By Katie Ryan
Saskatchewan communities will have to cool their heels and wait another year before the provincial government doles out more in revenue-sharing.
On Monday, Premier Brad Wall told delegates gathered in Regina for the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association annual convention that cities will receive the same amount of revenue-sharing money as last year.
The announcement came as little surprise to Lloydminster’s director of finance Don Newlin.
“We normally budget based on the previous year unless there is an announcement. We haven’t included any increases at this point,” he said.
The 2009-10 distribution of the municipal operating grant for Saskatchewan cities is $144.48 per capita, based on the 2006 census population. According to the city’s most recent municipal census, Lloydminster’s Saskatchewan population totalled 9,100. Last year the city was allotted an estimated $1.2 million from the revenue-sharing grant and will receive about the same in 2010.
Newlin said the freeze in funding won’t put strain on the city’s budgetary planning.
“We have had budget direction from both provinces that they expected to try and maintain the grant level similar to 2009.”
Comparatively, Saskatoon was in line to receive $38 million this year, instead because of the freeze the city will be given $29.2 million.
Under the Sask. Party’s 2009-10 budget, rural and urban municipalities received 90 per cent of one point of the provincial sales tax (PST), which totalled about $167 million.
The province also promised that in the spring a new, permanent revenue-sharing formula would be established, giving communities the equivalent of one point of the PST on an annual basis.
Instead the new revenue-sharing formula will now be implemented in 2011-12. Local MLA Tim McMillan said the promises made by his government will be kept, however, patience is needed.
“As the premier announced that we are still in our budget process for this year, but being that $2 billion of potash royalties came out of our current year’s budget, it’s going to be a more constrained budget this year,” he said.
“Our government campaigned in the last election on getting to a full one percent on PST revenue sharing to municipalities and we are going to hold firm to that election promise just like we have to a 100 we have already achieved in this mandate. But, it might not be this year that we go from 0.9 to the full one per cent.”
By early March the Saskatchewan budget is expected to be released.