Reaction to the Saskatchewan budget unveiled last week is one of relief.
After weeks of speculation lower than anticipated oil revenues would force the Saskatchewan Party into an austere budget which could include program clawbacks and even tax increases, the document presented came across as less impactful than many had feared.
Yorkton Mayor Bob Maloney said he was satisfied with what the provincial government did, especially in keeping the revenue sharing program it had in place for municipalities.
“I was pretty excited as I listened yesterday,” he said in a Yorkton This Week interview Thursday. “I was concerned.”
Joel Martinuk, president of the Yorkton Chamber of Commerce said he felt the government did what it had to.
“We feel it was a responsible budget,” he said. “On a provincial level they’re doing what they can under the economic circumstances.”
The provincial Chamber was more glowing in its praise citing restraint with the operating budget and investment in infrastructure as being good for business.
“We are also pleased that this budget didn’t contain any tax increases,” said Saskatchewan Chamber CEO Steve McLellan. “In our shifting economic climate, increased taxes would have placed a burden on local businesses, as well as consumers, which would have exacerbated existing pressures.”
Maloney said from a municipal perspective there was a concern they could lose a very good program to cuts.
“When the Premier says they were looking at revenue sharing it would have been silly not to be (worried),” he said.
But in the end the program remained intact.
Maloney said he had felt in the end it would be because it is a good program for municipalities.
“I was fairly confident revenue sharing would stay in place,” he said. “It took so much work to get in place I was fairly sure the government would leave it alone.”
Maloney said the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) certainly tried to make the message clear to the province they liked the revenue sharing program as it is.
“I think SUMA did a pretty good job of lobbying to get the message across about the importance of revenue sharing,” he said.
Maloney said revenue sharing is something municipalities need.
“Its important money,” he said, adding in the case of Yorkton it is $3.5 million.
“And it’s predictable,” continued the Mayor, who noted when he first joined Council the municipal budget was held up awaiting the provincial numbers to come out in the annual budget. With revenue sharing set by formula, municipalities can get about planning the work they need to do months earlier now.
Sunrise Health Region Board chair Lawrence Chomos said the 5.1 per cent increase to health regions actually came as a surprise.
We were prepared for a very tight budget, so any increase is appreciated,” he said, adding for Sunrise the increase will be $9.4 million over last year.
That said it is not exactly all new dollars, as some is money now rolled into core funding which last year was provided through other avenues to fund initiatives new in 2014.
Even with an increase Chomos said the local budgetary process is going to be a challenge.
“We know we are going to have to find more efficiencies this year,” he said.
Chomos said for the third straight year Sunrise is running in the red and headed toward a deficit on the year.
“So we have to find ways to do things better,” he said.
With three years of budget shortfalls, the question has to be asked if funding from the province is simply inadequate to cover the costs to provide service locally?
Chomos said it is a question he too is asking.
As an example he said “the challenge of this region is many smaller facilities some other regions don’t have.”
“It can fragment your costs,” said Chomos, who added they are asking the province if that issue of running the local region is “not adequately recognized for the expenditures we have.”
The provincial budget did include $4.5 million for the Kelvington integrated care facility.
Chomos said that is good news as infrastructure needs are an issue locally.
“Infrastructure issues need to be addressed,” he said.
Those needs include health care facility projects already prioritized by Sunrise for Yorkton, Canora and Esterhazy.
Chomos said he wants such projects to be considered by the province and then placed on a capital projects list, much as is already done regarding education facilities, so local regions can see where they sit in terms of possible funding. He said with the province funding 90 per cent of such projects they have the core decisions to make, but a list would let local authorities and fundraisers know where they stand.
Maloney said it was also good news for Yorkton to see the previously promised $4.5 million for the Parkland College Trades and Technology Centre still in the budget. While admitting a project already started was likely to be finished, with the government saying “everything was on the table” in terms of formulating this budget there were worries “they might slow down” some projects, pushing college funding a year down the road, he said.
Martinuk was also pleased to see the college funding, which in addition to the $4.5 million to complete construction included operational funding in the amount of $200,000 and $500,000 for programs.
Parkland President Dr. Fay Myers attended the budget announcement in Regina and was happy with what she heard.
“It will certainly assist us in moving forward and allow us some growth,” she said.
“It’s going to be tight on the operational side, but it was good news for the college.”
Martinuk hopes increased local training opportunities encourage more people to stay in the area, something business needs for employees and customers.
In the new budget, the Province added more incentive to the retention program by increasing the amount of time graduates have to use their tuition tax break. They may now recoup their tuition, up to $20,000, over 10 years if they stay in Saskatchewan.
The college will also benefit from the Saskatchewan Innovation & Opportunity Scholarship funding, which provides matching dollars for scholarship money raised locally and was renewed with the 2015-16 budget. Last year, Parkland handed out more than $194,000 to students under the program.
“Overall, we are very happy with how the budget impacts the college,” Myers said. “These measures will have a positive impact on students and communities in our region.”
In terms of separate K-12 education, not a lot changed according to Darrell Zaba, director of education for Christ the Teacher Catholic Schools (CTTCS).
“It’s almost like a status quo budget for us again,” he said.
On first examination, he said it looked like CTTCS would be within about a percentage point of implementing their education plan without any cuts.
It was not all indifferent, though.
“For us probably the biggest positive was before this year they hadn’t fully funded the funding model, now it’s fully implemented,” he said, explaining that meant there would not be the roughly $300,000 “efficiency adjustment” the division has had to deal with in each of the last two budgets.
On the public schools side, it was good news across the board for Good Spirit School Division (GSSD).
First off, the division received a $2.1 million increase in operational funding. Dwayne Reeve, director of education explained that nearly all of that will go to meeting the obligations of new collective bargaining agreements with teachers and support staff, but was very welcome.
“We thought that would have had to come off our existing budget, so it was much better news than we thought it would be,” he said.
GSSD also received a bump in preventative maintenance dollars of $200,000. This will allow the division to complete some projects, such as new roofs that have been put off due to lack of money.
It won’t completely catch them up, but they will be able to do more than they were planning for, Reeve said.
The public schools also benefited from the cancellation of efficiency adjustments and Reeve said the board was relieved an anticipated reduction in supports for learning did not occur.
Perhaps the best news of all, though, was the Province’s policy shift in how it deals with capital education projects. Saskatchewan is now funding 100 per cent of the capital costs for school projects including those that have been previously announced, but are not currently under construction.
Reeve believes this will apply to the new Langenburg school.
With the Province’s recently upgraded credit rating, taking on local boards’ share of these projects is projected to save the government money over the long term. And it has the add-on benefit locally of reducing administrative costs locally.
Another anticipated policy change that could ultimately save GSSD and CTTCS administrative costs is proposed centralization of property tax collection. Since the provincial government removed school divisions’ ability to set their own mill rates, it makes sense from an efficiency standpoint, Reeve said, that the taxing authority, now the Province, that sets the rate would also collect the money.
While the local school boards shuffle their numbers, the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation (STF) is taking a cautious approach toward the budget given the decrease of $661 million in provincial revenue.
“We know budgets are tight, but we also know that resources are needed to effectively support teachers who are dealing with increasingly diverse classrooms,” said Randy Cline, STF vice-president.
Still, the union has high expectations and intends to hold the government accountable.
“We will want to see evidence that government and school divisions are fulfilling their commitment to address the challenges being experienced by teachers regarding intensification of work,” Cline said.
Overall, Maloney said the budget seems to have avoided drastic changes even as oil, a major revenue source went from $100 per barrel to half that?
“I think they (the province) were legitimately concerned,” he said.
However, Maloney said while revenues are down, “year-over-year they are far higher than they used to be.”
The situation is one where the Saskatchewan economy is now more diverse, so it can weather low oil prices better, said Maloney, adding that while the province’s books have been hit, the province’s business sector has done better.
“Business in the province is doing better than the government is,” he said, adding “too often we measure our economy by how the government is doing.” He said the key is jobs. “If people are working we’re doing OK.”
