The City of Yorkton Operating and Capital Budgets for 2021 were passed without an overall increase in taxes collected.
The documents as passed showed a combined Operating and Capital Budget with no tax increases.
“The operating budget as presented does not require an increase in taxation,” said Ashley Stradeski, the City’s Director of Finance March 15. “This is a budget that is very much status quo.”
While Stradeski noted COVID-19 impacted revenues, reducing or eliminating some streams at recreational facilities in particular, that was somewhat offset by grant dollars.
Fortunately for us, relief was available from the Federal and Provincial Governments in the form of the COVID Safe Restart program which provided us with funding of $975,000 to use to offset lost revenue and increased costs related to COVID-19, he explained. The budget as presented includes utilization of just under $350,000 of this funding to offset these decreased revenues and increased costs.
While there was a zero increase, some taxpayers will pay more in 2021.
The budget resulted in no overall increase in taxation for the City – while this means the City wasn’t raising its rates to collect more tax, it did not mean that individual property owners didn’t see changes to their taxes. It was a revaluation year for property assessments, and with it at there were fluctuation in the value of nearly every property within the City, explained Stradeski.
While the City still collected the same amount of taxation dollars, the value of the properties determined how much each individual property paid of that.
