YORKTON - To probably no one’s surprise Yorkton Council green-lit the city’s operating and capital budgets for 2025.
To the credit of this edition of Council they did offer the public one look inside the process holding a special meeting where they basically reviewed the completed budgets with the TV cameras rolling, the media watching, and the gallery open to the public. It was a positive step in terms of being transparent in the most important job Council has – determining how to spend taxpayer dollars, and one hopes they continue to expand the amount of the process the public can see.
However, for additional openness on behalf of Council to have the impact it should, the public needs to be engaged to be part of the process if it is open to them.
Go to a coffee shop after an increase in property taxes is unveiled and you will be nearly assured to overhear comments of concern.
However, making suggestions, or offering ideas to your coffee buddy does not effect change at the Council level.
When it comes to questioning our elected officials, or offering them ideas to consider, none are more easily contacted than those on municipal council. They live, work, and govern in the community. To get the ear of the Mayor or a councillor is relatively easy.
But talk to councillors and you find that when it comes to budgets – increases in taxes, or not – and there is generally near silence from the public.
It is unclear, one supposes, whether the general silence is overwhelming support for the budgets, a begrudging acceptance tax increase are an annual thing, or maybe the ‘frog in the frying pan’ syndrome where we have become numb to property tax hikes even as we near the point they may become unaffordable.
That is still the question even as the 2025 budgets are now approved. When do increases become too much?
It is interesting that each year Administration offers up comment that on an ‘average’ home the tax increase is a rather modest one, but what has that increase been in the last five, or 10 years, as the near annual hikes begin to compound upon each other?
Then when one extrapolates a few years ahead and does the math on more and more increases, what then in terms of affordability, as noted by Coun. Darcy Zaharia Monday.
And therein lies the message for the public, to become more involved in the process. Offer ideas that might mitigate some of the tax hikes. Council is only seven individuals, and they won’t have every idea that may be a good one in terms of setting a local budget.
Share ideas, good ones will be appreciated, and most certainly are needed.
