YORKTON - A first public look at the City of Yorkton’s budget for 2025 was held Thursday.
At a ‘Special Meeting of Yorkton Council’ city administration reviewed both the operating, and capital budgets, with Council then offering comments and asking questions about the dual documents.
Overall the proposed budget includes increases of 2.06 per cent for capital (see related story this issue), and 1.84 per cent for operation, for a combined increase of 3.9 per cent.
The Capital budget is focused on larger, single capital items such as new city facilities, major construction, and other initiatives that are not recurring in nature, explained Ashley Stradeski – Director of Finance with the city.
The City prepares a two-year Capital Budget, which allows some lead time to plan out capital projects prior to execution with funding secured for the following year. This also allows for some flexibility on timing of projects and their associated costs, he added.
“The idea is it gives us kind of a heads-up on what we’re planning,” he said.
With capital it is in part about playing catch-up.
“On the Capital budget side, we recognize that we exist in an “infrastructure deficit”,” continued Stradeski.
An infrastructure deficit simply means the amount the city is spending on updating infrastructure is not keeping pace with the useful life of that infrastructure.
That said Stradeski added Yorkton is not unique.
“We’re in the same boat as every other municipality,” he said. “It’s just a fact of life we’re not spending enough.”
As a result given the spending deficit, the city has worked to close the spending gap on infrastructure by adding a specific portion of the annual tax increase to the Capital Budget, increasing the amount available for larger infrastructure projects, said Stradeski.
Our spending in this area is still behind where it needs to be, but has increased by over 40 per cent from 2018, allowing the City to continue to address our aging infrastructure and the unfortunate increase in construction costs over the last few years, he noted.
“Adding one per cent to our capital budget was already planned and approved in the 2024 / 2025 Capital Budget during the prior year’s deliberations. This added approximately $290,000 to our capital budget. After Council deliberations, it was decided to increase this amount to allow for more annual funding for important capital projects, and as such, this has been increased to 1.84 per cent which brings the annual increase for our Capital Budget to $540,000 in 2025,” detailed a report circulated to Council.
When it came time to ask questions, Council had varied areas of interest.
Councillor Darcy Zaharia started things with a question about drainage.
“We spend a lot of money on drainage . . . Where are we at?” he queried.
“We have spent a ton of money on drainage,” agreed Stradeski, adding it’s ongoing with a portion of the huge York Road expenditure related to drainage, and more to come. It is all part of a long-term goal to make the system better able to deal with water from rain events of up to one-in-100-year events.
The largest single item in the capital budget is the annual allocation to the York Road project, with $2.5 million going to the debt servicing for the next five years.
Recreation was another area of interest from councillors.
Coun. Quinn Haider was curious where previous public requests, one for a new football field, and another for specialized flooring in the Agripavilion for sport use were in terms of the budget.
Mayor Aaron Kienle asked about the previously proposed bicycle pump track and basketball courts behind Columbia School.
The football field and Agripavilion flooring are not in the 2025 budget, said Stradeski.
The pump track has money allocated previously – near $1 million -- but the project was put on hold by the previous council, it was noted.
All three ‘projects’ will eventually return to Council for decisions at some point – most likely in the current year.
Kienle followed-up with a question about the state of work at Jaycee Beach and of a potential new indoor sport facility.
City Manager Brad Hvidston said such projects need to be looked at more closely through the lens of seeing “what the community need is,” and that would mean starting “with a lot of community discussion.”
Hvidston said projects of such scale “don’t come to fruition in one year, or even one term,” but both are on the city’s list to investigate further.
The condition of the York Lake Road was also discussed, following a question by Coun. Haider.
A full upgrade of the city-owned portion of the road was among capital projects deferred as among those not feasible to complete in the short term.
The York Lake Road project has an estimated cost of approximately $2.6 million.
This amount, being as substantial as it is, would allow us to resurface approximately five kilometres of roadways, offered Stradeski.
As a result the city will simply be maintaining the status quo in terms of how it deals with York Lake Road, offered Aron Hershmiller – Director of Public Works with the city said.
Zaharia was also curious about $100,000 allocated for a Downtown and West Broadway Redevelopment Plan, which the report to Council stated will form a crucial pillar on which the City will plan out its growth and zoning plans to ensure revitalization of our core areas.
Michael Eger -- Director of Planning, Building & Development with the city said a plan exists which dates back to 2005, but because of its age it is “creating policy problems and gaps for us,” adding it simply needs to be reviewed and renewed,
“The plan (the current one) isn’t really working for anyone anymore,” he said.
In the end Council voted unanimously to proceed with garnering public feedback on the initial 2025 Operating Budget draft as presented by the Director of Finance, and further direct Administration to bring a subsequent budget report to the March 3, Council Meeting to consider for adoption.
