Regina City Council will need one more meeting to finalize the 2020 budget.
City council elected to add $292,000 worth of transit services in 2020, including airport service that will come at a cost of $144,000.
Mayor Michael Fougere said he voted against the airport transit amendment.
“My view is that we don’t have a strong business case, we haven’t concluded negotiations with the airport on longer term funding, we haven’t the (Regina) Hotel Association being involved as well,” Fougere said. “They may benefit directly from this one, so until we have those partnerships in place locked down, I felt it was premature.”
Fougere said funding municipal operations through the reserves is unsustainable.
“We’re going to need to look at this again in the future, but that’s the will of council to use part of the surplus from last year to fund operations,” Fougere said. “I repeat: that’s not sustainable, and we’re going to have to find a way to square that circle as we go forward.”
Fougere said the transit debate that was had Tuesday night is similar to some that were had in the past.
“It’s important, but it’s no greater importance than before,” Fougere said. “There’s been some new mechanisms like the airport busing, that’s new, but the other (amendments) are talking about weekend or holiday usage, expanding lines.
“That’s happened for many, many years.”
Council will reconvene Friday afternoon at Henry Baker Hall to finalize the operating budget as well as the utilities budget.
Regina Police budget approved
Meanwhile, Regina City Council gave the okay to the Regina Police operating budget Tuesday night, which includes a $3.6-million increase.
Chief Evan Bray said the current budget addresses needs that will need to be filled over a number of years.
“Obviously, we’re always looking for more officers, but we thought this was a positive step forward and hoping (it is) step one of maybe a three or four year process to get us to where we need to be.”
Councillor Jerry Flegel put forward a motion to increase funding for the police even further to hire more police officers.
It was defeated, but had it passed, the 2020 budget deliberations would have needed to be delayed by another month in order to send the police budget back to the Board of Police Commissioners.
Bray said the need for more officers is a result of the city growing too fast for the police to catch up.
“There’s lots of competing financial challenges for a city as well, so sometimes we can adapt and absorb some of those changes, but other times, the only way to address it is to add more resources,” Bray said. “I give our Board of Police Commissioners a lot of credit.”
Bray said there’s a lot of things police are doing to make up for short staffing.
“We’re doing a boundary review, we’re doing a service delivery review, and so those types of things can also have positive effects in terms of response times and things like that,” Bray said. “It’s a little bit of a moving target, and what it looks like today for 2020 might look different for 2023.”
Bray adds the new recruits will be hired some time in the new year.
