The City of Regina released its proposed 2021 budget Friday, which will see property taxes increase by just over 2 percent.
The proposed mill rate of 2.34 percent is made up of a previously dedicated mill rate for Mosaic Stadium (0.45 percent), investment into the Recreational Infrastructure Program (0.5 percent), and added investment into the Regina Police Service (1.39 percent).
City Manager Chris Holden this is the lowest mill rate increase since 2009, due in part to achieving a zero percent increase for Regina’s civic operations.
He says it was important to the city to keep the increase as low as possible after the financial impact of the pandemic.
“I live in Regina, have family in Regina,” said Holden. “At the end of the day, I think it’s a very responsible, and responsive approach to ensure that even though there is a mill rate increase, people know that there has been some tough proposed at City Hall for council’s consideration that limit the amount of the mill rate increase.”
Mayor Sandra Masters says although she was concerned to hear there would be a mill rate increase, she is happy with the way the city approached it.
“I think there’s always concerns that there’s going to be a mill rate increase, but at the end of the day, when you’ve got the lowest mill rate increase in a decade, that shows some responsibility,” said Masters. “It looks to be very responsible, and allows for some significant investment in the community, which I believe we have a responsibility to do, in terms of putting some folks back to work.”
When asked if she would propose lowering the mill rate during council deliberation, Masters says she is comfortable with the increase the way it is.
Masters adds the best way out of the pandemic is investing responsibly, rather than holding on to money unnecessarily,
“I don’t have an interest in zeroing out planning to save for future infrastructure investment, we get ourselves into trouble every time we do it,” said Masters. “Costs naturally go up, and again I’ll commend city administration for holding the line because it’s not that costs didn’t go up, they were just able to find some efficiencies so that civic operations could be maintained at zero.”
A complete overview of the proposed 2021 budget can be seen on the city’s website.
Increased police budget needed, says Masters
The bulk of the city’s mill rate increase in 2021 will go towards funding the Regina Police Service.
After the murder of George Floyd in May of last year, many people around the world called for municipal governments to defund their police services.
Mayor Sandra Masters says she believes that is the wrong approach, adding the RPS is already understaffed and undercutting them wouldn’t help anybody.
She says resident surveys show people actually want more of a police presence in Regina.
“If you go back to the statistic, that nine years ago, we had 193 officers per 100,000 citizens, and now we’re at 166, it’s visible that we don’t have as many police officers out in the community for our citizens to see,” said Masters. “Police presence is actually proactive policing, which is do believe in, meaning that you can end up deterring crime when you have police present.”
Masters says, even through the pandemic, demand for police in Regina has gone up, while the number of officers available has gone down.
She says if the downward trend continues, it’s only getting to worse as the city grows.
“We have a little bit of catch up to do, and as well, there is an intention on behalf of our city to grow our population, so if we don’t start catching up now, we’re just going to fall further behind,” said Masters. “At the same time, crime rate, excluding the Covid year, has either continued to increase modestly, or significantly year over year.
She says the mill rate increase will go towards addressing some of the crime issues facing the city.
“If you’re looking at that our Regina Police are dealing with, in terms of firearms for example, the City of Regina has 26 incidents per 100,000 people, Calgary has 7,” said Masters. “We have some problems here that we need to support our police in trying to solve.”
