YORKTON - Welcome to a new year.
As has become custom for many, the changing of the calendar is a time of making resolutions in an attempt to change things as we move into a new year.
With that in mind Yorkton Council is encouraged to make a collective resolution to find a way to hold the line on city spending in order to in turn stem the tide of everything going up year after year after year.
While it is well-recognized the city sits on a maze of aging underground infrastructure, many water and sewer lines well beyond what anyone would have expected them to last.
And a drive down a few streets quickly shows the often pock-marked asphalt, again well-past its anticipated life.
Sidewalks are no better in terms of condition based on age.
There is a need to update infrastructure, and that need will admittedly only get worse.
But, unless Council soon finds a way to trim costs and hold the line on cost hikes one wonders who will remain solvent enough to pay taxes.
Taken individually no single hike is ever that bad.
It’s a few dollars a month on the water bill, a bit more to pay for organic recycling bins, and then a singularly modest hike in property taxes.
But, when you add such modest costs together, and factor in that they are almost always year over year over year increases and suddenly the impact of the family budget is far from modest.
What does that mean?
Well it’s all part of a current reality that has Yorkton Fire Chief Trevor Morrissey seeking ways to alleviate a growing concern over homeless in the city.
Then there is the recently opened Community Fridge which does an all too brisk business in attempting to help keep people in the city who need some help fed.
The call for Christmas food hampers grows too.
The why is easy. Budgets are stretched to bursting, as food process climb, and property taxes and too many other bills for wages to keep pace.
So, when Council approves even modest hikes in fees and taxes citizens pay, it becomes a budgeting conundrum where those ‘modest’ dollars come from.
Initially, it might mean less restaurant meals, or trips to the movie theatre, or Junior Terrier games – a team that only a year ago was struggling financially a situation itself which might be an indication of less disposable dollars in the community.
Less extra dollars impact business, which impacts employment – recall of Saskatchewan NDP Shadow Minister for Jobs and the Economy Aleana Young recently in the city citing a report from Statistics Canada suggesting the Yorkton-Melville region had seen a loss of 7,900 in the past year.
Less people working puts pressure on things such as the Community Fridge and at its extreme could mean someone else left to life in a car or tent, and certainly not paying property taxes.
Service cuts are rarely going to be popular, but constant annual tax and fee increases simply are not sustainable either.
