Resident Art King is frustrated with how city council creates and manages its budget and believes elected officials need to do a better job of how they handle and use tax money.
King attended council’s regular meeting on May 13 and spoke about the proposed property tax bylaw — and other related financial matters — that council planned to vote on.
He pointed out that council discussed the federal gas tax fund in April, and while it’s a great program, he claimed the information that Coun. Dawn Luhning put forward was not factual because inflation was not a factor in creating the mill rate.
Continuing, King said he spoke with representatives from the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) and learned the opposite is true, that inflation is a discretionary item that the economy puts forward. Specifically, assessed land values determine the mill rates while council sets all budget-related items.
“I wish it was true that it was inflationary because my property in 2011 had a $768 mill rate and that is not the education part, that is the city council portion,” he said. “The inflationary rate on that particular item from 2011-24 is 34 per cent. That’s compounded interest inflation over inflation year-to-year.”
Conversely, King claimed his taxes have risen 84 per cent during that 13-year period, which is a difference of 50 per cent compared to inflation.
Meanwhile, the frustrated taxpayer — who is one of a few residents to regularly attend council meetings — said three of six councillors who ran for mayor in 2021 failed to correct the misinformation about the gas tax fund.
“That’s troubling to me because if you don’t know where the money is coming from, how can you know where it should be spent?” he said. “It’s easy to trim low-(hanging) fruit on the tree. That’s the situation the City of Moose Jaw takes with taxation.”
King reminded council members that there is more than $1 million in outstanding parking fines. He noted that council passed a motion recently to attempt to collect some of that money, which may or may not happen depending upon how successful the city is.
One “low hanging” financial item that King thought council could successfully pursue was forcing the Moose Jaw Warriors to pay their outstanding pledge amount for the Mulitiplex. He noted that the team is $400,000 to $600,000 behind in its commitment.
“Now $400,000 at five-per-cent interest is $20,000 a year that I as a taxpayer and (other) taxpayers have to make up. If it’s $600,000, then it’s $30,000 annually,” he said.
King criticized city administration for the agreement it signed with the Warriors to use the Events Centre, saying the contract looks fine but does not encourage the team to pay its pledge, which means the city loses $20,000 to $30,000 annually in taxation.
As manager of a corporation — the City of Moose Jaw —council needed to be more responsible with the taxes it received since it sometimes used that money to hire more employees than it needed, he continued.
King said the city’s population had remained relatively the same since 2015 while council’s budget had increased nearly four times. He didn’t believe this was due to inflation but to “poor workmanship and management of the labour force.”
The taxpayer — who lives near William Grayson School — told council that he saw eight city employees standing around when construction was happening at Caribou Street West and Ninth Avenue Northwest more than a year ago. He thought a barricade could have done a better job of blocking traffic instead of having the employees do it.
“That is total mismanagement and taxpayers were picking it up to boot,” King added.
The next regular council meeting is Monday, May 27.
