Mayor happy provincial budget held no big surprises
Mayor Gary Vidal’s said the 2018 provincial budget seems status-quo, especially for municipalities.
The mayor said the budget contained a few things he and council were watching for, like details about municipal revenue sharing, the municipal surcharge from SaskEnergy, and the focus on spending for rural crime.
Meadow Lake will take a small hit in revenue sharing. The city will receive $940,000, down from $1.01 million in 2017-18. The decline didn’t come as a surprise to Vidal, he said, as the city took it into account while planning for 2018. He said this year’s number was based on provincial sales tax revenues from 2016.
“We knew the revenue was going to go down,” he said. “When the provincial PST revenue is higher we gain, and when it goes down we lose. We knew that; we budgeted for that; that’s not a surprise to us. We understand there’s going to be some consultation and discussions going forward on how we deal with the municipal revenue sharing in the future.”