REGINA – Crunch time has arrived at City Hall as councillors fight the clock to come to a decision on the 2026 budget.
Deliberations resumed Friday morning for the final day scheduled for budget deliberations. But the deliberations have continued to be a slow process and if deliberations are not concluded by the end of the day then they will have to resume in the new year, with the Christmas break approaching.
Councillors were still on their last speaker in the first round of questions on the operations budget, and were considering a motion brought by Ward 9 councillor Jason Mancinelli to close Massey Pool.
Mancinelli said he felt like "the Grinch closing a pool" but noted this had already been on the list of cuts and was already near the end of its life. "There's a high risk it won't open even if we make this investment," he said.
But there had not been a lot of appetite from council for closing Massey Pool, with a number of councillors speaking against it. Council ultimately voted 8 to 2 against closing the pool.
As deliberations unfolded Thursday afternoon the projected mill rate increase has continued to hover either slightly above or below the 11 per cent mark — still well below the original 15.69 per cent increase originally proposed by administration.
The meeting Thursday saw several motions from the more fiscally-conservative members of council seeking cost savings. Most of those were either defeated or withdrawn, with the few that passed resulting in only minor changes downward to the mill rate.
On Thursday, a series of 14 votes on amendments from Councillor George Tsiklis saw two of those motions passed on reducing nuisance property enforcement and increasing revenue from street use permits. That resulted in the projected increase being reduced down to 11.04 per cent.
Later, following motions from Councillor Sarah Turnbull to increase parking meter fees by $.50 an hour and parking ticket fees by $10 a ticket. At that point the projected mill rate stood at 10.87 per cent.
Council was extended past the scheduled 5 p.m. end time and continued to debate through to close at 8 p.m. Thursday before wrapping up for the day. Following the discussion and unsuccessful motion on Massey Pool, council passed another amendment motion from Mancinelli to reduce the amount allocated to the Heritage Grant Program by 50 per cent, from $260,000 to $130,000.
That means the projected mill rate now stands at 10.83 per cent as of 10:35 a.m. this morning.
Deliberations are expected to extend throughout Friday at City Hall.
