Residents of Yorkton are looking at a 3.93% tax increase, down from an original 8% increase. Finance Director Ashley Stradeski says that would translate to an increase of $6.50-7.00 a month for the average residential property, and twice that amount for the average commercial property.

Stradeski says a large part of the increase is due to inflation.

“Utilities, fuel, those kinds of things are the biggest impacts. Essentially anything the City has to buy has gone up drastically,.” said Stradeski.

The increase, Stradeski explains, is broken down into two parts, a 1% increase in capital and 2.93% increase in operating. The 1% is to close the infrastructure deficit and the 2.93% covers the cost of inflation while providing the same level of services to Yorkton residents.

“They went about it very carefully and said ‘Where can we save, [and] where can we trim without losing services?’ which sounds a little bit hard to believe, but on the other hand, they did,” Mayor Mitch Hippsley said of administration’s main battle of inflation when setting the budget. “They came to us with an 8% figure, and knowing almost that we weren’t going to approve – and we didn’t – we said ‘Okay, let’s go back to the drawing table.’”

The budget is available for public feedback on the city’s website, www.yorkton.ca/budget, with the possibility of the budget being approved as early as February 13.