Yorkton residents will see 3.9% tax increase in city’s draft budget

WATCH: Yorkton City Council put out their budget for review, which shows a tax increase for residents. Sierra D’Souza Butts has more.

Yorkton City Council has put their 2025-26 draft budget out for review, proposing a 3.90 per cent increase in taxes.

The breakdown of the proposed slight increase includes a 1.84 per cent increase in the city’s capital budget, and a 2.06 per cent increase in the city’s operations. As a result, the average homeowner will have to pay roughly $7.10 more per month for property tax, and roughly twice that for an equally valued commercial property.

“With operating, for the most part you are looking at staffing, the cost of life with increases there, as well as the roads,” explained Yorkton Mayor Aaron Kienle.

“As for capital, a number of projects that are either needing to be funded or new things that are coming along. The 3.9 per cent is where we landed. We did our best to keep it below that four (per cent) and make it something that’s palatable.”

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The capital budget will support major projects like debt servicing for York Road and drainage related expenses, construction for the new airport terminal and road construction on Sully Ave North. As well, feasibility studies to assess the development of more indoor recreation facilities.

“For amenities, like councillor Stephanie Ortynsky said, that’s what everyone sees and that’s what everyone uses,” shared councillor Darcy Zaharia.

“We’re all trying to advocate for amenities, I don’t think there’s one councillor or the mayor that didn’t advocate for that, but there’s only so many dollars and when you see all of the money that has to go to infrastructure, there’s just very little left for amenities so we try to get as many as we can.”

The increase in taxation revenue is projected to support the city’s plan on keeping up with inflation and help close the city’s “infrastructure deficit.”

“Some of the (major projects) are continuations of the old ones, which is York Road being our largest one,” Ashely Stradeski, director of finance explained.

“There’s a lot of drainage and culvert work to be done. Those are essential projects where certain areas of the city drainage has failed and that kind of thing. They are a far cry from the drainage work that has yet to be done, but we have to keep going in that direction.”

Kienle said council reviewed many avenues for trying to keep taxes as low as possible, while still maintaining the city’s quality of services.

“We’re going to be doing more streets and roads. I think a lot of the money that was allocated to that department ended up on York Road. Now moving forward, we’ve added a little bit more so we can do more of the neighbourhood streets,” Kienle shared.

“Also, just a continuation of providing the services we provide, whether that’s snow removal or grass cutting, all of those things. They all cost a lot of money and keeping those services at the same level, it was a discussion that was had on whether we would look at reducing services to allow for more affordability for people. I think there was a real desire to have those services stay where they are at, people are happy with them.”

Council held their first open budget meeting Thursday evening, a special event the city plans to do moving forward.

Residents have until Feb. 26 to review the city’s proposed budget online in detail, and provide any feedback before council votes on March 3.