Issue: Municipal Revenue Sharing

Questions for Municipal Leaders to
Ask at Candidate Debates

2016Provincial Election

Issue: Municipal Revenue Sharing

Urban municipalities are on the front lines of Saskatchewan’s growing economy — we provide the foundation for the growth our province has been experiencing over the last decade.

The provincial government has a vested interest in ensuring these communities are great places to work, play, and live. The success of our province is inextricably linked to the success of our urban municipalities. When our hometowns do well, so does the province.

Urban municipalities provide core services that are essential to quality of life and that foster and sustain growth. These include the services residents rely on every day including:

• police and fire services;
• snow clearing;
• public transit;
• recreation, arts, and culture facilities and programming;
• economic and community development; and
• garbage and recycling collection/processing.

More than 77 per cent of Saskatchewan’s population lives in the province’s cities, towns, villages, resort villages, and northern municipalities.

Over the last decade our province has experienced incredible growth that can be attributed to the population and economic growth that occurs in our urban municipalities.

In the last eight years, Saskatchewan has incorporated three new cities, each with at least 5,000 residents: Martensville, Meadow Lake, and Warman. In that time, we have also welcomed 135,935 people — enough people to fill the equivalent of more than 27 new cities.

A) Permanent Municipal Revenue Sharing

Our urban municipalities only collect about eight cents of every tax dollar and have a limited ability to bring in revenue beyond property taxes. As a result, municipalities alone cannot support the incredible growth in their communities and rely on the province to broaden their revenue base.

After years of consulting with municipalities, the province announced a historic revenue sharing agreement in 2009 that resulted in one point (i.e., 20 per cent) of the Provincial Sales Tax (PST) going to municipalities in the form of municipal revenue sharing.

While we are extremely supportive of this program, the one component that is missing is permanence.There have been times in the recent past where that funding was in jeopardy.

We want revenue sharing made permanent through changes to legislation so that the province cannot easily modify the program without consultation with or notice to municipalities.

Q: Is your party dedicated to ensuring municipalities can continue being partners in the growth of our Saskatchewan by committing to a permanent revenue sharing program?

B)Downloading Of Provincial Responsibilities onto Municipalities

Revenue sharing is intended to reflect the provincial government’s interest in municipalities providing critical, core services fundamental to our quality of life. Revenue sharing is not intended to pay for services that are the responsibility of the provincial government.

Over the last few years, wehave seen a gradual shift of responsibilities from provincial to municipal governments — particularly to urban governments. This shift includes the downloading of responsibilities for healthcare, education, affordable housing, pest control, para-transit, and disaster mitigation to name just a few.

Q: Will your party commit to halting the practice of using revenue sharing as an excuse to download provincial responsibilities onto municipalities?

C)Regulatory Changes

From time to time, the provincial government makes changes to provincial regulations, and new responsibilities are transferred onto municipal governments. These changes rarely, if ever, come with attached funding for municipalities to pay for these responsibilities.

For example, the cost of environmental improvements to or the decommissioning of landfills is borne entirely by municipalities, even though they have no control over the Environmental Code or regulations.

Municipalities also bear the entire burden for building or improving wastewater treatment plants to meet new environmental standards and federal regulations.

The province simply cannot expect municipalities to take on new responsibilities resulting from changes to provincial regulations without providing funding to match.

Q: Should your party form the next provincial government, will you commit to adequately funding any regulatory changes that transfer new responsibilities onto municipal governments?

Issue: Infrastructure

More than 77 per cent of Saskatchewan’s population lives in urban municipalities and rely on municipal infrastructure to go about their day-to-day lives. This vital infrastructure includes the streets and bridges we drive on, the systems to take away and treat our wastewater, and all the equipment needed to ensure access to clean, safe water.

Over the last 10 years, Saskatchewan has experienced enormous economic and population growth, largely in urban municipalities. This puts increasing demand on existing municipal infrastructure and the need for new infrastructure to meet the demands of growth, which can be particularlychallenging for our cities, towns, villages, resort villages, and northern municipalities.

A) Made-on-Saskatchewan Infrastructure Program

While municipalities own more than 60 per cent of Canada’s public infrastructure, they collect only eight cents from every tax dollar paid in Canada, with the balance going to federal, provincial, and territorial governments.

Property tax alone cannot provide the level of funding needed to address growth.

Despite recent investments in municipal infrastructure by the province, urban municipalities still face a significant infrastructure deficit after decades of underinvestment.

We are confronted with crumbling roads, rusting bridges and sewer systems, and outdated water and wastewater treatment facilities.

Q: Should your party be elected to form government, will you establish a Made-In-Saskatchewan infrastructure program specific to municipalities and in consultation with municipalities to address the infrastructure deficit in Saskatchewan?

Q: Will you also commit to making the program permanent, long-term, sustainable, and predictable; and one that covers assets including streets, bridges, water and wastewater plants, and landfills — not schools or hospitals?

B) Innovative Options for Financing Municipal Infrastructure

On our own, municipalities don't have the revenue tools to rebuild infrastructure — especially while we are expected to meet growing needs on things such as policing, recreation, arts and culture, and the many responsibilities downloaded from other orders of government including housing, and settlement of newcomers.Property tax alone is not enough.

Q: Should your party have the honour of forming the next provincial government, will you work with municipalities tofind innovative options for financing municipal infrastructure and encouraging local solutions and local investment?

C) Urban Highway Connector Program (UHCP)

Urban connector highways are the roads that connect our municipalities to provincial and national highways.

The provincial government’s Urban Highway Connector Highway Policy recognizes that “urban communities serve as key collection and interchange points where export bound products trucked along rural highways are linked to national and international transportation corridors.

Urban connectors form an essential part of both the national and provincial transportation system. Efficiencies and the public interest are best served by the free flow of traffic, including travel on urban connectors. Producers and shippers cannot afford delays in urban areas caused by transportation bottlenecks.”

The current UHCP remains under-funded to the point where the province is failing to live up to its responsibilities and municipalities are being forced to pick up the slack.

At present funding rates, it would take roughly 20 years to rehabilitate all the outstanding UHCP roadways. We cannot wait that long; 71 kilometres of these roads are already in fair-poor to poor condition — the worst ratings given under the program.

Q: If your party is elected as the next provincial government, will you commit to providing adequate funding to fix all outstanding urban highway connectors as soon as possible so our communities can continue to play an important role in the provincial economy as generators of economic activity?

D)Orphaned Environmentally Impacted Sites Fund

In 2015, the provincial government initiated the Orphaned Environmentally Impacted Site Fund to provide funding to clean up abandoned contaminated sites.

These sites have a negative impact on communities in terms of health and safety. Cleaning up these sites not only has numerous benefits for residents and communities, but will also foster economic growth by allowing these sites — often located in the main business areas of urban municipalities — to be redeveloped.

In theory this is a meaningful program. In practice, however, funding is minimal or non-existent, as fines collected from violations of certain environmental laws are the only source of revenue for the program.

Q: If elected, will your party commit to keeping our residents and communities safe and provide adequate funding to clean up abandoned contaminated sites?

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