Saskatoon city council approves 2025 budget with 4.96% property tax hike

This week's budget session at Saskatoon city hall was shorter than last year's and the resulting property tax hike was smaller.

The property tax bill is still increasing in 2025 by 4.96 per cent, or about $9.14 per month for the average homeowner, according to the city. Budget deliberations started Monday and ended Tuesday before lunch, ahead of schedule by a day and a half.

Just three weeks after the civic election, the new city council unanimously approved the $1.1-billion budget for 2025.

The city' recently adopted a multi-year budgeting cycle, so much of the 2025 financial plan was debated and settled on last year when the outgoing city council spent four days finalizing budgets for 2024 and 2025.

Mayor Cynthia Block was a councillor during those long budget sessions that resulted in 2024's 6.04 per cent increase.

"It was an excruciating process," Block said about 2023 after this year's final vote Tuesday morning. 

"Last time there was unprecedented inflationary pressures. And for us to find ourselves where we are today, it's just so much better from the standpoint that a lot of those really hard decisions were made."

The 2025 projected property tax increase stood at 5.64 per cent when councillors started on Monday, but that dropped to 5.2 per cent when city administration added another $2 million to the plus column from investment revenue.

City council decided to put another $500,000 into snow removal on top of the $1.1 million increase already set for 2025 during last year's budget debate. Councillors also voted to approve two new fire inspectors.

On Monday, councillors approved budgets for city services, including Saskatoon police, the Saskatoon Public Library and Remai Mondern.

Recent increases by year:

• 2023 – 3.93 per cent.
• 2022 – 3.86 per cent.
• 2021 – 2.83 per cent.
• 2020 – 3.70 per cent.