St. Paul digging into 2025 Budget on Monday

The Town of St. Paul will dig deep into the budget on Monday in a special council meeting, to go line by line into next year’s financials in hopes of passing the interim budget.

Council will review scenarios that include a three per cent tax increase.

Mayor Maureen Miller said they had department meetings in November with each department, outlining the needs and priorities. But even maintaining status quo is more difficult, with rising costs around utilities.

“When we talk about starting the budget, we talk about those non-negotiables. Gas is going to be gas, electricity is going to be electricity, insurance is going to be… and we’ve got those [numbers] now, and we did discuss that openly in our in our last meeting. They just come off the top, and they’re a non-negotiable,” said Miller. 

“The general cost of living for the municipality alone, be it gas and electricity, and where that status quo has gone up, is really a hard conversation to have, knowing all these expenses have gone up as well.”

Another aspect that is hitting a community like St. Paul hard is the rising contract costs of the RCMP, that are swallowing a large chunk of operating budget dollars.

“We had a special meeting with ministers around policing, crime, vagrancy, and mental health and addictions. Our whole area, if you look at the crime rates up here, we need help, and it can’t come out of any one of our budgets,” she said. 

“Our policing costs are already to the max where they could be. And if we could even put another set of quote, unquote boots on the ground, I don’t have it in my budget to do so.”

Some of the currently listed top items in the 5-year capital plan, are $3.4 million of retrofitting at the Clancy Richard Arena (dependent on grant funding), $2.7 million to upgrade the waterline on 50th Avenue, and $2.2 million for a raw water supply system upgrade.

Each municipality has to pass an interim budget for 2025 before the end of the year.

“We can be as frugal as we can, but we still need to have a vibrant community. We still need to invest in the future generations of our community. You can’t take it to the bare bones, to the point that you’re not maintaining capital, you’re not maintaining infrastructure…that can all come off, but who is then going to hold that bag at some point?

“We have to just plan for it as prudently as we can and make sure that we’re still moving our municipality forward.”