Proposed Regina property tax hike gives Saskatoon residents less reason for envy

Saskatoon Mayor Cynthia Block expressed some envy Wednesday over the Saskatchewan Roughriders Grey Cup victory parade.

“I was so proud and excited [about the Grey Cup win] and jealous that Regina got the parade,” the mayor of Saskatchewan’s largest city told her colleagues at city council. “That seems very unfair.”

As Block leads council into her first two-year budget debate as mayor this week, any jealousy toward the rival city to the south has likely evaporated.

Block and Saskatoon council are wrestling with a preliminary property tax increase of 7.43 per cent next year and 5.92 per cent in 2027. Next year’s tax hike, if left unchanged, would tie for the highest in Saskatoon history for civic services, matching the 2014 increase.

Bureaucrats in Regina, however, apparently saw that and said: “Hold our taxpayer-funded beers.”

Regina residents are facing a proposed property tax explosion of 15.69 per cent. That increase is not derived from a massive expansion of services. Like Saskatoon’s, it would pay merely to maintain existing services.

Many cities find themselves struggling to pay their bills in the inflationary post-pandemic environment.

But Regina’s preliminary increase ranks as absolutely astronomical, even in the current landscape of rising costs.

Rookie Regina Mayor Chad Bachynski will lead a council of mostly fellow rookies in trying to beat down the tax hike. But Regina property owners should not get their hopes up too high.

Regina's proposed 2025 tax increase started out at 8.5 per cent and was later reduced by council — but only to 7.33 per cent. Notably, it came in just below Saskatoon’s highest historical hike.

To perform a similar feat for 2026 would require some major chainsaw action — maybe cut the fire department or something like that, and hope nobody notices.

But Bachynski and his colleagues likely agree with a statement Block made last week at a business luncheon: that property tax is outdated as a viable way to fund growing cities.

In Calgary, property taxes are forecast to jump 3.6 per cent in 2026, which might sound low until you consider that they will rise by 5.8 per cent for residential properties. Last year, the city’s portion of Calgary property taxes rose just 3.4 per cent, but the provincial share climbed by 17.5 per cent, so overall taxes soared by 8.9 per cent.

No wonder some Alberta municipalities want the province to collect its own property taxes.