Saskatoon city council unanimously approves 4% tax increase

Saskatoon city council has approved a tax increase of just under four per cent as two days of budget debates come to a close.

The official increase is 3.96 per cent, which will cost the average family an extra $64.70 per year on their property taxes or $5.40 per month. It's the lowest property tax increase since 2010.

Council did have a windfall of about $1.2 million dollars from extra property tax taken inthis year that could have been used to lessen the tax increase.However councillorsopted to put that money into an improved snow removal strategy.

Coun. Ann Iwanchuk has been pushing for city-wide snow removal from residential streets since she first ran for office.

"Eventually I'd like to see us get to the city-wide clearing, but in the meantime we do need to look at those priority streets and to have the snow actually removed as opposed to the windrows piled. I think that will make a huge difference," she said after the vote.

The snow removal plan will include a property increase of 0.55 per centfor the next five years to build up enough money for city-wide removal.

Council will also need to find up to another $90 million for more places to dump the extrasnow.