Saskatoon city council approves plan to borrow millions to cover snow removal cost

A plan to take out a loan to cover the anticipated $20 million cost of removing the snow left behind by a winter storm in December was approved by Saskatoon's city council.

Ward 1 Coun. Darren Hill, who has previously expressed opposition to the plan, was the only councillor to vote against it.

"I believe that we should be funding this through existing reserves and operating savings and decreasing some particular budget lines," Hill said during council's regular business meeting Wednesday evening.

Before calling a vote on the proposal, Mayor Charlie Clark said while he can appreciate Hill's opposition to the plan, it's also important to recognize the unprecedented nature of the ballooning cost of snow clearing.

"This is a doubling of the entire cost of our snow clearing budget that has occurred, That was not planned for," Clark said.

"We've now seen it twice in the last three years but prior to that we had not seen it for 20 years."

Under the plan as it was authorized by council, city administration may borrow up to $20 million to cover the cost of the emergency snow removal prompted by December's storm.

The cost will be repaid through a 0.75 per cent tax levy which will be incorporated in the 2024 through 2027 budgets.

When the plan was brought forward at the committee level, councillors pledged to absorb the added cost by taking steps such as deferring spending on large projects.

In addition to covering the cost of removing the piles of snow left behind after December's storm, some of the borrowed money will but towards creating a fund to help absorb the expense of similar weather events in the future.