Saskatoon’s Governance and Priorities Committee met today to discuss “Priority-Based Budgeting”. In January of this year, the auditor’s office put forth an audit recommendation to investigate “priority-based budgeting’, as part of the financial review.

In response, Chief Financial Officer with the City of Saskatoon, Clae Hack presented a report saying, “While the city’s current budgeting approach has done a good job of keeping the overall expenditure increases below inflation and growth, and lower than other orders of government, the existing approach offers little insight into the budgeting priorities of the city, other than maintaining the existing service levels across the board.”

The Chief Financial Officer says implementing a “Priority-Based Budgeting Tool” would offer additional insight into which services and programs are of highest priority for the city and assist in future decision-making and allocations.

One of the recommendations made today, was to reduce the climate budget, particularly around Green House Gases (GHG). This would involve putting less effort into GHG budgeting, so they can bring a bigger focus to the actual priorities that city council should be looking at as a city.

The recommendation was carried unanimously, but City Council still has to vote to approve it.