Councillor Brian Swanson and Councillor Dawn Luhning were not in favour of the 2014 Operating Budget

After initial approval two weeks ago, the final green light has been given to a 1.64% mill rate increase for Moose Jaw. Council ratified the Operating Budget Monday night, working out to about $20 extra a year for a home worth $140,000.

Councillors will now shift their focus to the Five year Capital Budget and while funding for infrastructure is always key, Councillor Dawn Luhning believes planning is even more important this year.

"You can't just throw money at the problem and expect it to fix itself." said Luhning. "You have to do your homework and look at it outside the box and see where you can make some changes and do things differently."

"We definitely have an issue where we have a very large carry over from last year. Are we going to be able to do anything in 2014 if we're still doing work from 2013."

Some councillors have started to entertain the idea of a second tax increase to help pay for more infrastructure upgrades, while others share Councillor Luhning's idea that better planning is needed to make best use of our current resources. Councillor Heather Eby is one of those councillors who has expressed the notion of using 2014 as a year to catch up on the outstanding projects while allowing city administration the time to develop a better plan of attack.

Even our Finance Director has voiced a similar concern saying they don't have enough staff, or contractors available in the city to do all the work that's needed. But with enough funding, more staff could be hired and trained to do the work, depending on how councillors want to address the situation.

"I think that you can do that if you really shave deeply in all the budgets and I'm still not convinced that we are going to do some deep cutting and deep digging as to where we could be saving some dollars and re-allocating some money." explained Luhning when asked if she had an appetite for an infrastructure tax increase. "I don't want to tack on another tax increase and not do some really hard discussions around where is the waste in the budget."