Regina Minute: Issue 129

Regina Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Regina politics

📅 This Week In Regina: 📅

• The Executive Committee will meet on Wednesday at 9:00 am, and one of the items on the agenda is a rewrite of Regina's floodplain rules affecting roughly 2,400 property owners. New flood mapping from the Water Security Agency, replacing data from 1982, would reclassify properties along Wascana Creek in the Dieppe, Mount Royal, CPR Annex, Crescents and Lakeview neighbourhoods from flood fringe to floodway. Administration is recommending the City drop its standard from a 1-in-500-year flood event to the 1-in-200-year standard the Government of Saskatchewan adopted in 2025, arguing that keeping the stricter rule would cause disinvestment as properties are phased out over many years. Owners inside the floodplain would face new flood-proofing requirements, including restrictions on residential units in basements, a rule putting furnaces and water heaters above the safe building elevation of half a metre above floodplain level, and engineer approval for new residential buildings. The City mailed notices to about 2,400 affected owners in June and held an information session in July, drawing 37 responses that were mostly questions about property values, insurance, and renovations. Administration told those owners their assessments will not change as a direct result, though the next assessment cycle runs from 2029 to 2033. If the Committee agrees, Council takes up the amendments on September 23rd.
  
  
• Also on Wednesday's Executive Committee agenda is a request to give the RCMP Heritage Centre a $250,000 grant drawn from the City's General Fund Reserve. The museum is planning a $9.6 million capital renewal and has been approved for $7.7 million from the federal Build Communities Strong Fund, which requires it to raise money from other sources. Administration's own report puts the reserve's forecasted uncommitted balance at $20.8 million against a recommended minimum of $35.8 million, and warns that drawing on it below that threshold leaves the City less cushion to respond to emergencies. The Heritage Centre has already received roughly $7.7 million in municipal property tax exemptions since 2007 and about $1.1 million in community grants since 2014. Administration believes the money will strengthen the museum's bid to become a National Museum, which it says would end the need for City funding and could instead bring in an estimated $500,000 a year in payments in lieu of property taxes. The Committee considered the request in private session on September 2nd and voted to concur before sending it to Wednesday's public meeting.
  
  
• A supplemental report on the Regina Housing Strategy returns to the same agenda, seven weeks after Council sent the strategy back for more work. Council asked Administration in July to explain how tax increment financing could advance the City's housing goals, and whether the City should take on the role of pre-developer or developer for infill projects. On tax increment financing, the report warns that revenues would be diverted away from general municipal purposes for the life of the district, typically about 20 years, that borrowing would count against the City's debt limit, and that assessment revaluations happen only every four years in Saskatchewan, creating cash flow problems. It recommends the tool be used sparingly and only in narrow geographic areas where an assessment increase can be predicted with confidence. On the City building housing itself, Administration is blunter, writing that there is substantial risk because the City has neither the capital nor the experience to compete with private industry. The report also notes $600,000 from the federal Housing Accelerator Fund has been set aside to map water and wastewater capacity for infill developers, work Administration expects to finish by the end of 2027.
  
  
• The Regina Planning Commission meets tomorrow at 4:00 pm, and one of the items on the agenda is a two-year review of the rules governing where office buildings can be built. Administration is recommending that the office area in Harbour Landing receive the same permissions as the Albert Street transit hubs, which would let office buildings of 1,000 to 4,000 square metres go up there without Council approval and without regard to the downtown vacancy rate. The report acknowledges the change could be seen as undermining the goal of keeping downtown as the city's primary business area, and could add as much as 4,000 square metres to the suburban office inventory. Downtown office vacancy has fallen from 15% in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 12.6% in the second quarter of 2026, still well above the 6.5% threshold that currently blocks suburban office development. The 2024 changes that created the Albert Street transit hub permissions have produced no office proposals at all, which Administration attributes to a lack of market demand for medium-scale buildings. Also on tomorrow's agenda is a proposed contract rezoning at 1202 and 1212 Retallack Street in North Central, which would allow light industry and outdoor storage on two vacant lots currently zoned for low-rise housing.
  
  
• Regina Councillors were handed a list of 35 proposed service enhancements totalling about $9 million at a pre-budget meeting on September 8th, and funding all of them would push next year's property tax increase to 8.15%. City staff are currently targeting a mill rate increase of 5.81% for 2027, and the enhancements would add another 2.34% on top of that. For the average Regina home assessed at $325,000, the full package would mean about $288 more in property tax. The list includes $1.3 million for sidewalk repairs, more than $1 million for the City's accessibility plan, $889,000 for a downtown and Warehouse District sidewalk cleaning crew, and $433,000 for a bus route to the new Costco opening on Dewdney Avenue in May 2027. Acting Chief Financial Officer Jeff May told councillors that funding any of the enhancements while holding the increase at 5.81% would require finding offsets, and he declined to rank the list by priority. Ward 2 Councillor George Tsiklis warned against drifting into December with a big wish list and not enough room on the tax bill. The figures do not yet include budget requests from the Regina Police Service, Economic Development Regina or the Provincial Capital Commission, and Council does not deliberate on the budget until the sittings from December 7th to 11th.

🚨 This Week’s Action Item: 🚨

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