Budget Building Blocks
The City's Strategic Plan, Business Plan and Budget are foundational building blocks that guide the City’s multi-year business plan and budget. Collectively, they provide a framework that supports the City to ensure its budget investments are deliberate, purposeful and supportive of the high quality of life we have in Saskatoon today - and for the future:
- 2022-2025 Strategic Plan
- 2026/2027 Multi-Year Business Plan
- 2026/2027 Multi-Year Budget
Strategic Plan Alignment
The City’s 2026/2027 financial planning continued to be guided by the 2022–2025 Strategic Plan, which outlines key council priorities and service goals. This City Council's 2026-2029 Strategic Plan will be approved in early 2026.
The development of the 2026-2029 strategic plan presented emerging themes and priority areas of focus which informed the City’s early budget planning discussions and helped shape future proposed investments. Though there is an overlap of the two strategic plans, this approach has ensured continuity of our budget planning process and service delivery. This approach allows flexibility to adapt to evolving community needs and this current City Council's (elected in 2024) new priority areas and ongoing direction to Administration.
Budget planning in alignment with the City’s Strategic Plan helps to ensure our programs and services continue to address the needs of the community and our changing city, while staying within our financial means. Both strategic plans are guided by the City of Saskatoon’s Vision, Mission and Values.
Three pillars form the City’s 2022-2025 Strategic Plan’s framework:
• Advance City Council’s Priorities;
• Deliver Excellence in Core Services and Operational Priorities; and
• Drive Corporate Transformational Change.
2026/2027 Multi-Year Business Plan
The 2026/2026 Multi-Year Business Plan includes initiatives and projects aligned with the 2022-2025 Strategic Plan. The business plan guides investments, projects, and service levels the City will implement and achieve over the course of the next two years.
The City’s business planning process ensures resources are provided to priority programs and services. Funding will be tied to clear and achievable key actions identified in the 2022-2025 Strategic Plan. The multi-year business plan provides a framework which allows the City to quickly adapt, respond and adjust if needed to changing municipal, provincial, and federal environments.
The City's business plan supports service outcomes, performance measures, strategic outcomes, and actions planned within the City's 14 Business Lines:
| Arts, Culture and Events Venues | Saskatoon Fire |
| Community Support | Saskatoon Public Library |
| Corporate Asset Management | Saskatoon Police Service |
| Corporate Governance and Finance | Taxation and General Revenues |
| Environmental Health | Transportation |
| Land Development | Urban Planning and Development |
| Recreation and Culture | Utilities |
2026/2027 Multi-Year Budget
The City’s 2022-2025 Strategic Plan continued to drive the business planning and budget process. The 2026-2029 Strategic Plan is expected to be finalized in early 2026 and will be used for future budgets.
Collectively, the City's 2022-2025 Strategic Plan, and the 2026/2027 Business Plan and Budget are the foundational building blocks that provide the framework to support the City’s multi-year budget approach. These pieces help ensure the City’s budgeted investments are deliberate, purposeful, and supportive of the high quality of life we have in Saskatoon today - and for the future.
The City’s approach to multi-year budget planning and budgeting is intended to:
• Improve transparency and decision-making by providing City Council and citizens with more information about where City funds are used. This approach links service costs to service levels and outcomes, and better connects long-term goals to short-term spending decisions;
• Increase the City’s accountability in delivering civic services to citizens effectively and efficiently, while maintaining its focus on a sustainable future; and
• Help the City transform by providing for more regular, ongoing, and thorough examination of civic services to ensure that services are relevant to citizens’ needs and priorities.
Four-Step Multi-Year Budget Planning Process
Administration's four-step process is as follows:
Step 1: Determine Cost to Maintain Service Levels
As part of developing the cost to maintain civic services, City Departments were given a 0% expenditure increase as a starting point. Any requests for increases were thoroughly reviewed on an individual basis by Administration. Through the review of all costs, considerations were given to:
- reviews of historical results;
- opportunities for absorption and continuous improvement within existing budgets;
- contractually obligated inflationary increases; and
- growth in service areas (roadways, park space, population, etc.).
Step 2: Determine the Budget Forecast Status for 2026/2027
This step forecasts the costs to maintain existing services and service levels at status quo, that is to keep all services as they are currently; to achieve this, operating expenses and operating revenues are reviewed to determine if there is a funding gap. A key risk to any business plan and budget is the continuous reworking of assumptions and plans due to moving targets and lack of parameters set at the beginning of the planning cycle.
Step 3: Develop Corporate Business Plans to Achieve Priorities and Goals outlined in the City's Strategic Plan
Administration formed working committees to develop strategies and initiatives to achieve the priorities within the City’s 2022-2025 Strategic Plan.
Step 4: Incorporate desired Business Plan Options into the Business Plan and Budget
City Council's final Budget Review (deliberations) is scheduled for November 25-27, 2025.
Civic Surveys and Public Input: An Important Part of the City's Budget Process
The City of Saskatoon regularly conducts two civic services surveys to measure resident’s perspectives on quality of life in Saskatoon, satisfaction with civic services, areas for improvement and future priorities. The results of the surveys help inform decisions related to strategic priorities, budgeting, and service delivery, while also identifying opportunities for continuous improvement.
- Civic Satisfaction & Performance Survey
- Civic Services Survey: Performance, Priorities & Preference
These surveys measure residents’ perceived quality of life in Saskatoon, satisfaction with civic services, areas for improvement, and future priorities. The Civic Services Survey provides Council with resident feedback on service priorities and preferences. The City will use this feedback to inform decisions on strategic priorities, budgeting and service delivery and to identify opportunities for continuous improvement.
The 2025 civic services surveys were conducted by Forum Research Inc through their online panel. For each online study, panelists were selected at random from the panel to complete surveys online, ensuring the accuracy of online research results. Panel members who are residents of Saskatoon were provided with a link to access the survey online.
Previous versions of the civic services surveys also included a random telephone sample and an open link for self-selected survey respondents. Data collection for the 2025 surveys was exclusively conducted via online panel.
Survey background and results are available at saskatoon.ca/civic-services-surveys.
Services, Savings and Sustainability
For more than a decade, the City has been has been committed to becoming a more sustainable organization by finding new savings and efficiencies in the work we do every day, and delivering value for taxpayer dollars year after year.
The annual Service, Savings and Sustainability report highlights the ways the City’s departments and teams worked together in the preceding year to:
- Capture savings and find efficiencies
- Enhance services for residents through creativity and innovation
- Make improvements in the area of sustainability
The 2024 Service, Savings and Sustainability report identified over $5.4 million saved through cost savings, cost avoidance and reductions, with an additional $1.9 million in cost avoidance to come over the next three to five years. View the 2024 Report at saskatoon.ca/SSSreport.
The report demonstrates the City is working hard become one of the best-managed cities in Canada. It highlights our yearly achievements and progress made to drive service improvements, identify savings for taxpayers, and adopt sustainability initiatives across Saskatoon.
City employees are committed to sustaining a culture of continuous improvement and making Saskatoon a better community for everyone.
Risk-Based Management Framework
The City, like all municipal governments, faces many types of risk, including strategic, operational, financial and compliance.
To help manage these risks, the City implemented a Risk-Based Management Program (RBM) to assist Administration with enhancing intelligent risk performance in all areas of operation, ensuring continuous improvement in the way the City is managed, as well as continued growth in public confidence in the City’s performance.
RBM is an important building block in the business, budget and strategic planning process by providing a continuous, proactive and systematic process to ensure risk is understood, managed and communicated throughout the organization.
The framework assists departments in developing processes that help identify and document risks before they occur, allowing for a planned approach to reducing the likelihood and impact of an adverse event, and also increasing the possibility and magnitude of benefits that could result from seizing an opportunity.
When effectively integrated into strategic and decision-making processes, the risk management process helps to:
- achieve Strategic Goals and operational objectives;
- improve financial and operational management by effectively allocating resources to high-risk areas;
- strengthen the planning and priority-setting process;
- increase management accountability by demonstrating due diligence; and
- foster innovation and continuous improvement.