Border Land School Division has adopted a budget for the 2026-27 school year that boosts school taxes by a relatively minor amount in order to support the educational needs in the region.
The financial plan includes a mill rate increase of 8.6 per cent from 11.6 to 12.6, but the board also made the decision to dip into the division’s accumulated surplus fund in order to lessen the impact on taxpayers.
“We’re deficit budgeting because we carried a surplus over our provincial cap amount,” explained board chairperson Steven Wiebe. “That allowed us to keep our mill rate increase to a reasonable amount. We’re relying on the excess surplus from last year.
“I think it shows that we’re still running a fairly tight ship as far as our budget numbers go. We’re not being outlandish in any of our cost categories.”
The new budget estimates total revenues of $45,733,556 and expenses of $45,293,057. To bring down its accumulated surplus fund according to provincial guidelines, the division is dipping into that fund to transfer $1,040,499 to its capital fund.
The budget includes provincial government revenue of $30,873,529 with net municipal support coming to about $12,721,857, with other revenue sources including federal support making up the difference.
As far as the impact on taxes, the homeowner affordability tax credit that has replaced the education property tax credit is increasing from a maximum $1,500 to $1,600, and property assessments only increased in 2026 by one per cent, as it was not a reassessment year.
It means the impact per $300,000 of assessment per year breaks down as follows:
– Farm (portioned assessment rate 26 per cent): increase of $78.
– Residential (portioned assessment rate 45 per cent): increase of $35.
– Commercial (portioned assessment rate 65 per cent): increase of $195.
Wiebe noted the division last year benefitted from a sizeable property assessment increase.
“There’s always this temptation when you get a massive property assessment increase,” he said. “What was tempting was if we start with the same mill rate, last year we would have had quite an increase in the amount of money we would have received from local taxation, but what we actually did last year as a division was we dropped our mill rate,” he noted.
“This year because we saw a year over year increase in operating expenses by about 7.3 per cent, we had no choice but to do a slight increase in the mill rate … to catch up with those expenses and then maintain a sort of status quo budget.”
He noted that a large part of their financial challenge was that increased operating support from the province overall came in at under two per cent—a level which does not keep up with rising costs.
“The public announcements sound really promising,” said Wiebe. “For a division like Border Land, what it actually boiled down to was a net increase in provincial funding of about $200,000. It’s not negligible … but it’s different when you’re talking about a $42 million budget.”
He also noted that the move to provincial bargaining for teaching staff that led to the harmonization of salaries province-wide has had a financial impact for school divisions.
“That’s actually a substantial cost for rural divisions,” he said. “We were hoping the province would have stepped in to help with those salary costs for that harmonization. In our case, we only got about 30 per cent of that increase … the remainder has to come from our budget.
“We have to dig into our coffers and look at local taxation as a way to cover those kinds of expenses.”
The division considered a number of priorities as far as their budget for the school year ahead, including the following:
– Teaching staff salary move to the provincial harmonized grid which is an increase of 2.85 per cent.
– Support staff salary increase of 2.5 per cent.
– 22 per cent of teaching staff are budgeted to be ‘on the grid’ and receiving a four per cent increase for the additional year of service.
– $590,000 of operating funds and $330,000 of capital reserve funds for the Roseau Valley School boiler project
– Deficit budgeting of $600,000 to use up surplus in excess of the 4 per cent allowable amount.
– Bus reserve allocation when cost is more than $200,000 per bus.
There are also a number of other capital expenses, including $12,000 for flooring, $57,000 for cabinetry, $94,000 storage sheds, a $38,000 retaining wall and $50,000 for equipment including four auto scrubber floor machines.
Wiebe suggested the division had done well considering they were not in a position to pursue any more grandiose plans and priorities.
“We’re not sitting in a board room dreaming about all of the wonderful projects we would like to do,” he said, recalling the years under the previous Conservative government where they were restricted in terms of increases in local taxation, but even though they now have some leeway as far as local taxation, they still need to be mindful.
“We want to be careful and respectful of the taxpayers. We have to be cognizant of maintaining the status quo and not suddenly opening the doors and spending freely. Those days are over,” he said. “Would we like to dream about new programming and extra staffing? Yes, we would, but we don’t have that luxury.”
