Premier Lorne Calvert announced Monday that the province has allocated $52 million more for local governments ­ which means Estevan may not see any property tax increase this year, according to Mayor Gary St. Onge.

Feeble applause floated from roughly 900 delegates of the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) convention in Regina as Calvert announced the funding.

The announcement, he said, was in response to SUMA's request for an additional $30 million annually, in revenue sharing. Although the immediate fiscal year will see more money transferred to municipalities, the apprehensive applause indicated the delegates mixed reaction to the short-term solution.

The money will come in three packages: $10 million for a one-time top-up payment in the current fiscal year's transfer payments, an additional $10 million for the next fiscal year's transfer payments, and the creation of a $32 million community share 2006 fund, accessible in the form of one-time grants for local governments to improve infrastructure.

The total influx for Estevan this fiscal year should equal roughly $600,000, according to the mayor's initial calculations; half from the topped-up transfer payment, and half from the per-capita-assessed portion of the community share 2006 fund.

"We had been thinking about some kind of a tax increase this year," said St. Onge shortly after the announcement. "But, we shouldn't need a tax increase this year."

Despite the allocation's short-comings ­ both in the short-term nature and the dramatic disparity from the requested $30 million annual revenue sharing plan ­ both SUMA president Don Schlosser of Weyburn and St. Onge are happy with the announcement.

"I'm pretty happy with the fact that we've got $20 million to the revenue sharing base," said St. Onge, who called the provincial plan a first step towards a more permanent agreement.

"I agree that a lot of it is maybe only one-time money for this year," said Schlosser, who is also the mayor of Weyburn. "But, by working together with the provincial government, I'm sure that we're going to be able to work out a plan so it will be there permanently."

Calvert credits the ability to allocate the $52 million to Saskatchewan's strong economy, adding that he anticipates continued prosperity, which will make the desire of the province's city mayors to create a permanent revenue sharing formula, a reality.

"We are engaged in that conversation towards a longer term relationship," said Calvert. "We have a lot of confidence in the future of our budget, but we don't budget dollars that we're not absolutely sure of. We don't spend imaginary money."

"We're still looking down the road," said St. Onge, "that eventually we'll have a revenue sharing formula, whereby when certain things go up for the province, ours would go up, and if it should drop like it did in the early '90s, it would drop as well, so that we would at least be able to predict ­ have some idea of predicting-what kind of dollars we would be getting."

Estevan's share of the $32 million capital projects fund has a few possible destinations already, according to St. Onge.

"It may be enough dollars that we may look at more infrastructure work, put money on the debt ­ we have quite a bit of debt. Or, finally set up some reserves, because we don't have any reserves," he said.

Weyburn's infrastructure priorities are road repair and water pipe replacement; a project that has already seen 14 kilometres of pipe replaced in the last two years, said St. Onge.

In addition, Estevan's 30-year plan could be accelerated somewhat by the announcement.

"It may speed it up a little bit. I don't want to say that right now,but that would be my guess right now. It could speed up, or we might not put so much tax dollars in it, and may not have to raise taxes," said St. Onge.

Editor's note: Erin Morrison is a journalism student at the University of Regina and will be contributing stories to The Mercury