The City of Swift Current has seen a decrease of over $500,000 in funding after a decision in last week's provincial budget.

Grants-in-Lieu Taxes (GLIT) from SaskPower and SaskEnergy have been eliminated. The grant is paid by the Crown Corporations in lieu of property taxes for infrastructure, and has left the City scrambling to cover a $523,490 cost.

Mayor Denis Perrault explains the decision caught the City off guard, but the result could have been much worse for Swift Current.

"The benefit of owning our own power utility, in looking at other communities our size like North Battleford and Yorkton, it could easily have been upwards of three times that amount. So we're fortunate that it's not as bad as others, and we're thankful for that," he said.

The next step for the Mayor and City Officials is to undertake the task of finding cost-efficiencies in the budget. Notably omitted from the cost-efficiencies is an additional increase in the $10.83 monthly increase projected for the City's 2017 budget.

"We're not going to go back to the public to look for more," Perrault said. "Moving forward, I do believe we can find savings here. Should we need to, we might have to dip into reserve funds."

With cities across the province similarly scrambling to figure out the entirety of what the Grants-In-Lieu Tax will mean, Mayor Perrault says the City will be following up with their Saskatchewan Urban Municipality Association (SUMA) representative to discuss a variety of strategies looking to be implemented by city Mayors across the province.

More updates will be given as SUMA comes out with a plan of action to cover the loss of GLIT around the province - a total of approximately $36 million.