In City Council last night, a motion was passed to increase the revolving line of credit for property development for the City of Swift Current.

The City's current line of credit is $14.3 million, but with the spending near the current limit, they felt the need for an increase of $10.3 million. The increase is still within the City's current budget limit.

Notably, the credit line won't immediately increase by $10.3 million but will allow for the additional room to increase spending by that amount if needed.

The potential for additional funding for the completion of three projects makes up the increase:

  • $3.9 million at Munro Industrial Park
  • $3.4 million at Cypress Point, and
  • $3.0 million for projects included in the 2017 Capital Budget

Mayor Perrault explains the City's decision to increase the line of credit for payment was to avoid the set payment schedule of a mortgage on these projects.

"In this case, we can borrow against this line and we can pay off that line as property sales happen in the fluid motion that we hope that it does. So we invest a lot of Capital - with borrowed money through the credit line - to develop that land and to put those services in. As those properties sell, we can decline that. But truth be told, we likely will always have a line of credit if we continue on the path of being our own property developer," he said.

With the City playing the role of land developer, Perrault and Council note that this allows businesses to acquire lots from the City at reasonable prices to encourage both industrial and residential growth. This is a point that Perrault, and former Mayor Jerrod Schafer have touched on in multiple instances. with the 'good debt' discussion being a much-debated topic during the City's 2016 election.

The rise of the debt has left some citizens leery of the growing figures. but as Perrault explains, it's a difficult figure to judge based solely on the dollar-figure.

"When we look at our total debt for the City of Swift Current, we've got our property development - and there are other communities that are not their own land developer. We've also got our utility - there's only one other community that has an electrical utility. We've got our wastewater utility, water treatment utility, and our landfill. All those things pool together totally to make up our total debt."

Perrault explains he hopes clarity can be given in more concrete fashion as to the areas making up the City's debt.

"I really want to work with us on Council for our financial reporting for this year to have the dollar figures for those areas broken down a lot better for the public. That would help to see that although they all get pooled together on our reporting, I think it's important to see them as an individual item as well," he said.

City Officials clarifies that although the increased line of credit has ties to projects in the 2017 Capital Budget, the cred increase will not affect the projected $10.83 monthly tax increase from the City of Swift Current's 2017 Municipal Budget.