Gordon Barnhart new SUMA president

Gordon Barnhart has been elected as the new president of the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association. 

He defeated Saskatoon city councillor Darren Hill on Monday.

Barnhart is a councillor for the town of Saltcoats, Sask., and is also the former lieutenant-governor and former interim president of the University of Saskatchewan. 

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Barnhart told CBC his top priorities as president will be to figure out how Saskatchewan towns and cities will deal with less provincial funding.

"Preparation for the upcoming provincial budget will be one of the biggest issues for us, for sure," he said. 

Barnhart said members of SUMA would hope that the current revenue sharing formula did not change. Municipalities have previously shared a pool of money equivalent to one percentage point of provincial sales tax revenues.

If the formula changes, every municipality in the province will have to rethink their upcoming budgets, Barnhart said. 

"I'll just give the example in Saltcoats, if memory serves me correctly this grant is 10 per cent of our overall budget so if we were to lose that, that's huge. Secondly we can't run a deficit so if we have less money that means we have to cut services or raise taxes."

Earlier in the day, Premier Brad Wall spoke to those in attendance at SUMA's annual convention in Saskatoon. He said cities and towns will receive less money from the province, but didn't say just how much less that would be. 

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Wall said the province's budget deficit is up again, to around $1.2 billion, which includes the $236 million related to repayments to businesses from a surplus at the Workers' Compensation Board.

The government forecasted a $1-billion deficit in November.

Third quarter updates are usually rolled out in February.