A $560,000 plan to upgrade the steps to Pilots’ Monument was saved as Yellowknife city councillors made a range of cuts and changes on day two of 2026 budget deliberations.
Some councillors criticized a perceived lack of detail in the budget after an hour or more of discussion was needed to figure out exactly what the $560,000 will pay for.
It’ll cover a new set of steps to the Yellowknife tourist attraction – a hilltop monument to the city’s bush pilots with great views of the NWT capital and the bay – with an accessible route either to the top or a new viewing area partway up. Up to $200,000 of the overall cost can be covered by federal cash.
The existing steps were damaged in August when a truck hit the ramp at the base of the hill. Repairs have since taken place and the steps are open again, but an inspection highlighted the need for more work.
Three councillors tried to have the $560,000 replaced with $200,000 to simply rebuild the steps without accessibility features, but the majority voted down that option.
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Elsewhere on Tuesday, council saved $675,000 by revising the city’s plan to improve its downtown services in winter.
Extra staff and equipment were being brought on board to bring the winter level of service more closely into line with summer service for things like street cleaning and garbage collection, alongside winter-only issues like snow removal.
Those line items were deleted. City Hall will instead move from two to three days of downtown garbage collection in winter by rearranging existing resources.
The main downtown enhancement contract, which pays for things like summer street cleaning, will however get a $75,000 boost, rising from $100,000 to $175,000, based on positive feedback from residents.
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$46,800 was added to the funding available for annual community grants.
“Support has not increased since 2016, pre-pandemic. Inflation has increased 27 percent,” said councillor Tom McLennan, leading that move. “This is forcing the grant review committee to reject some applications, lower the funding allocated to some applicants and hold funding steady across the board, despite very reasonable and sometimes necessary requests for increases.”
$25,000 was added to support the city’s food and agriculture strategy, while $141,000 will be saved by amending the way a couple of municipal fuel tanks are removed and replaced.
More: YK fieldhouse track to stay free as council permanently scraps fees
Council also spent time debating the city’s “emerging issues reserve,” established after the 2023 wildfire and evacuation to give municipal staff a defined amount of emergency funding.
That reserve has sat in the budget for three years without a firm policy in place governing how it should be used or maintained, and some councillors were becoming fed up with the floating sum of money – well over a million dollars.
“There’s no clarity on how the money can be used or its specific purpose,” said McLennan, calling for the reserve to be scrapped. “The reserve in its current form is a paper tiger.”
Mayor Ben Hendriksen pushed back at the idea of deleting the reserve.
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“We’ve lived through an experience where having some flexibility in our financial capacity would have been super important,” he said, referring to 2023’s events, “and I would be concerned to get rid of this at this point.”
City staff promised a full policy for the reserve this coming year, having been delayed by other priorities.
A motion to scrap the reserve backed by McLennan, Ryan Fequet and Steve Payne failed when other councillors opposed it.
An attempt by Rob Foote to introduce $25,000 into the budget for an artist-in-residence program was ultimately withdrawn as not enough councillors voiced support. Some councillors said the extra funding for the grant program could help that kind of initiative.
A third day of deliberations will begin at 5:30pm on Wednesday.
Council made more than a half a million dollars in cuts on Monday, while Tuesday’s amendments also amount to more than half a million saved.
The projected property tax increase for 2026 stood at 5.83 percent at the start of this week’s deliberations. The cuts made so far will have reduced that figure, though a precise accounting isn’t yet available.
A finalized budget and final figure for the tax change are expected by the end of the week.
