Kevin Berger
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Clark’s Crossing Gazette
The RM of Corman Park is looking at introducing a $100 flat fee per unique property-owner in order to cover the costs of firefighting services that the municipality currently bills out to ratepayers.
During the administration committee meeting on December 9, councillors voted 7-1 to recommend that administration be directed to bring back an updated fire services bylaw in the first quarter of 2026 that includes the proposed $100 flat fee per unique property-owner.
Division 6 Councillor Steven Balzer voted against the recommendation. Division 2 Councillor John Saleski was absent.
That motion was then adopted by council as part of the consent agenda during the December 16 council meeting.
While presenting a report to council, Director of Finance and Information Technology Cal Hamm noted council had previously reviewed a briefing memo on firefighting cost recovery as part of the 2026 budget deliberations on November 12.
At that time, council passed a motion to have administration prepare a comprehensive report on what various options for a potential firefighting services fee.
Currently, the RM has fire protection agreements with the Cities of Saskatoon, Martensville and Warman, as well as the Towns of Dalmeny, Langham and Osler.
Fire service costs are billed to the RM and recovered from ratepayers at a maximum cost of $30,000. In turn, insurance typically provides about $20,000 to $30,000 in coverage based on premiums of $200 to $300 per property.
In 2024, the RM’s firefighting costs totalled $520,000, while the year-to-date costs as of October 31, 2025 have been $378,000. Historically, about 75% to 88% of costs have been recovered through invoicing ratepayers.
The problem with this approach, noted Hamm, is its variability in cost recovery, as well as hefty administrative burdens on RM staff and inequities among property-owners depending on insurance coverage.
Increasingly, coverage is being capped or excluded due to the unpredictability of claims, and insurance is harder to get on unproductive land.
To this end, Hamm presented the administrative committee with five options for a fee that would hopefully cover the RM’s yearly firefighting bill. The first of these was the $100 flat fee charged to all 4,923 unique property-owners in Corman Park.
Hamm clarified that if there were three individuals listed as owners of a property on its title, that would be considered a unique property. And then if two of those individuals were owners on another title, then that would also be considered a unique property.
“Obviously, there’s a whole wide-ranging number of properties in the RM that have any sort of combination of owners,” said Hamm.
“At $100 per property, based on those numbers, you would be looking at a flat fee charge of just over $490,000.”
While this would be difficult for administration to implement under the current system, Hamm noted this option was favoured by insurance brokers and would also mean farmers with multiple agricultural properties only being charged once.
It should be noted as well this fee would only apply to direct fire response costs and exclude nuisance calls, false alarms and unregistered burns. In short, there would still be situations involving negligence where ratepayers are charged for firefighting costs.
A second option would be to impose a flat fee of $70 for each of the 7,300 properties in the RM, which would be easier to implement and generate about $513,000 in revenue, but potentially spark backlash from ratepayers.
Hamm also presented options for a flat fee of $125 for each of the 3.798 “improved” properties (ie. properties that have a building or raised struture) in the RM, and a 3.5% increase to the mill rate, raising it from 4.78 to 4.95. The fifth option was simply maintaining the status quo.
Administration’s recommendation was to go with the first option of a flat fee per unique property-owner, while also setting the fire reserve at $500,000 to cover expenses that exceed the amount of revenue generated.
Likewise, any revenue generated above expenses being rolled into that reserve at year-end.
It is worth noting that Dave Nussbaumer of the Lakeview Insurance Group was in attendance at the December 9 committee meeting to answer any insurance-related questions.
Nussbaumer commended council for considering this flat fee, noting that this issue needed to be considered at a provincial level.
“You guys are taking, I think, a proactive and proper step in the right direction from an insurance and ratepayer perspective,” he said.
