Listen to this article
Estimated 3 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
Craig Stahlke worked at the Pembina Trails School Division for more than four decades, and has spent the past four years on its board of trustees, but he can’t recall the last time the Winnipeg division considered such a sizeable mill rate increase.
Following a special meeting of the board of trustees on Thursday, the division announced in a news release Friday that its draft budget for 2026-27 is proposing a 9.9 per cent mill rate increase due to a “significant shortfall” tied to reduced baseline funding from the province.
“I can’t go back over the decades, but this is one of the larger increases, if not the largest increase,” Stahlke, who currently serves as the board’s vice-chair, told CBC on Friday.
The division’s $272.56 million draft budget for 2026-27 includes a rate increase of 1.07 mills. The mill rate for 2025-26 was 10.811, Stahlke said, which could jump to 11.881 — a hike of 9.9 per cent — if the budget passes in its current form.
“This is not necessarily the final budget. There are some pieces of information that we don’t have that will affect the final calculation of the mill rate. They may or may not be significant,” he said.
Pembina Trails still awaits the final assessment report from the city, which is typically provided the first week of March. That report will affect the total assessment on which mill rates are based, said Stahlke, who spent his working years as the the board’s secretary-treasurer and chief financial officer.
The division says funding from the province increased at a lower rate for 2026-27 (1.1 per cent) compared to 2025-26 (1.5 per cent), which fails to cover increased expenses tied to contractual obligations and inflation, according to the release.
“Whether we like to levy a tax increase as high as what we’re proposing or not … we have to balance that off with the educational and operational needs of the system,” Stahlke said.
Those needs, he said, led the board to project an increase in expenses of more than $20 million for 2026-27. Meanwhile, without a tax increase, the division would only see revenues rise by $1.7 million.
The proposed mill rate increase was made in combination with other cost-cutting measures to balance the budget ahead of the upcoming academic year.
Pembina Trails estimates the average homeowner within the division’s boundaries, which is valued at $531,800, will see a $13 monthly increase in education taxes.
“We’re faced with a wide variety of challenges and I can assure you that the board is mindful of the burden it places on the local taxpayer. We would rather not have that, but we have to meet the needs of our students,” Stahlke said.
He cited the division’s enrolment bump of 3,000-4,000 students over the last four to five years has resulted in higher costs. As of 2026, the division has nearly 18,000 students and employs nearly 2,500 full- and part-time staff.
“The need to provide teachers, which are an expensive resource, is vital in order to provide the kind of education that these students are entitled to.”