The city of Swift Current is decreasing its line of credit by a significant margin.

During Monday night's meeting, city council voted unanimously to reduce the line of credit from $7 million down to $2 million.

The credit change comes about six months after the city had increased its limit to $7 million to make sure they'd meet their financial commitments and offer a security blanket to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Swift Current's General Manager of Corporate Services Kari Cobler said the move was made because the city has been aided by an unexpected strong cash flow through the first seven months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The city has received its revenue sharing and gas tax payments in a lump sum rather than by monthly installments which has lessened the cash flow pressure," she said.

The city also noted they saved money by reducing operational expenses (facility closures and programming cancellation) and they also secured their long-term debt at a lower than anticipated interest rate.

"Of course if our circumstances change in the new year we can always readdress that," Cobler said. "At this point in time, we felt it was prudent that we do reduce our operating line of credit back to $2 million."

Another reason the city enlarged their line of credit for cash flow reasons was because they gave residential and commercial property's three more months than normal to pay their property taxes.

"We did see an increase in the amount of property tax and utility accounts that were outstanding up to September 30," she said. "What that told us is that many businesses and residents valued the payment deferral program that we did put in place earlier this year."

According to the city, they didn't use any of the increase to their line of credit.