Faced with a proposal by city administrators to increase property taxes by 8.1 per cent in 2025, Edmonton city councillors began engaging in budget deliberations on Monday.
“We’re all focused on reducing taxes, (and) at the same time making sure that we continue to protect and invest in core municipal services,” Mayor Amarjeet Sohi said.
The 8.1-per cent figure was proposed by administrators earlier this fall, but they have since proposed some ideas to councillors that could reduce that number, including increasing Epcor’s dividend to the city.
City council had already approved seven per cent of that proposed increase in April 2024 in order to maintain services. In August, the possibility of requiring a 13-per cent increase was raised but city administrators worked to reduce that number to the current 8.1-per cent proposal.
Sohi wrote a letter to city councillors late last month in which he pitched a plan that he believes can reduce the proposed tax increase by at least two per cent. The plan proposes temporarily reducing spending on the city’s neighbourhood renewal program but also calls for replenishing the city’s fniancial stabilization reserve, funding an initiative to improve cleanliness downtown, and using the city’s LRT reserve fund to address the shortfall expected in the ride transit program.
“Even if we get to something below six per cent, we’re still talking about a half billion dollars more every year from this year on than we were taking in 2022, and it’s really hard to figure out where those dollars are going,” Coun. Tim Cartmell said.
In a news release issued on Oct. 31, deputy city manager Stacey Padbury noted that administrators have planned for issues that will create challenges in crafting a budget, but noted “they’re much bigger than forecasted when we developed the four-year budget in 2022.”
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“We are delivering services beyond what the current budget can support and that’s not sustainable. Like many Edmontonians who continue to deal with high costs, we have to make some tough choices about what money we have coming in and what we’re spending it on.”
City administrators have noted that Edmonton’s quickly-growing population, coupled with inflation, has made it increasingly expensive to provide the services that the city currently does.
Sohi said he believes the city needs to look at potentially overhauling its budget process going forward.
“What we need to do is go back to what we used to do in 2008 and 2009 when we actually did a line-by-line analysis of every department leading up to the final budget,” he said.
Budget deliberations are expected to continue until Thursday.
–with files from Morgan Black, Global News
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
