MOUNTAIN VIEW COUNTY - The county concurs with concerns raised by the Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA) over the provincial government’s new capital allocation formula under the Local Government Fiscal Framework (LGFF), and specifically its heavy weighting on population, says Mountain View County Reeve Angela Aalbers.
“The county shares RMA’s concerns that the formula does not properly reflect current and future capital construction and maintenance costs that will face rural municipalities as they continue to host Alberta’s key industries, such as oil and gas, forestry, agriculture, and renewable energy,” Aalbers told the Albertan.
“We are also concerned that the starting point for the LGFF of $722 million is not reflective of the investments required by municipalities to support our residents and businesses, especially when considering the downloading from the province on municipalities, like bridge infrastructure which is now a part of municipal infrastructure.”
Ric McIver, minister of Municipal Affairs, recently announced that the LGSS funding will total $722 million in 2024-25, increasing to $820 million in 2025-26.
The province also announced that the LGFF allocation formula will be weighted 65 per cent on population, 15 per cent on tangible capital assets, 10 per cent off amortization tangible capital assets, and 10 per cent off kilometres of local roads.
Reeve Aalbers noted that the five-year average of capital funding under the Municipal Sustainability Initiative (which has been replaced by the LGFF) for Mountain View County from 2014-2018 was $4.5 million, and the five-year average from 2019-2023 was $3.2 million.
The 2024 LGFF capital grant transfer to Mountain View County will be $2.8 million and for 2025 it will be $3.1 million, “which are well below the 10-year average of provincial capital grant funding and has no regard or reflection of increased costs,” she said.
“In response to decreasing capital grant transfers from the province, Mountain View County continues to defer all major road upgrade projects and instead is focused on maintaining our current infrastructure,” she said.
“We know, based on our long range plans that our bridge program will require $5 million plus per year from 2027 onwards, so our focus will be to best utilize capital grant dollars on maintaining our existing infrastructure.”
The RMA, which represents 69 municipalities, issued a press release regarding the LGFF allocation formula.
“The RMA is concerned with the high weighting of population in the formula, particularly as based on the RMA’s analysis, population is more strongly linked to operational costs than to capital costs for municipalities in Alberta,” the association said.
“This high weighting will also reward high-residential growth municipalities that already can generate more own-source revenues and developer-contributed infrastructure, especially if, as projected, Alberta’s population growth continues to be concentrated in a relatively small number of communities.”
Alberta Municipalities says the $722 million LGFF funding earmarked for 2024-25 is not sufficient to meet needs.
