OLDS — Town of Olds council has asked its chief administrative officer Brent Williams to provide an estimate of how much provincial downloading of costs has affected the municipality.
It’s believed that estimate may be provided as council begins intensive budget discussions on Monday, Nov. 25.
That estimate is expected to include the impact of these factors:
• the carbon tax;
• a 50 per cent cut in Grants In Place of Property Taxes (GIPOT – money paid by the province for provincially-owned property in municipalities); and
• the cost of a requirement by the province to switch to hand-counting votes for municipal elections, rather than using electronic tabulators, as many municipalities – including Olds – have done for years.
Council made that decision during its Nov. 12 meeting in response to a letter from Alberta Municipalities (ABmunis) president Tyler Gandam. ABmunis represents urban municipalities in the province.
In his letter, Gandam said between 2019 and 2020, the province cut GIPOT funding in half, from $60 million to $30 million.
“While funding has since increased to $38.1 million in Budget 2024, due to rising assessment values and construction of new government infrastructure, this
still falls well below the amount that should be granted to municipalities for the essential services you provide to provincial properties,” Gandam wrote.
Gandam said Whitecourt officials estimate that the cut in GIPOT funding that town has received has forced them to “recoup a total of $267,882 from other taxpayers over the past several years.”
He provided a table from Whitecourt officials outlining that impact.
Gandam noted that during this year’s ABmunis convention, members passed a resolution calling full GIPOT funding to be reinstated.
He also reflected the concern of many ABMunis members that the province’s Bill 20, which requires the switch to hand-counting votes will vastly increase costs for next year’s elections.
Gandam suggested that if those issues concern member municipalities, they should write letters outlining those concerns and impacts to Premier Danielle Smith, with copies going to Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIvor and Gandam.
During debate on the matter, Coun. Heather Ryan suggested the Town of Olds should send letters regarding the GIPOT funding and the costs of hand-counting.
Ryan said even though Bill 20 has been passed, she believes it would still be worth it to send the municipality's concern about those impending costs to the provincial government.
She said local residents should also be made aware of what that cost will be for the Town of Olds.
Legislative clerk Marcie McKinnon said it’s too early to know what those hand-counting costs will be. She said that figure won’t likely be fully known until after next October’s municipal election.
“I can guess,” she said. “We’ve got numbers, they’re in the budget, but at the same point, but until the dust settles, I don’t know where we’re truly going to end up, because we will need extra help for resources to fill in the requirements from the new bill.”
Coun. Wanda Blatz said despite that, the provincial government and local residents need to know the financial impact that hand-counting ballots will have.
Blatz said it’s her understanding that in Alberta’s cities the cost will be “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“Putting it into perspective, it’s going to cost us money when we already had a process in place that worked and it wasn’t as costly, nearly as costly,” she said.
Dahl agreed a letter might help bring the point home.
“There’s been a lot of speculation on both sides of the floor at any conference I’ve been to within the last six months, and some of the comments were “well, we’ll just bill the province back for those costs,’ but of course, how does a person do that,” she asked.
Deputy mayor James Cummings said he’s “really confident” that the provincial government realizes hand-counting ballots will be more costly.
However, he said it would be “preemptive” to send a letter now when town officials don’t have a precise figure on how much the move will actually cost.
“I think a letter might be better suited when we have actual numbers to present to them (on) how much that is, rather than an estimate,” he said.
Cummings said the main topic covered in Gandam’s letter is the loss of GIPOT funding.
“In a recent conversation I had with the CAO, we confirmed that the province is our largest employer in the area and there’s a lot of provincial properties in this town that are not any longer being taxed,” Cummings said.
He called for Williams to come up with a table outlining the financial impact to Olds of that cut, similar to the Whitecourt one.
That led to passage of the motion calling on Williams to provide an estimate of how much provincial downloading of costs has affected the community.
