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According to Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi it’s all so easy: The provincial government just has to give the city more money. Presto! Problems solved.
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Look at Sohi’s letter to Premier Danielle Smith on Tuesday. All the problems the city is facing would magically disappear, Sohi implied, if only the UCP government would turn over tens of millions more each year.
Except Sohi’s tone wasn’t so positive. Basically Sohi wrote all of the city’s problems are the result of provincial underfunding. Everything is the province’s fault.
Homelessness? Drug crisis? Crumbling infrastructure? Transit? Crime? Blame it all on the province. We’re being treated unfairly, Sohi whinged.
It’s as if the city has never misspent a nickel. The problem is not municipal inefficiency or bad choices by council, such as buying into the eco-hype over electric vehicles and wasting millions on underperforming electric buses. Sohi, a Liberal, pins it all on neglect by a conservative provincial government.
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Then the mayor held a gun to Edmontonians’ heads: Give us more money, Premier Smith, or we’ll raise property taxes even more.
There are at least two things wrong with the logic behind this threat.
First, if holding city taxes steady leads to higher provincial taxes, it simply hurts Edmonton taxpayers from another direction. It all comes out of the same pocket. And to the extend it ropes taxpayers in Medicine Hat, Grande Prairie or Rocky Mountain House into funding Edmonton city council’s pet projects, that truly is unfair.
Second, is there nowhere the city can cut its own spending? For instance, if they’re short on infrastructure funds (one of Sohi’s complaints), they should stop building LRT. And stop obsessing on bike lanes.
Over the past nearly 15 years, residential property taxes have gone up an average of nearly five per cent a year — six per cent a year over the past three.
However, since 2010, the number and value of properties in our city has grown faster still, meaning the city’s revenue from residential taxes has grown closer to 10 per cent a year. The key fact is that the city’s income from residential and business taxes has exceeded the rate of growth of inflation and population.
The culprit is not provincial funding, but rather the fact the city increases spending faster than inflation and faster than our population has exploded.
The city has thrown away more than $200 million being its own developer on the eco-fantasy of the Blatchford development at the old city centre airport. And every time they turn around, it seems, they are approving another $2 billion or $3 billion for LRT.
Why is it up to the province to fund every daydream city council can come up with? For instance, the city needs new transit buses and LRT cars, but hasn’t set aside money to pay for them. How is that the concern of provincial taxpayers in Bow Island?
During budget debates at the end of 2022, council and the mayor agreed to cut $60 million out of the municipal budget over four years. That’s $15 million a year from an annual budget of approximately $3.4 billion.
Even though that is less than half of one per cent of total operational spending, it has proven too great a task for the majority on our lefty council. One of the biggest reasons rumoured for the departure of former city manager Andre Corbould was that he became frustrated by council’s unwillingness to trim a single dollar or lay off a single employee.
Over the past seven years, the city has hired nearly 2,000 new managers — not frontline workers — yet council, apparently, won’t even eliminate unfilled positions in the bureaucracy.
Until the mayor and council get their own fiscal house in order, the need to whine less about the province.
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GUNTER: Edmonton needs to get spending in order before demanding more money from province
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04.04.2024
You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.
According to Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi it’s all so easy: The provincial government just has to give the city more money. Presto! Problems solved.
Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.
Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.
Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.
Look at Sohi’s letter to Premier Danielle Smith on Tuesday. All the problems the city is facing would magically disappear, Sohi implied, if only the UCP government would turn over tens of millions more each year.
Except Sohi’s tone wasn’t so positive. Basically Sohi wrote all of the city’s problems are the result of provincial underfunding. Everything is the province’s fault.
Homelessness? Drug crisis? Crumbling infrastructure? Transit? Crime? Blame it all on the province. We’re being treated unfairly, Sohi whinged.
It’s as if the city has never misspent a nickel. The problem is not municipal inefficiency or bad choices by council, such as buying into the eco-hype over electric vehicles and........
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