With the annual Alberta Municipalities convention taking place last week, and Mayor Cathy Heron calling on the provincial government to substantially increase the amount of funding made available to municipalities each year, the Gazette searched it's archives for past coverage of municipal calls for action from higher levels of government, and came across an article from 1968 concerning then-Mayor Ray Gibbon's call for a provincial sales tax.
“The Town of St. Albert is calling for a provincial sales tax to remove from the municipal tax levy the entire cost of education,” the article begins.
“The resolution was originally introduced to town council in 1967 by Ray Gibbon,” who at the time was a councillor, and wasn't elected mayor until the fall of 1968.
“I was afraid they were going to put in a sales tax anyway,” Gibbon is quoted as saying. “So I thought we might as well try to and get it taped to do a certain job.”
At the time, and until 1994, primary and secondary education in Alberta was funded through both the provincial government and through local school boards. To that end, local school boards had the authority to set education property tax levies, although the provincial government had instituted a cap.
In 1994, then Premier Ralph Klein and his progressive conservative government created the Alberta School Foundation Fund, and made determining education property tax mill rates the sole responsibility of the provincial government, with a few exceptions.
Past issues of the Gazette, dating as far back as Jan. 1, 1949, are available to view online thanks to the University of Alberta's Peel's Prairie Provinces archive.
