Inflation is driving up the cost of doing business at St. Albert libraries and heritage properties.
Members of the library and Arts and Heritage Foundation boards each detailed their respective requests for the same increase to their funding from the city in budget 2025 – five per cent – during a committee meeting Oct. 24.
The AHF is an independent registered charity which operates the Art Gallery of St. Albert, Musée Héritage Museum, Little White School and St. Albert's Historic River Lots + Grain Elevators on behalf of the City of St. Albert and the provincially owned Father Lacombe Chapel on behalf of the Government of Alberta.
Ahmad Sanni, vice-chair, said costs have increased for everything from artist fees to paperclips to IT, “especially cyber-security.”
Landscaping is a new cost as well. Previously, the city’s public works department was able to conduct light landscaping such as grass cutting at AHF-managed assets when their schedule allowed, but this has become untenable post-pandemic.
The AHF will have to contract a company going forward, which will allow them the flexibility of regular maintenance plus enhanced landscaping work such as tree pruning.
The programming the AHF offers is seeing a rebound in interest since the pandemic; some revenues have increased, some costs have come down, due to reduced rent in their new smaller office, and a new, cheaper phone system.
At the library, hard costs and usage are both on similar upward trends.
Donna Kawahara, board co-chair, told councillors usage is up at both the St. Albert Place and Jensen Lakes branches:
- Memberships are up 13 per cent
- Program attendance is up 7 per cent
- Teens logged 1 million minutes read in a challenge for second straight year, 12 per cent more than 2023; participation in the summer program is up 92 per cent since 2019
- At 32,463 year-to-date, in-person visits at the Jensen Lakes branch are up 200 per cent since 2020 opening, loans of materials are increasing on the same trajectory
- At 190,000 year-to-date, in-person visits at the downtown branch are up 10 per cent over 2023
Demand for digital material such as the increasingly popular e-audio-books is “just exploding,” and there is a wait list of 126 people for programming at the Jensen branch.
Kawahara said the five-per-cent increase would be a restoration to what the library received from the city in 2019. The library was able to save $40,000 in 2024 and a projected $70,000 in 2025 by closing its materials centre in August.
The library board has written the province asking that the new 2024 census numbers be used in their per-capita based formula for funding; currently, grants are based on the 2019 Municipal Affairs Population List, which pegs St. Albert at 66,082, based on a 2018 municipal census.
“You guys continue to amaze me,” Mayor Cathy Heron said. “One of your strategic priorities is (truth and) reconciliation, and you are, I would say, knocking out of the park with that one, both with your recent award for Tea and Bannock, but also your presence at almost everything related to reconciliation.”
No decisions on the increase requests were made. Councillors continue budget deliberations Nov. 5 and are expected to approve the 2025 financial plan in December.
