St. Albert is considering a number of cuts to service levels for 2022, according to a draft budget presented to council Nov. 3.
Chief administrative officer Kevin Scoble told councillors on Nov. 3 the city found measures to reduce the tax increase from 7.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent, an amount that includes the minimum 1.5 per cent required to fund the city’s repair, maintenance, and replacement (RMR) infrastructure deficit.
One component of those measures — service-level reductions — would reduce the tax increase by 1.3 per cent, Scoble said.
“With the economic reality facing the City of St. Albert, our approach to this year’s budget involves a commitment to minimize spending,” Scoble said during the budget presentation.
Some reductions include reducing operating hours at city facilities, cancelling some projects designed to beautify the city, and transit and traffic services.
City facilities
Operating hours at Servus Place and Fountain Park could be reduced, as well as casual staffing at outdoor rinks, pending council’s approval.
Restoring library operating hours to those available pre-pandemic is also something the city is looking at forgoing to save $143,000 in 2022.
Public portable toilets at outdoor recreation facilities and parks could also be reduced. During his budget presentation, Scoble said this adjustment wouldn’t impact the portable toilets at Rotary Park.
Less beauty saves bucks?
Some measures St. Albert has in place to beautify the city in line with its Botanical Arts branding might be removed to save some cash.
For example, the city is looking at forgoing its beautification program, a grant program for businesses to enhance their buildings with elements such as artistic bike racks and planters in summer. This could save the city $20,000 per year.
The city is also looking to save around $75,000 by cancelling its annual flower-planting contract.
Transit and traffic
The city is looking to convert local Saturday transit service from a fixed-route to on-demand transit, potentially reducing buses deployed from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. for the 13 hours of operation. This would save $223,000 in 2022.
Currently, the city offers services to facilitate vehicle and pedestrian traffic for community events, including Canada Day, the Snowflake Festival, and the St. Albert Farmers' Market. The city is recommending a reduction in these services to save $60,000.
This fund also supports the city’s temporary pop-up patio program. The city absorbs the traffic mitigation costs of patios, including re-routing pedestrian traffic off city sidewalks, or placing traffic barriers and controls beside the patio setup.
Fewer feedback opportunities
Over the past year, city administration has said St. Albertans are happy with current service levels, citing a high approval rating from the city’s community satisfaction survey. Now, these surveys themselves might occur less frequently to save the city money.
The survey looks at metrics such as overall quality of life in the city, and overall satisfaction with services. While the city previously conducted the survey every two years, administration is looking to move this to every four years to save about $7,000 per year.
Additional cost-saving measures
In addition to cutting the services listed here — and others — city administration is recommending two other strategies to reduce this year’s tax increase: a $3-million reduction through corporate adjustments, and a $1.2-million reduction by applying all new growth assessments for new initiatives to the tax base.
Assessment growth is the money the city allocates every year for the expanding operational costs that come with a growing city. This includes additional full-time equivalent-employees, and items such as the city’s Home Energy Retrofit Accelerator (HERA) program.
Diane McMordie, St. Albert’s director of finance, said the city “pulled almost every stop” available this year to decrease residential taxes.
“That takes away a lot of flexibility next year,” McMordie said. “Of course, we’ll have new assessment growth again, but I don’t know if we’re going to be able to apply it all against the tax base rate [again]. The new business cases that were deferred, they’re needed.”
The $3 million in corporate adjustments included using $2.5 million from the city’s one-time COVID-19 relief funding. The city will also reduce the assessment growth transfer — unused assessment growth dollars saved from previous years.
The city is also looking to apply the money that would normally go to the public art reserve transfer — the city has the option to allocate up to $220,000 from the capital reserve each year to put toward purchasing and maintaining public art — and the corporate learning budget, to the tax base.
McMordie said the corporate learning budget is used to fund staff training and development, and has been reduced quite a bit over the past three years. She said this could hurt the city’s competitiveness.
“When you’re trying to recruit somebody, it’s not always just about salary,” McMordie said. “If we have to make people start paying for their own training, it certainly makes us less competitive.”
Franchise fees
While in 2018, the city introduced an electrical franchise fee to help offset property taxes, franchise fees — including both gas and electrical — are not set to increase in 2022.
Franchise fees are what the city charges its utility providers for access to city land where utility infrastructure is built. The utility provider then passes that fee along to its customers on their utility bills. The more energy used, the more the user will pay in these fees.
St. Albert's gas franchise fee sits at 20.3 per cent, and its electrical franchise fee is at 10 per cent.
