St. Albert's budget increase for the 2025 municipal election is mostly due to staffing requirements, the city's returning officer said.
In 2021, the city's municipal election budget was $261,200. The increase in budget was originally discussed during the 2024 budget deliberations, as a result of the changes made by the province in Bill 20, which required the creation of a permanent electors register and prohibited the use of electronic tabulators.
St. Albert's returning officer and Director of Legal, Legislative and Records Services Marta Caufield said they're currently in the stages of election planning to "use as little of the money as possible while implementing the legislative changes correctly."
Janice Vollrath said the introduction of the bill led them to start planning the election much earlier than they normally would.
"We took our budget request a little bit ahead of the budget cycle to make sure we had enough money for the election before we started doing stuff," Vollrath said.
The budget was approved following an October 2024 council meeting, with the additional costs due to Bill 20 totalling $669,500, bringing the total budget for the 2025 municipal election up to $930,700.
The largest line item increase is for manual counting staff, which is budgeted at $280,000, followed by $175,000 for the permanent electors register. The city is currently hiring election workers, and interested residents can apply on the city's website at stalbert.ca.
The cost for election workers includes ballot counters, but also staff working election day such as supervisors.
"We have to meet our deadline so we have to make sure we have enough ballot counters," Vollrath said. The deadline for results to be submitted to the province is Oct. 24, four days after election day.
Caufield said they didn't have an exact number of ballot counters the city was looking to hire, but that job postings for election workers are currently open, and estimated they'd be looking at adding around 400 workers.
The city is also hiring security, currently budgeted at $37,000, as the count this year will take longer.
"We won't finish our count in one day, and so we have to make sure that the ballots are secure and the integrity of the vote is secure," she said, adding that they were still working through risk assessments as far as when security would be required to be on site.
"Definitely anytime the ballots are there and there's nobody else there," she said.
A report by Taproot Edmonton asked municipalities in the surrounding area -- such as Devon, Stony Plain, and Spruce Grove -- similar questions about their budget increases for the 2025 election. They found that of those who could give a number, St. Albert saw one of the higher increases from 2021.
Vollrath said this largely had to do with the size of the municipalities that were questioned.
"If you're a smaller municipality with a smaller population, it's more feasible to be able to manage a permanent elector's register on paper by hand, especially if you only have one voting station," she said. "It also has a lot to do with being an at large municipality versus a ward system. And the cost in terms of counting ballots, and that time goes up significantly."
