Taxes, fees, and council pay were top of mind at an open house on Morinville’s budget last week.
About 40 people were at the Community Cultural Centre Oct. 29 for an open house on the 2020 Morinville budget.
The budget proposes a three-per-cent tax hike for residential lands and 12 per cent for non-residential ones under a 1:1.2 split mill rate. Included in it are 4.5 new positions, a census, a $100,000 storefront improvement plan and a wage hike for councillors.
Mayor Barry Turner said he’d been hearing a lot from residents about the budget’s capital plan, user fees and the impact of the proposed tax hike on businesses.
“Certainly some of the increase we felt last year is not something council is interested in repeating,” Turner said, but council was looking to bring its taxes more in line with the average for this region.
Morinville Sports building owner Kelly Richardson said his taxes went up roughly 289 per cent last year due to a tax hike and extensive renovations to his building. He hoped council would reconsider the proposed non-residential tax increase in this year’s budget.
“Everything’s going to get passed onto the renter,” he said, and if taxes are too high, businesses will leave town.
Retired mechanic Bill Hubbard said he was also concerned with taxes, and criticized council’s recent decision to spend $17,000 on Christmas lights instead of putting that money toward this year’s budget.
“With (Premier Jason) Kenney’s budget and the cutbacks and everything, they should watch what they’re spending their money on.”
Hubbard was also concerned with the proposed raises for councillors. The budget includes funds to implement the new council pay policy which, effective next year, gives the town’s mayor and councillors a 29- and 37-per-cent raise (respectively) to bring their salaries in line with the average of 10 comparable communities.
“I’ve got nothing against giving people a raise,” Hubbard said, but he suggested this one be phased in over several years.
“To me, that would say that council is looking at the town’s finances more than just looking at their own pocket.”
Community fees
Also up for discussion at the open house were proposed changes to community service fees. Town council voted Oct. 8 to hike many of its corporate fees to bring them in line with the region’s median rates, but held off doing the same for meeting rooms, ball diamonds and other community services pending public consultation.
Charts at the open house showed two scenarios, one where community fees moved to the region’s median rate and another where they went up by 12 per cent.
Setting community fees at the median just doesn’t make sense, said Coun. Sarah Hall. The median rate to rent a meeting room for four hours was $161, for example, which would be a “crazy increase” of 544 per cent ($136) from the current rate of $25.
“We want to make it affordable,” Hall said.
Council won’t make a decision on these fees for another five months, but is looking at something like a two-to 10-per-cent increase, Hall said.
“They do have to go up a little bit,” she said, as the town’s fees are extremely low.
Setting meeting room fees at the median would mean the Morinville Art Club would have to leave the Community Cultural Centre, said club president Rozanna McConnell. Even a 12-per-cent or $3 increase would be a challenge, as the group sometimes struggles to rally enough members to pay the current fee as is.
“Why raise the prices?” she asked, noting groups other than the art club are just now starting to rent rooms on Tuesdays.
“People are finally using the space!”
Capital ideas
The open house also gave residents a closer look at the roughly $4 million in capital projects proposed in the budget.
The biggest item after $760,000 in road and sidewalk repairs was $600,000 to start planning a new RCMP building.
“It’s a $12-million facility to build,” town community and protective services director David Schafer said, and that’s not something the town can currently afford to do on its own. (The capital plan shows the bulk of this bill would come in 2022.) Morinville will likely have to partner with the province and Sturgeon County to build this facility.
There’s also $530,660 to replace aging play and fitness equipment along the town’s splash park, arena playground, Fish and Game pond and trails, said public works director Claude Valcourt.
This project also proposes to remove but not replace the Belle and Rotary Park playgrounds. Valcourt said these playgrounds didn’t see much use, so the town hopes to take the cash they would have spent on replacing them and put it into the splash park.
Residents can send comments on the budget to [email protected]. Second reading of the budget is scheduled for Nov. 12. Budget documents are available at www.morinville.ca.
