Coming Up: April 30
Council meets on Monday. On the agenda this week:
Rising Above
ATCO Streetlights
Community Group Funding
Grande Prairie Storm
Following is more information and my take on agenda items.
As always, any mistakes or opinions belong to me and me alone, not to Council or City staff.
While I express my current views below, I work hard to go into meetings ready to listen and with an open mind. I learn new information and participate in debate. This always informs, and sometimes changes, how I vote on issues.
If you would like to watch the meeting or read any of its supporting material for yourself, you can do so by clicking here. The City will post the highlights of Council’s decisions here.
Delegations & Proclamations
At all Council meetings, organisations and residents are welcome to come talk to Council.
This week, Rising Above is coming as a delegation. They are requesting permission to build a new building on City land next to their existing facility. This will be just the start of the conversation: much more work will need to be done prior to Council making a decision.
ATCO Street Lights
ATCO owns the majority of streetlights in the community. The City pays ATCO for maintenance and electricity to keep them lit.
Under current arrangements, the City pays for actual costs of street light maintenance. This leads to unpredictable costs (ex: when a wire break or a car hits a light). Additionally, there is currently a maintenance backlog and a need to start converting lights to LED: this will have significant one-time costs.
It is proposed that Council approve a different payment method whereby the City pays a monthly fixed cost for streetlights. Because of the predictability it brings, if this change is made, ATCO will invest some of its money into the needed one time expenses.
An external consultant was hired to analyze this proposal. It was found that switching to fixed payments will save the City money over the next 25 years (which is the lifespan of a streetlight). I have a few questions to ask, but am likely to support this change.
However: because of this conversation, Council asked for a report on illumination levels around the community. If I am understanding the report correctly, many places in the City are illuminated to a higher standard than recommended by the Transportation Association of Canada. This could mean we are spending more money and creating more light pollution than we need for safety. I look forward to discussing this more to see if changes should be made to our street light network.
Community group funding
Council is discussing the funding it will provide to Community Groups over the next two years. You can click here to see what I had to say about Community Group Funding last time Council touched it.
Here is the high level summary of what is being recommended to Council:
Source: https://pub-cityofgp.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=34011
I’ll be voting “no” to this funding recommendation because it proposes to basically hold funding flat over the next 2 years.
Community groups leverage volunteers, donations, and community networks in ways the City cannot. Supporting them is an incredibly efficient way to further Council’s Strategic Plan of building Quality of Life in Grande Prairie. There is a strong case to be made to INCREASE community group funding. At the very least, we should be keeping funding at pace with inflation. Especially when we currently plan to provide annual inflationary increases to taxes and the City’s operating budget.
I’ll be voting “no” to this funding summary in hopes of getting the total funding envelope increased.
If this funding summary is approved, you can click here to see how operational funding would be allocated between different organisations and here for capital funding. If Council doesn’t approve an overall funding increase, I’m likely to vote in favour of this allocation breakdown.
grande Prairie Storm
The Grande Prairie Storm are working hard to become fiscally viable again. To help with that, they have made a couple requests which Council will be discussing on Monday. Council has been asked to consider forgiving an outstanding loan to the team and giving discounted or donated ice time.
You can click here to see my thinking last time the Storm made a request to Council.
An important note: the Storm is a non-profit organisation, not a privately held team.
The Storm do provide big value to our community. Some ways they do that:
Helping our economy by bringing people to the City Centre and filling hotel rooms
Bringing people in our community together for games and other events
Undertaking various non-hockey volunteer projects
Creating a development route for aspiring local hockey players
Generating revenue for a City facility
At the same time: many other non-profits also bring value to our community. And we aren’t even providing inflationary (never mind substantially increased) funding to them. So I find these Storm requests difficult to consider. I want the team to be viable. But municipal resources are also limited.
When it comes to facility usage: this is the easiest request to me. The City is very generous with Gift In Kind requests to other non-profits. Allowing our facilities to be used has limited hard costs to the City budget. And in the Storm’s case, allowing facility usage increases advertising and concession revenue. I am open to the idea of negotiating or forgiving some ice time fees, especially for bookings that occur when other events are not happening (ex: during the day throughout the week).
When it comes to the loan: it will be difficult for me to become convinced to support forgiveness. Although the organisation also owes some private loans to local individuals and companies: I’d be open to considering forgiving some City debt if it is part of a wider forgiveness package supported by other loan holders. But that would still be a hard sell to me. However: one loan the organisation needs to pay off is a Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) loan. $20,000 of CEWS will be forgiven by the federal government if the remainder is paid in 2023. Understandably, the Storm want to be sure to take advantage of this. I am open to the idea of pausing repayment to the City for one year so that CEWS payments can be prioritized.
That’s what is on our agenda this week. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
You can comment below. Or, you can contact me at dbressey@cityofgp.com or 780-402-4166. I'm happy to talk online or over the phone. I'm also always willing to setup a time to meet for coffee.
We also always have great conversation in the GP Round Table group on Facebook.
After Council meeting, you will be able to find highlights posted by the City here.
Thanks for reading!
-Dylan