Coming Up: March 11
Council meets on Monday. On the agenda this week:
Downtown Business Association Budget
Bear Creek Folk Festival
Advocacy Priorities
Stormwater Utility
Downtown BuSINESS ASSOCIATION BUDGET
The Down Town Business Association is a non-profit association operated by the Down Town business community. It exists to support and promote the City Centre. Its budget is funded by a special tax levied on commercial properties within the Down Town Business Improvement Area (BIA).
The Association’s budget is created by its Board of Directors, which is elected by members. This budget is then approved by membership at an AGM. However, since Council is responsible for the BIA taxes that fund this budget, Council also has to approve the budget. It is being presented to Council on Monday.
The proposed budget for 2024 is $302,507. This budget has remained the same for several years. That is despite inflation, the province deciding to no longer pay its property taxes towards the BIA, and increased needs. The Association has done a good job of managing its budget. I’m likely to vote in favour of approving it.
Every time we discuss the BIA, there are some in the community who suggest it is unfair or unreasonable to have a special tax on downtown businesses. However, in response, I’d highlight that if Council doesn’t pass the BIA Tax, it only has two other options:
Overrule the decisions made by downtown business by refusing to fund the Downtown Association. This would effectively mean Council is saying to businesses “sorry, we know what is best for your operations” while undermining their efforts to be viable and profitable.
Fund the Downtown Association through the City’s general revenue. This means that property tax owners throughout the City would be footing the bill for activities that they get no say in and no direct benefit from. Residents would be directly funding the Downtown Association. And businesses across the City would be paying for the marketing activities of their competitors in the City Centre.
Neither of these is a good alternative. The BIA Tax should be passed.
It’s also worth highlighting:
This tax isn’t new. It’s an annual tax that started in 1984 at the request of downtown businesses.
The tax amount is set by a Board elected by downtown businesses and is then approved at a meeting open to all downtown businesses. I usually attend this meeting, and never hear anyone oppose the budget.
I haven’t had a single business reach out to me and request that this tax not be levied.
Provincial properties traditionally pay ~$60,000 into the BIA tax. However, several years ago the province has recently decide to no longer pay property taxes, which is a big hit to downtown. The Association made up for this by reducing its budget, not by increasing what member businesses pay.
bEAR CREEK FOLK FESTIVAL
The Bear Creek Folk Festival is one of our community’s premier events. It enhances community and quality of life for residents who volunteer or attend, attracts thousands of people to spend money in our local economy, and through its national coverage highlights Grande Prairie as a great place to visit and live.
Supporting this event is worthwhile. For the previous two years, it has received $75,000 from the City.
This year, the festival requested $80,000 through the Large Scale Tourism Fund. Administration is recommending that this request be re-directed into Council’s Sponsorship Fund and given the maximum amount under this funding stream of $50,000. This would represent 4% of the event’s $1.34 million budget.
I will be supporting this recommendation. However, I am concerned that this is a $25,000 reduction to City grant funding in a year when grants from other levels of government are no longer available to the Festival. I would like to see us tap other funding streams to give it the $75,000 which it has been granted over the past two years.
advocacy priorities
An important role for City Council is to advocate to other levels of government on behalf of the community. Every year, Council adopts a priority list to guide this work.
It is recommended that Council approve the following key advocacy priorities:
Electricity Distribution Costs
Health Care Supports
Medical First Response Funding
Northwestern Polytechnic Support
And additional other advocacy priorities:
Improved Rail Service
Provincial and Federal Funding for Housing Needs
Provincial Changes to Automated Traffic Enforcement
Immigration Biometric Scanning
You can get more information about each priority in this staff report.
I do support these priorities. However, there is one missing: Local Government Fiscal Framework (LGFF) and inclusion of Aquatera assets.
The LGFF is a newly established provincial grant program that allocates infrastructure funding based on a formula that includes the value of physical assets each municipality owns. Unlike most municipalities, the City owns its water and wastewater through Aquatera. Currently, the province is choosing to not credit this infrastructure in LGFF allocations. This will cost the City ~$500,000/year. We’ve had initial conversations with the province about this and I’m optimistic we’ll see change. But it should be a continued advocacy priority for Council until it is changed.
stormwater utility
There has been lots of conversation about a proposed Stormwater Utility. You can see my recent writing on it here.
I do think a Stormwater Utility model is a prudent change. Charging for this service based on how much each property accesses it instead of based on how much each property is worth makes sense to me. Furthermore: many other municipalities already charge a Stormwater Utility Fee. If we want our taxes to be equivalent to them, then we need to get other revenue sources (such as this fee) in line with them as well.
At the same time: I don’t think our communication on this has been great. And many residents are still struggling to understand the change. It might be prudent not to move forward at this time so residents have more time to learn about and discuss this change.
There is also still lots of conversation happening around which of the four models to calculate Stormwater fees is the best. I don’t know if I am ready to vote on a particular model yet.
I’m still wrestling with this myself. I also still have a couple coffees with residents setup and haven’t heard from my Council colleagues recently. So I might change my mind. But currently: I’m inclined to argue that we push a potential implementation back to 2025, further refine how fees would be calculated, have additional public consultation during the fall budget season, and make a final decision during budget deliberations.
That being said: whether we have a Stormwater Utility Fee or not, the stormwater system is an essential service and we DO have real costs (~$8,000,000/year) to maintain it. This year, we budgeted to collect $4,000,000 through a stormwater fee. If a stormwater fee isn’t collected this year, that money needs to either be cut from the budget or added to taxes.
I don’t think it would be prudent to slash municipal services midyear without time for meaningful consultation and thoughtful conversations. This means that if we are going to not collect a stormwater fee this year, I’ll also be supporting increasing taxes above the previously budgeted 3.28% increase.
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