The first step towards City council’s approval of the City’s 2016 General Operating and Capital Infrastructure budgets was taken Nov. 3 when Director of Corporate Services Lucy Wiwcharuk presented a broad overview of the proposed budgets.
The draft budgets include an increase to the operating budget from $111 million in 2015 to $120 million in 2016 and an increase from $45 million in 2015 to $57 million to the capital budget.
According to Wiwcharuk, the main force behind the increase to the operating budget is population growth.
“Probably one of the biggest pressures is around community safety,” she said.
“We have a $1.3 million change in our policing costs (in the draft budget) and that’s an addition of another six RCMP officers. Those are the pieces that, as your community gets bigger, the business becomes different and you’ll start to need more resources. You can directly attribute things like that back to our population growth.”
She said growth is also contributing to the need for more Parks workers and Roads workers.
The draft operating budget proposes a 3.5 per cent increase in property taxes to help pay for the increased needs. For the average homeowner, this means an increase of $4.67 per month.
As part of her presentation, Wiwcharuk said the City expects the population of Airdrie to increase to 65,000 by 2017.
Some major construction projects – $19 million for a new library, $14 million to expand City Hall – are projected to occur mainly in 2017. However, Wiwcharuk said the draft 2016 Capital Infrastructure Budget includes funding for some significant roadworks.
Included in these are the expansion of Eighth Street to four lanes from Yankee Valley Boulevard to Hillcrest Way in the southwest – budgeted to cost $7 million – and upgrades to Yankee Valley Boulevard from Bayside Gate to 24th Street and from East Lake Boulevard to King’s Heights Gate – budgeted at $18.9 million. All of these roadworks would be funded through developer levies, not through city taxes.
“City administration has prepared and delivered a 2016 Capital and Operating Budget that is responsible and continues to provide the citizens of Airdrie services that they need and want,” Wiwcharuk said.
“Staff look forward to working through the deliberation process with the Council Budget Committee over November in order to determine the best possible budget for the community.”
She said the community will have better access to budget information through the Look Closer campaign, which was launched to educate residents about the budget process and to provide staff and council with information about what residents value and want provided in terms of services and infrastructure.
The City produced a number of fact sheets outlining how certain services are funded and also conducted a survey with residents asking about the biggest challenges the City faces and what types of services and infrastructure residents value.
“We gathered all of that information and provided it to council very recently (Oct. 19),” Wiwcharuk said.
“They can just consider that along with all the rest of the information as they’re walking through the budget.”
Mayor Peter Brown said he looks forward to reviewing the draft budgets in more detail.
“It’s really preliminary. (Wiwcharuk) gave a brief overview of the 600 or so pages of information. Until we go into it in more detail, I can’t really say much about what they’ve proposed as it relates to a tax increase or the utility rates,” he said.
“I think with the economy the way it is, I’m really going to be scrutinizing the new hires and making sure they’re absolutely necessary at this time.”
The Council Budget Committee will hold deliberation meetings at which the budgets will be discussed in-depth on Nov. 13 and 14. Members of the public are invited to attend those meetings, which will also be streamed online on the City’s YouTube channel.
