Budget 2009 Impacts

Council debated some significant revisions to the 2009 budget yesterday, which we needed to deal with before we establish the tax mill rates later this month. City revenues are down about $30 million because of slower building activity (resulting in lower permit fee revenue) and low interest rates on the cash we have in the bank.

Here are some highlights with my comments:

Approved:

• Limited cuts to early (5 am – 7 am) and late (9 pm – 11 pm) service hours at some leisure centres. Further details to follow.
• Cease city operation of Scona Pool (it belongs to the school board, so ultimate closure is their decision). I’m not altogether happy with how this came forward and have some more questions on this. I’ll write more later once I’ve collected some more background. I’m getting a lot of unhappy correspondence on this today.
• Restoration of $1 million for Family and Community Social Services that was being diverted to cover the deficit.
• Implementation of parking charges at Transit Park and Ride. The city’s still working out the details of when this will apply. Briefly, I support this move. There are substantial costs to maintain these lots and there is no such thing as free parking. Many of the users could use the bus or walk, others come from municipalities in the capital region other than Edmonton where they do not support transit operating costs through taxation.

Not approved:

• Transit peak hour service improvements; I voted for going ahead with these needed service improvements — Cllr. Sohi spoke movingly about the very real need for this for students, new Canadians, and those who cannot afford private automobiles. We’ll see about shifting existing resources around to deal with peak demand.
• A special tax related to the gap between the provincial education property tax and municipal tax, which we’ve used in the past, was not levied on business (link to Journal story). It would have been used to restore our Financial Stabilisation Reserve which we dipped into last year for our deficit, which is what it’s for. I supported not doing this in a year when many businesses are struggling. We’ll top up the reserve when city revenues recover.