2012 Budget Preview
[Update Nov 23, 2012: The public hearing on the budget started today with a thorough presentation from city administration chock full of historical information about trends driving the operating budget. A pdf of the presentation can be accessed here.]
Distribution of an average home’s monthly municipal property tax.
Yesterday Council received its first look at the proposed 2012 operating budget (full documentation available here). To achieve Council’s previous objective of 1.5% for neighbourhood reconstruction and 3% for, well, everything else, means some significant cuts that Council will weigh against substitute cuts and/or increases in revenues.
See how average monthly household expenditures in Edmonton compare to municipal property taxes. Click on image to enlarge.
One of the main things driving our costs is is our infrastructure agenda: e.g. borrowing for all the new things we’re building like Meadows and Clareview rec centres, and then the cost of operations that hit when these new facilities open up. Some of the other things are cost of labour, which continues to rise briskly in recession-proof Alberta, and things like diesel fuel costs, which are way up. I’ll be spending the next few days getting acquainted with the 450 pages of the budget but if you want a handy overview, start with the executive summary.
2012-2014 planned neighbourhood renewal work. Still significant but less than previously committed to. Click to enlarge.
One of the things this budget (together with its companion 3-year infrastructure budget) will test is our commitment to keeping up with renewal needs. Repair and replacement of existing infrastructure is substantially underfunded in the capital budget, and even neighbourhood renewal has been slowed down in the draft. I am hopeful that we can get neighbourhood renewal back on track and increase our investment in existing infrastructure. My position going into our last budget three years ago was we shouldn’t be building new infrastructure without a companion commitment to fix our existing infrastructure. We’re short there with this infrastructure budget but I am hopeful that can be addressed.
6 thoughts on “2012 Budget Preview”
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I am not pleased with things like garbage costing more and being taken off the tax rolls… but what I *am* willing to pay for, is infrastructure spending.
Capital assets are vital for the future and renewal is extremely important. We must not be a crumbling metropolis only a few years down the road.
I think the city is doing well with this but needs to do even MORE to push people into local living and community engagement. Everyone must connect with their local infrastructure and feel its value. Then we all feel responsible for it.
Use it or lose it.
Mike
adhdcanuck.ca
I am also willing to pay more for infrastructure renewal and the basics in the City mandate: policing and fire service, road maintenance, snow removal, etc. I am very frustrated with the Mayor’s comments that taxpayers won’t pay extra for the arena and then uses the federal infrastructure funding for the arena instead of sewer upgrades, then taxes are increased to pay for the sewer upgrades. It’s a shell game and dishonest. I appreciate that you tried to add some logic to the arena debate. I am very happy to finally see that the policy of stealth is over and police cars are back on the road – they are everywhere now and it is great. The main roadway improvements in my area are also appreciated. The bike lanes are great but it is time to license bike riders with a basic rules of the road test – many don’t know or follow the rules of the road and some of them are dangerous – they mistakenly believe they have the right of way like pedestrians when they are actually vehicles.
I’m very unhappy with the arena expense (and I do believe it effects my taxes, regardless of what council claims), and the use of utilities as a sneaky way to tax us more and sweep it under the rug. It’s dishonest to say a tax increase is blank percent when we all have to pay fees in our utilities for city services (that used to be included in taxes) which are now seeing there own larger increases.
Also, it is a well known fact that 3d graphs are a poor way to represent data, and often lead the viewer to get a false representation of the data. why not stick to normal bar graphs? maybe the city can save some money by shrinking there graphics department.
While this may be a little off topic, it’s still budget related so I thought I would post it here.
I just read on EBC’s website that the city is proposing ZERO dollars go towards Active Transportation in the next capital budget.
As an Empire Park resident who cycle commutes, I was pleased to see the city put in the bike lanes on 106 Street this summer. The lanes are a little disjointed and confusing, but I still thought it was a good step forward, and I did see more casual looking cyclists out on the streets.
It’s pretty discouraging that out of the recommended 631 million dollars for roads in the capital budget, the city doesn’t plan to even match the 1.5 million spent last year on the bike lanes, which is less than 0.3% of the roads budget.
Don, do you know if there is any chance of this changing? I unfortunately just read about this an hour ago, so I had already missed the hearing down at City Hall.
Let me know if I misunderstand something about the way the budget is laid out. I’m also curious how you feel personally about the decision to have no capital funding for Active Transportation?
Thanks,
Corey
So, if we believe City Administration’s own graphs, the ‘average monthly household expenditures’ totals $6,442, which means an annual average salary of $77,304 (times 12 months) for the average household. Really? I can now see why City Administration views the average Edmontonian as flush with cash. Well, this average pensioner disputes (and many more will also) those figures, and removes himself from the graph. But then again, I should not be surprised. The Mayor is always saying how Edmontonians want Council to spend more. I only saw 100 this week with their hand out, saying ‘give me, give me’ money. Graphs can be presented and interpreted any average way to make whatever average point serves the average City Admistration thinking. I have plans too. Where am I going to find the dollars to complete my plans if Council takes my annual cost of living increase every year before I receive it.