2019-2022 Budget In The Books

Council’s toughest job is to reconcile all the seemingly contradictory perspectives from the public and then prioritize and allocate scarce resources to shape a vision for our city’s future . I’m proud of where we landed at 2.6% a year, over the next four years. While we’ll continue to work to bring this number down further in the coming months, we are now bending our tax increases down closer to inflation, which has been my long-standing goal.

When we first started discussions about our capital and operating budgets in late summer, I suggested that this would be City Council’s toughest budget in a decade. An uncertain provincial economy, playing catch-up on our infrastructure and new demands for city services was creating a perfect storm of competing priorities.

In the face of all these pressures, City Council has come together to pass a prudent four year budget. I’m grateful for Council’s thoughtfulness, and for their thoroughness. Each one of us proposed changes to the budget, and some passed and some failed, but we ultimately came together to jointly own the most significant expression of our City’s priorities. I’m also grateful for the many contributions from the public, and from voices like Prosperity Edmonton and Thrive Edmonton. I’d also like to thank the citizens who came out to speak up for DATS improvements, supports for entrepreneurs, or the recreation facilities people depend on or still need to be built.

When I look back at the 5-point plan I had set out for Budget 2018, I’m pleased with the progress on these commitments, reflecting the priorities of Edmontonians and allowing our city to continue to grow:

1. Roll back the subsidy on suburban growth: we recognize that suburban growth has been subsidized by existing taxpayers, and especially businesses who have taken on a disproportionate share of the tax burden. Through the budget process, City Council began the discussion on how to fairly allocate the costs of growth and we’re starting to think and talk differently about how we’ll fund big ticket items such as rec centres, fire stations and key roadways without deeply impacting housing affordability. This theme of fair allocation extended into the Edmonton Metro Region and the need for our neighbours to pitch in more for the costs of our facilities that their residents enjoy. These aren’t easy conversations but we’ve been doing some tough collaborative work to further the shared investment for shared benefit goals. Simply put, Edmonton can’t continue to carry the burden as funder of all things in the region.
2. Secure a new long-term funding deal with the province: after months of negotiation, I’m proud we finally achieved this on the first day of budget deliberations. This deal recognizes the Government of Alberta’s commitment to putting Edmonton’s growth front and centre in our region and our province’s economic well being. The deal not only offers certainty on our infrastructure budgets but it allows us to plan and build our transit network well into the next decade. There’s also new incentives to collaborate on regional infrastructure, something we’ve never had before. We now need to shift our focus to advocacy, to protect this deal, and the historic commitments to Edmonton and our metro region.
3. Make cuts where services are no longer relevant or effective: To date, the Program and Service Review has generated significant savings with the promise of more efficiencies to come in the next few years. I’m pleased with the progress so far, but I appreciate Council’s desire to rethink how we build our budgets and ensure we’re matching our priorities. During this round of budget deliberations, Council demanded greater efficiency from our police service and directed administration to further reduce staffing levels – saving millions of dollars.  
4. Protect the investments we’ve made in our core infrastructure: Some of the best news of this budget is what Council didn’t do – which is to pull back on our existing infrastructure investments. In the 1990s we didn’t invest in our roads, sewers and transit – and our city fell behind. I’m happy Council is continuing to support things like neighbourhood renewal, investments in Yellowhead Trail and expanding our LRT network to keep Edmonton moving. We did not make any short-sighted decisions.
5. Limit new spending: There were many new spending asks for Council to consider but I’m pleased to see that limited targeted investments were made in areas that deliver long-term returns to Edmontonians. Some of these investments include affordable housing, a solar voltaic project, converting more street lights to LEDs and strengthening our regional economic development work. We also invested in the City’s Recover: Urban Wellness project which will – ultimately – reduce health, justice and policing costs, and we extended our low income transit program to enable people to travel to jobs and help grow our economy.  

Throughout this process, we were creative about working through these challenges, committed to restraint and seeking efficiencies within the City’s workforce. As a result, I’m confident we put Edmonton in a position to thrive for decades to come.

Budget by the Numbers

• Proposed 2019 tax increase at the start of the process: 3.3%
• Final 2019 tax increase at the end of the process: 2.6%
• Number of speakers who registered to speak to council about the budget: >180
• Hours of hearing from the public by Council >20
• Pages of budget material presented to council: >2000
• Rounds of questioning of city staff by council on the budget: 13