Tuesday’s letters: Here are city budget items to cut

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Sarah Hamilton wanted feedback on what budget service items are important to Edmontonians. Challenge accepted.

Debt: Stop borrowing for nice-to-have capital projects. Tax-supported debt charges are projected to increase from $178.74 million in 2022 to $275.94 million in fiscal year 2026, a 64-per-cent increase. In 2024, tax-supported debt charges are $202 million or 37.10 per cent of corporate expenditures.

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Neighbourhood renewal: Stop the recent scope creep. Before COVID, sidewalks and roadways were replaced with new ones with no significant changes. Now, neighbourhood renewal is over-engineered with wider sidewalks, bike lanes, bollards, planters.

Staff: Lay off or reduce the City of Edmonton’s FTE count through attrition. Some departments can be trimmed, amalgamated, or eliminated, such as Vision Zero, Environment and Climate, with its related “climate-budget” bureaucracy, and Edmonton Unlimited. Sell Blatchford brownfield redevelopment and related renewable energy utility.

Spending hours of council and administrative time to cut a measly amount from the travel budget will not fix the structural problems with the city’s finances. In these inflationary times, city residents and ratepayers are cutting back. Now, the City of Edmonton, council and related bureaucracy must step up and do their part.

Bill Wilson, Edmonton

UCP should butt out of pension funds

Multiple sources have noted that AIMCo salaries and costs, while excessive, are lower than comparable investment managers. Their returns average. We hear of tension between the government and the board regarding where the funds should be invested.

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But Nate Horner says the crisis was so dire that it was necessary to precipitously fire a whole board and some executives. The fired interim chair Kenneth Kroner now disputes that narrative in full. Oddly, I trust him more than the government.

Most important is his assertion regarding pension funds. The Albertans who paid into the fund who depend on safe investment returns for their retirement and who set goals for their money — their investment benchmarks were being met and exceeded. They own the money, rely on it and need it for retirement. Shouldn’t be a surprise they didn’t want it invested in high-risk commodities or used to de-risk pet projects of the government. Politicians shouldn’t butt in.

Our provincial government seems to have forgotten that their role is to ensure policies and regulations protect from financial malfeasance, not to run everything. This is just the latest overreach, interfering in what should be arm’s-length services and Crown corporations.

S.M. Hogan, Edmonton

It’s about emissions, not production

Energy production cap? The federal government is imposing an emissions cap, phased in over four years. Operators who can’t meet the cap can buy credits from other operators, or/and, invest in decarbonization programs.

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The UCP has positioned this as a production cap, imposed by those awful people in Ottawa. It’s not. It’s an emissions cap, stupid!

Rob Arrand, Edmonton

Higher mayor’s pay for what?

So let me get this straight, Sohi gets paid $3,000 more than the Calgary mayor gets paid, and Edmonton’s proposed property tax hike is 8.1 per cent while Calgary’s is 3.6. Something doesn’t add up.

Louise Reneau, Edmonton