“I feel what I’m proposing is a balanced approach of lowering taxes, protecting core public services that we have invested in, improving them, and at the same time continuing to focus on economic growth opportunities,” said Mayor Amarjeet Sohi
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Edmonton’s mayor has released a plan he says will shave at least two per cent off next year’s property tax rate while adding dollars for cleaning the city’s core and business areas, cutting the grass, attracting industrial businesses, and keeping the low-income transit pass program afloat.
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Mayor Amarjeet Sohi published a letter to city council on his website Friday with a list of amendments he plans to make when budget debates start next week, alongside a pitch to make the city’s budget process more transparent in the future. The city’s 2025 draft budgets rely on an 8.1 per cent property tax increase.
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The mayor told Postmedia Friday the hope is to whittle down the tax increase to below six per cent for 2025. He worked with business leaders, community leagues, labour unions, and city councillors to come up with the pitch and hopes it will pass.
“We will continue to strive to reduce taxes further as we find more efficiencies,” he said.
“But at this time, in this moment, I feel what I’m proposing is a balanced approach of lowering taxes, protecting core public services that we have invested in, improving them, and at the same time continuing to focus on economic growth opportunities that help us create jobs, create more revenue, and stabilize our finances.”
Sohi’s proposed changes would cut the neighbourhood renewal program by $15 million, and shuffle some utility revenues to be spent elsewhere while working to replenish the city’s nearly depleted rainy-day fund, the Financial Stabilization Reserve.
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If city council agrees next week, Edmonton will maintain its current, higher cleaning standards for Downtown, Chinatown and Wîhkwêntôwin (formerly Oliver) after the provincial government chose not to renew a pilot program. Other BIAs would get access to a new cleaning and graffiti removal fund, and more money would be spent citywide on trimming grass and pruning trees. The city would fill the funding gap needed to keep the low-income transit pass program going, add more funds to the community league infrastructure pool, and create an industrial growth hub to encourage more industrial businesses to set up within city limits. EPCOR dividends and franchise fees would be saved to replenish its rainy-day fund.
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Budget debates begin Monday with the mayor’s omnibus amendment.
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‘Overhaul’ budget process
When he was a city councillor, there were branch-by-branch analyses before final budgets were prepared and he wants to bring that back. Right now, city administrators prepare complete budget documents giving council members only a couple weeks to come up with adjustments.
Sohi wants to revamp the way budgets are prepared so city council can more closely evaluate all programs and services in each department and branch, to look for efficiencies and track any spending they don’t think the city should be paying for.
“We need to overhaul how we budget,” he told Postmedia. “I think we need to bring back that kind of approach so we can undertake a line-by-line analysis of the budget, then demonstrate value for the need for Edmontonians, and where we see redundancies, where we see efficiencies, we can deal with them.”
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This was the goal of what council called “OP 12” in late 2022 which tasked the former city manager with finding about $300 million to cut or spend elsewhere, Sohi said: “We were able to do some, but not to the level that I wanted.”
The mayor also wants to restructure the city to cut red tape and streamline decision-making, review the efficiency of economic development agencies, simplify city policies, and create a new policy where staff must report budget overruns to council above a certain amount.
Whichever tax rate is passed, Sohi hopes it could come down even further by next spring.
He’s asking the Alberta government to reinstate the grants paid in lieu of property taxes on provincial buildings to 2019 levels, which could cut the tax rate by at least 0.7 per cent more next year. Premier Danielle Smith and Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver have met with the mayor and are reviewing this request, McIver’s office confirmed. Sohi hopes dollars will be reinstated in the next provincial budget.
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