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Municipal Politics

Maybe Mayor Gandam will run for provincial office to work on undoing some of the changes over the past couple years. Every provincial headline seems to read "GoA passes law, Alberta Municipalities hates it" lately.

Frustrating that 85% of delegates including 1,000 Alberta mayors and councillors that want to keep electronic vote tabulators because of less expense and better efficiency are ignored by Smith to appease her conspiracy theorists.

Will end up costing millions unnecessarily as municipalities are saying there isn't a problem.

But people also say cutting the grants to Edmonton in lieu of taxes by 50% since 2019 is minor even though it has now totalled $90 million and counting.

Finally, interesting that Sohi says manual vote counting will cost Edmonton $2.6 million while Gondek says initial estimates in Calgary are $1.3 million. What gives?
 
Maybe Mayor Gandam will run for provincial office to work on undoing some of the changes over the past couple years. Every provincial headline seems to read "GoA passes law, Alberta Municipalities hates it" lately.

Mayor Gundam?!?! Hot damn, we may finally have a solution to the crime problem!!

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Frustrating that 85% of delegates including 1,000 Alberta mayors and councillors that want to keep electronic vote tabulators because of less expense and better efficiency are ignored by Smith to appease her conspiracy theorists.

Will end up costing millions unnecessarily as municipalities are saying there isn't a problem.

But people also say cutting the grants to Edmonton in lieu of taxes by 50% since 2019 is minor even though it has now totalled $90 million and counting.

Finally, interesting that Sohi says manual vote counting will cost Edmonton $2.6 million while Gondek says initial estimates in Calgary are $1.3 million. What gives?
Clearly, Edmontonians count 50% slower.
 
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Finally, interesting that Sohi says manual vote counting will cost Edmonton $2.6 million while Gondek says initial estimates in Calgary are $1.3 million. What gives?
It must be alot cheaper to count votes from the Calgary Suburban Conservative Clones when they all vote the same way no matter what. ;)

In all seriousness, that is a good question.
 
A good read - Agenda Item 7.1 'Fiscal Gap' report


Essentially, we have no money but spells out in detail what the financial problems are, many made by Council or legislative constraints or whatnot.
This is an interesting resource - the City FCS department always puts out great stuff. I had no idea that Council removed the internet debt limit in 2022.

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Lots of interesting tidbits, pulled out just one:

"From 2008 to 2022, Edmonton’s non-residential assessment base declined from 72 per cent of the EMRB non-residential base, to 60 per cent. This is in large part due to insufficient real growth of the non-residential tax base. There was an estimated $29.9 billion in real growth from 2010 to 2022, of which the City absorbed only 41 per cent, whereas surrounding municipalities absorbed 59 per cent (inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars). Ideal real growth absorption should be somewhat proximate to the City’s population share (72.8 per cent), as population is one of the primary drivers of the City’s expenditure responsibilities."
 
Lots of interesting tidbits, pulled out just one:

"From 2008 to 2022, Edmonton’s non-residential assessment base declined from 72 per cent of the EMRB non-residential base, to 60 per cent. This is in large part due to insufficient real growth of the non-residential tax base. There was an estimated $29.9 billion in real growth from 2010 to 2022, of which the City absorbed only 41 per cent, whereas surrounding municipalities absorbed 59 per cent (inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars). Ideal real growth absorption should be somewhat proximate to the City’s population share (72.8 per cent), as population is one of the primary drivers of the City’s expenditure responsibilities."

Smith floated the idea today of the province taking over tax collection from all municipalities thereby reducing the size of city administrations doing this work, as one proposed benefit.

 
Smith floated the idea today of the province taking over tax collection from all municipalities thereby reducing the size of city administrations doing this work, as one proposed benefit.

I have no earthly idea how the province thinks it could keep on top of this. Municipalities are already struggling to collect franchise fees, particularly in the oil & gas industry.

I imagine the cheers came less from supporting the idea of less influence for municipalities, and more from "thank god, we hate dealing with taxes". The only benefit I can think of off the cuff would be that if assessors worked across a larger area, tax assessments might be more consistent, who knows. The rapidly increasing absorption of both municipal and federal jurisdiction into the Province are worrying.
 

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