Grande Prairie City Council endorsed a 1.16% tax increase for the 2022 City budget with a focus on efficient operations to support a sustainable future.

The budget prioritizes existing infrastructure and focuses on filling infrastructure gaps in the community while maintaining a moderate tax increase for residents. It was developed with a focus on the future to ensure the City is well-positioned to continue to provide and sustain for the needs of our growing community as development continues.

“Today, Council approved a strategic, collaborative and realistic budget for 2022-2025. The budget reflects the cost of maintaining currently approved services adjusted for inflation, growth, service changes, capital projects, and the impacts of COVID-19 with a strong future-focus to grow our community sustainably year-after-year,” says Mayor Jackie Clayton.

“Over the past year, we were fortunate to receive relief funding from the federal and provincial governments to advance several projects with our largest capital budget to date. This enabled us to get ahead while facing the ongoing impacts of COVID-19, a declined economy, and reductions in provincial funding.

“As we look ahead and see the economy making a recovery, our priority is now on building and investing sustainably, focusing on community needs, and the state of our infrastructure. Council aimed to keep a tax increase low to ensure the City is providing maximum value per dollar while ensuring the increase is manageable for residents.”

Highlights

Highlights from the budget include:

• Enterprise Resource Planning Project: $2,500,000
• Accessibility initiatives: $50,000
• Transit shelters and bus stops $25,000
• Special Project Funding for Art Gallery, Nitehawk, STARS and more: $529,000
• Grande Prairie Regional Hospital Funding to prioritize community growth: $500,000
• Playground replacement program: $300,000
• Tree replacement program: $95,000
• Roads and infrastructure funding such as:
  • Bridge maintenance and replacement program: $300,000
  • Intersection improvement program: $1,000,000
  • Old highway 43 rehab/overlay: $5,750,000
  • Pedestrian links: trail and sidewalk: $3,500,000
  • New and existing road rehabilitation: $11,500,000
  • Storm Replacement and Rehab Program: $3,275,000

For more information on these and other projects, visit the 2022 Budget Book available at engage.cityofgp.com/budget2022.

City administration additionally presented to Council on a centralized asset management process that sets in place a 10-year plan to maintain City-owned infrastructure in the most efficient and effective manner. The asset management process is proposed to optimise the lifespan of City infrastructure at the lowest cost. Through these and other efficiency initiatives and LEAN processes, City Council and Administration work to keep taxes low for residents.

Background

The City uses a multi-year budget, (2022 – 2025) aligned to the four-year Strategic Plan of City Council. The first year of the budget is approved with the remaining years approved in principle, with deliberations held every year. This budget represents the last budget year of the prior Council’s Strategic Plan for the City (2019-2022).

A Priority Based approach to budgeting was used for the City’s 300+ services to allocate funding to those services and programs more aligned with Council’s Strategic Vision.

With a focus on sustainability, Administration has worked diligently to adopt innovative and more efficient ways to operate. The City’s goal is reducing red tape and simplifying, streamlining and integrating systems and processes to support costs containment, encourage more economic recovery and development and more business opportunities and regional partnerships, while also considering the social and safety needs of our community.

Budget engagement occurred in multiple phases from May 3- October 14 and was completed fully online. It included a survey, Idea Space and Q&A, online budget allocator, Balancing Act budget balancing tool, and public and stakeholder engagement sessions. A full What We Heard report from the budget engagement is available at engage.cityofgp.com/budget2022.

The 2022 City Budget will receive final ratification at the December 13, 2021 Council meeting.