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City aims to expand the financial pie

Mayor's address focuses on how to drum up new revenues

St. Albert is looking at ways to bake a bigger financial pie, rather than simply slicing the existing one in different ways, Mayor Cathy Heron said in her State of the City address Wednesday.

While addressing the St. Albert and District Chamber of Commerce’s business luncheon Sept. 11, sustainability was top of mind as Heron spoke on how the city is facing increasingly dire financial outlooks, in times of budget shortfalls and government grant uncertainties.

“Currently, we have control over a limited number of revenue streams,” Heron said, referring to property taxes, fees and fines. “We face a funding gap between what we need or want to fund, and the money we have available.”

City council has already trimmed the fat off St. Albert’s capital expenditures, and the only other option is to investigate revenue streams, Heron said. Typically, municipalities have relied on provincial and federal grants to fund their capital plans for utilities and growth, and to keep infrastructure in good shape.

The Alberta government’s MacKinnon report on the state of the province's finances, released earlier this month, “points to the uncomfortable reality that we will have to pay for the maintenance and upkeep” of St. Albert, Heron said.

As such, St. Albert must “look outside the box” at tapping into new revenue streams through a municipal utility corporation.

“We can explore different ways to slice the pie, to shuffle money around, or we can look at expanding the pie,” Heron said.

City council has been playing with the idea of a municipal utility corporation since last year, and last month took the first step toward creating one by passing its municipal public utilities bylaw. This would give St. Albert a monopoly over any utilities it chooses to provide.

City administration has been directed to craft a business case for a utility corporation, which was set to come to council this fall.

However, Heron said St. Albert has hired an independent management consulting firm, Grant Thornton, to draw up the business case to ensure the city is “making a wise choice.” Council is set to look at extending the deadline for that business case during their meeting on Monday.

Heron explained a municipal utility corporation would not be about overcharging residents on traditional utilities such as waste, wastewater, storm and solid waste. Instead, it would be predicated on creating new lines of service, including waste to energy, which the city currently has a pilot project on the go for.

“But it is not only about big projects and new technologies, it is about finding new sources of revenue of any size to provide more value to ratepayers, such as consulting and/or operation and maintenance services for the private sector.”

Heron said the city has received responses from a “number of significant stakeholders” about participating in finding these new revenue streams.

“This is truly a more the merrier initiative.”

Heron’s focus over the next two years of her term as mayor will be about identifying changes necessary to help St. Albert “not only survive, but thrive.”

2019 accomplishments

During Heron’s second State of the City address, she also outlined council accomplishments over the past year.

“Because this council has embraced this culture of optimism, collaboration and mutual respect, we have been able to achieve what many believed to be unachievable,” Heron said.

One of the biggest items Heron outlined was creating a partnership with the Alberta government for the expansion of Ray Gibbon Drive. Under the terms agreed upon with the former NDP government, St. Albert would front-end the $54.2-million project for the first five or six years before provincial dollars kicked in, although the current UCP government has said it is reviewing its infrastructure commitments.

Council also moved forward on expropriating land in Kingswood, an ongoing issue since the site was designated as a park and school site but has not been handed over by the developer.

Additionally, Heron spoke about St. Albert being the first city in Alberta to make moves on banning conversion therapy.

In order to support further growth of St. Albert, the city has also progressed in talks with Sturgeon County and is on track to make a submission to the province on annexation by the end of 2020.

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