St. Albert city councillors are set to decide on Tuesday whether they want to take the next step toward creating a city-owned utility company.
In March, Mayor Cathy Heron said she was bringing forward a motion to look at the feasibility of such a company, which would handle water, wastewater and solid waste as well as heat and electricity generation and distribution.
Her motion also calls for a business case to come before council by March 4, 2019.
The benefit of a municipal utility corporation is that the city would get another source of revenue. Heron pointed to Epcor as one example – with the City of Edmonton as its sole shareholder, Epcor generates a dividend that goes back to Edmonton.
How that dividend would be used would be up to city council.
"What we need is the business case in order to make the decision to move forward. We don't know if we're going to do a separate utility corporation until we see the business case," said Heron.
"I do think it's worth the money spent to investigate this option."
A report from utilities director Kevin Cole states the city has identified eight questions that would need to be answered in order to develop a business case, such as what the governance structure might be and potential risks of a utility corporation.
He suggests the utilities and finance departments do a feasibility study, which could cost around $25,000, while a financial review could be done by an objective third party for around $75,000.
"I do think if we're going to go down this road, we do need to have that third-party, unbiased, objective opinion," Heron said.
"This is something I would not want to do in-house."
"A good conversation for St. Albert city council would be, if we generate a dividend, do we want to put it into utility capital and lower utility rates? Or do we want to put it to reduce taxes?" Heron said.
However, she said she would not be looking to have utility rates artificially hiked in order to generate that dividend. Instead, revenue could come in from new lines of service, such as garbage pickup for industrial, commercial and institutional properties.
Currently, the city does not pick up garbage for those properties – "but we could," Heron said.
Another motive for having a utility corporation is the impact it could have on zero-waste processes.
Council will be getting a report in June on the feasibility of zero-waste processes for managing St. Albert's solid waste.
In March, city manager Kevin Scoble told the Gazette gasification of solid waste can generate heat and electricity.
While other mid-sized cities in Alberta have municipal utility corporations, former mayor Nolan Crouse says St. Albert needs to preserve its brand.
"We do not need to be like everyone else," he said.
He added he would like to see the city engage with any stakeholders who could be affected by the corporation, and that any council conversations about the corporation should be held openly and publicly.
"I simply expect our council to do what is best for all in our community," he said.
A final part of Heron's motion is to look into the impacts of transferring the revenues and expenses from stormwater over to the municipal side of the city's budget, instead of counting it on the utility side.
However, city staff are recommending that be dealt with separately as part of a stormwater rate report. That report is supposed to come to council in June but staff are suggesting that be pushed to Sept. 24.
