Mayor Nolan Crouse is tired of “the fear-mongerers” criticizing the state of St. Albert’s finances after the latest set of corporate financial indicators released by the province show the city near the top when compared to similar communities.
Crouse made the remarks during a meeting of the standing committee on finance (SCOF) Monday in which chief financial officer Ed Kaemingh showed the city ranks near the top in some key financial indicators, compared to similar communities, as assessed by the province for fiscal year 2010, the last year for which data is available.
“The fear-mongerers, they try to discredit staff and council and spread selective half-truths. They try to avoid this stuff,” Crouse said, referring to the data presented to SCOF.
“This is a message that is going to get out more and more often because the fear-mongerers will try to paint the community as a poor place to be. Or just a picture of lousy councils day after day, year after year.”
According to Kaemingh’s presentation, the city’s comparative performance is considered “impressive,” with St. Albert ranking slightly or significantly better than its comparator communities when it comes to debt and debt servicing limits, total expenditures per capita, employees per capita and sales and user fees per capita.
St. Albert’s comparator communities include Red Deer, Airdrie, Lethbridge, Grande Prairie and Medicine Hat.
“Almost all spending categories are less than their group median and substantially less than their group maximum,” Kaemingh said.
As of 2010, the city used only 35 per cent of its debt limit and 25 per cent of its debt-servicing limit, well below the median for comparator cities. City total expenditures of $2,209 per capita were less than the median and average, as were sales and user fees at $627 per capita, compared to the median of $951 and a maximum of $3,710.
“We hear a lot of chirping about how much it costs to live here? We’re the lowest. Look at it and tell me the city isn’t doing as good as you can,” Crouse said.
Areas where the city ranks higher than its group median include net municipal property taxes of $1,161 per capita and total equalized assessment of approximately $150,000, which Kaemingh said has decreased slightly but is still the highest in the group. Equalized assessment is determined by dividing the value of the city’s total market assessment by the total taxes it collects. Conversely, St. Albert’s non-residential tax component was only 11 per cent, the lowest in the group.
The numbers also show vigorous lobbying by community groups for provincial and federal grants as the calculated $689 grant dollars per capita was the highest in the group, more than $200 per capita higher than the median and at the 2010 maximum.
“A lot of groups work really hard to put in grant applications, whether it’s a playground group or getting money for another film and here it is — we are one of the best communities, if not the best, in the province,” Crouse said.
Crouse called for the city to actively publish the data through its social media accounts and other mechanisms.
“I get a little bit tired of some of the criticisms that comes to everybody, including our staff,” Crouse said. “We can take it, we’re big people, we take the bullets, but the flip side is we have a responsibility to defend ourselves, defend staff and defend the community.”
