The good news from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is that St. Albert is not at the top of its list for spending per capita.
The self-described taxpayers’ advocacy group published its municipal spending report for Alberta last week as a way of demonstrating how much different sizes of municipalities are spending per capita. On the Big Cities list, Medicine Hat ranked the highest, spending $6,243 per person, with Airdrie at the bottom of the 14 cities with $2,172 per person.
St. Albert came in ninth at $2,896, well below the average of $3,401 per person.
Franco Terrazzano, the federation’s Alberta director, explained the information was derived by the Blue Ribbon Panel charged by the province to examine spending last year.
“The Blue Ribbon Panel was an expert panel put together by Premier Jason Kenney and the United Conservative Party to do a deep dive into the state of Alberta's finances. They came together with reports. It was produced last fall, and it pretty much had one key takeaway for taxpayers,” he began.
“Our governments in Alberta have a spending problem. As it relates to the municipal spending report that we put out, the Blue Ribbon Panel found that Alberta’s municipalities tend to be some of the biggest spenders in Canada. Alberta's municipal per-person spending was the second-highest among the provinces, only behind Ontario, where their municipalities tend to deliver a different range of services.”
The report shows per-capita capital spending in Calgary and Edmonton is among the highest for comparable cities in Canada.
“We wanted to put this out at a crucial time, especially right now – the more money that Alberta councillors are spending, the less money that families and businesses have to weather this economic storm. That's why it's really so important for municipal councils to do everything they can to cut the fat, to lower property taxes,” he continued.
“I will say it’s especially important for municipal governments because property taxes are an especially harmful type of tax for the many laid-off workers, for the many struggling businesses who've seen their income or their revenue evaporate but then still owe big tax bills on their homes or their offices.”
St. Albert Mayor Cathy Heron was cautious to put too much value in the information.
“I always look at these things as just raw data, nothing more,” she summarized.
“That's quite often the problem with these kind of taxpayer watchdog groups. They just give you the raw data. All data, I would say, could be used in your favour or against you. I always feel bad for municipalities like Medicine Hat. The context is not there.”
She explained further that Medicine Hat is not a very good comparable municipality to St. Albert because it has its own utility corporation and they generate a lot of revenue. You tend to spend more when you have more, she commented.
“If you were to look at the revenue side of the ledger as well as the spending side, it would probably start to show you a clearer picture. The other thing is geographical location quite often helps. We don't have to spend as much as Edmonton on things such as homeless shelters ... because our homeless in St. Albert end up in Edmonton. They spend more money running recreation that my residents use. We don't need to build a zoo because there's one in our neighbouring municipality. So the context is not there.”
The context also indicates the possibility of inverse proportions – as the size of the municipality decreases, its per-capita spending goes up. From the report, the Municipal District of Greenview (ranked as a medium-sized municipality with a population between 5,000 and 30,000) spent $14,911 per person while the Municipal District of Ranchland (a small town with less than 5,000 population) took the overall top spot with $23,151 per person in spending.
