Athabasca County is planning for its first municipal tax increase in three years, but council decided to keep it at two per cent during a Jan. 10 budget and finance committee meeting.
The committee made progress with a draft version of the 2018 budget that includes a two per cent municipal tax increase. A further increase to 2.5 per cent was voted down in an informal straw poll during the meeting.
As the committee discussed projects to cut to make room for $687,000 in previously unaccounted funding for graders and other public works equipment, Coun. Warren Griffin said the revenue side should be examined.
“At some point, we can’t keep taking out of reserves that we will start having to rebuild,” Griffin said. “You can’t do it without money. At some point, we have to just say, you know what, we got to raise taxes. You can’t keep saying no to tax increases or fee increases.”
The budget and its corresponding proposed tax increase are still in draft stages and have not yet received final approval from Athabasca County council.
Athabasca County’s tax rate remained steady through 2016 and 2017, and the last increase was for one per cent in 2015, committee chair Larry Armfelt said during the meeting.
Coun. Penny Stewart said people are going to question a larger increase in 2018 because of no increases in previous years.
“Why did we not increase one per cent the last two years, and why’s the sky falling now?” Stewart said.
Armfelt replied that it was a decision of the council at the time.
“We can’t go into that,” he said.
Athabasca County Reeve Doris Splane said the municipality could get people to understand why these increases happen.
“No matter what, the idea is to tell people so they understand. We get demands, and everybody’s coming in here and they want more,” Splane said. “But nobody wants to pay the extra.”
“Let’s educate them and say ‘Sorry, if we’re going to try to meet the services you want, we’re going to have to now increase the taxes,’” Splane added.
The draft of the budget also has approximately $8.2 million coming out of reserves, according to Athabasca County director of corporate services Brian Pysyk. He added that the majority of that – $6.2 million – is going towards the new pool facility in Athabasca. Athabasca County’s total reserves as of 2016 – the last audited fiscal year – was $25.4 million, Pysyk said.
As the committee discussed transferring more from reserves to balance the budget, Splane said she was reluctant to do so.
“I don’t want to touch reserves, because we don’t know how secure our linear assessment is,” Splane said.
After the finance committee could not come an agreement for an additional tax increase, two items were tentatively dropped from the draft budget – $250,000 in a reserve transfer for a public works shop and $175,000 in a cold mix asphalt project at the Athabasca Regional Airport.
The budget and finance committee set its next meeting for Feb. 5. Armfelt said although the committee had not yet agreed on how to balance the budget, they made good progress.
“We’re down to really a few thousand dollars now. To do our annual budget and just be down to a few thousand dollars, we’ve done good,” he said.
