www.auma.ca Alberta Urban Municipalities Association president Barry Morishita says the province’s approach to municipal funding has been “frustrating and disappointing.”
jappel@medicinehatnews.com@MHNJeremyAppel
The president of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association says the province’s approach to municipal funding has been “frustrating and disappointing.”
Barry Morishita, who’s also the mayor of Brooks, told the News he hopes to turn over a new leaf with the province with Thursday’s budget, but remains skeptical after significant cuts to municipal funding and increases in costs since October’s financial framework.
Morishita says he’s “never” experienced two budgets in the span of four months.
“It is a bit odd, for sure,” he said. “It makes planning very difficult.”
This is due to the lateness of the October budget, as well as uncertainty surrounding Thursday’s budget since municipalities have already passed their own, said Morishita.
“We took a lot of operational hits and those are very difficult to deal with, considering the province’s overarching approach of ‘Don’t raise taxes, keep spending in line,’ while they continue to download without consultation, and that’s very difficult for municipalities to deal with,” he said.
Morishita says this is akin to “putting municipalities’ backs up against the wall.”
The previous budget increased the education tax requisition municipalities collect on behalf of the province, which he says decreases the amount of room municipalities have to increase property taxes.
“Our residents want to keep services, but at the same time the province is taking more of the education property tax to fund education, which they’re freezing spending on, which means the proportion of who’s paying is going up,” said Morishita, “Those things aren’t acceptable and they aren’t collaborative. We’re not working to mitigate the fiscal situation, which is very frustrating and disappointing.”
Morishita also criticized the province’s new policing model for a rushed implementation that forces municipalities to budget for new RCMP officers this fiscal year, as well as the province taking a larger share of revenue from police fines.
He said the AUMA appreciates the province’s fiscal situation needs to be addressed, but that municipal governments cannot solely bear the burden of increasing taxes while the province cuts.
“We were hopeful to start with, but it’s become increasingly clear that they don’t seem to be interested in having a true partnership. They just want us to pick up the pieces they leave in our communities when they download and cut back,” Morishita said.
He said he hopes the upcoming budget has no more cuts and no more downloading of responsibilities.
“I expect if they listen to us there will be no impacts on municipal budgets,” said Morishita.
The effects of this austerity are particularly notable in smaller cities, such as Medicine Hat and Brooks, due to the relatively small size of their budgets compared to Calgary or Edmonton, said Morishita.
“We have less fiscal capacity to absorb shock,” he said.
Morishita says he’s expressed his concerns to MLA Michaela Glasgo, who represents Brooks and part of Medicine Hat in the legislature, in addition to sending a letter to Premier Jason Kenney on Feb. 5.
For her part, Glasgo says all government MLAs – including the minister of finance and minister of municipal affairs – have engaged in extensive consultation with stakeholders in advance of the budget.
Glasgo also cited two telephone town halls where Albertans were able to ask questions about the government’s direction, as well as an online survey to solicit feedback from the public, which was open for about a month. These initiatives had 30,000 and 26,000 participants, respectively.
“All efforts were made to accommodate each meeting request,” she added.
