The County of Grande Prairie’s top municipal leader says inflation, along with the continued growth the county has seen played a role in the 2.9 per cent property tax increase council tentatively approved for the 2024 interim budget.
County Reeve Bob Marshall says according to the federal census since 2016 the municipality has seen a 5.6 per cent increase. Marshall explains that even with the continued growth the county has tried to keep taxes stagnant and avoid implementing increases, though at times the municipality has had to implement increases to the workforce to keep services at the same level.
“Unfortunately we can’t keep that going on forever, we were dipping into some of our reserves and our savings to help soften that blow for our residents. But, you can’t do that ongoing otherwise you will get to the point where potentially you will have a massive tax increase.”
Some of the additions that council made to keep the service levels for the growing community included the addition of a new fire prevention officer position, along with eight full-time firefighters which equaled a $750,000 investment. Marshall says that another area that is important to keeping service levels is the amount of grant funding the county has available to the various community organizations; ; which is why an estimated $6.6 million was approved for community grants.
“The different groups such as recreation and ag societies provide such a valuable service to our ratepayers, our volunteers, there is no way we could provide that service from a county level so anywhere we can help them out with funding and grants and stuff to keep them viable and going.”
The county reeve says even with the 2.9 per cent increase, the county’s tax bump is still lower than the tax increases being seen in not just other parts of the province but the country.
“There originally was a seven per cent tax increase that our administration working group was asking us to do, but we worked with them through that three days to try to bring that down,” Marshall says. “Again this is just the interim budget, so when we do the final budget in April we will still be looking at, what is the final tax rate going to be?”
Marshall adds that the final numbers for the 2023 budget have not come in yet the speculation is that there will be a slight surplus, which will be put toward the 2024 budget
