Stormwater Utility discussions are over for Grande Prairie’s current city council after a lengthy years-long debate.
Over the past four weeks, city council has hosted a series of public engagement sessions regarding what a potential change to the current model could look like.
Currently, stormwater utility billing is collected from residents based on their property taxes, and before the engagement sessions, council came up with four models to address public concerns.
The first was a tiered model with a billing cap that would have seen residents pay based on the number of billing units within a property, the second was a flat fee model that would see residents who own a small home, or a large commercial space pay the same $33.36 per month fee, the third was a billing unit model with no cap that would have low-density residential properties pay a fixed monthly charge of $6.85 per month per dwelling unit and larger properties pay the same with no upper limit on the number of units charged, and the fourth was a bracket model that would have high-density properties pay a base rate assigned to their tier.
In February, council seemed to be confident in one of four potential changes to the current system; however, over a period of four weeks, it was discovered that now might not be the right time to make the switch.
“I think that over time council learned more and wasn’t comfortable with that change,” Mayor Clayton says.
According to Mayor Clayton, Grande Prairie “tends to be in the top six” property tax rates in Alberta, and the change in stormwater billing would have given council a more “apples to apples” comparison between the city and other municipalities.
“Council wanted to see those dollars that it costs to operate stormwater removed from property tax bills,” she says. “If council removed that we wouldn’t be a top ten of highest levels of taxation across the province.”
A change in stormwater utility was included in council’s budget deliberations last fall, and with the decision to remove the change from the discussion, a $4 million hole has to be filled by council’s tax rate and mill rate deadline in April. Currently, it is unclear where that money will be coming from, and council has directed city administration to come up with some ideas to fill the gap.
“There will be more information coming to council prior to then for deciding how to absorb that difference that would have been collected through a stormwater utility, there’s always consideration whether it be taxation, whether it be reserves,” she says. “We’ll have a better understanding of how that affects ratepayers at the end of March, beginning of April.”
The Mayor is urging residents to recognize that Grande Prairie’s taxes “aren’t just expensive” because of items like snow removal and facilities, but the higher rate is a result of the fact that stormwater utility is collected through property tax.