Grande Prairie City Council’s 2025 Budget Deliberations are less than one week away, and city officials have indicated they are confident administration has done their due diligence to avoid a less-than-desirable tax hike.
Deputy Mayor for the City of Grande Prairie Gladys Blackmore gave credit to her administration team saying she is happy with the work done over the past year looking for any place the city can save money.
“Administration has done a really good job and worked very hard this year to look for any place we can save dollars or any place we can do business differently so that it is more cost-effective,” she says. “When we get to budgets to start discussing those things, I think our residents will be pleased with the work that’s gone into that.”
The city’s annual tradition of consulting with representatives in the financial sector will continue this year, and Blackmore says her council is counting on some good news, especially regarding the topic of inflation, this time around.
“Inflation has dropped over the past year so we’re hopeful we’ll hear some good news come out of our financial specialists […] I’m hoping they are less negative than they were last year,” she says. “No one is ever pleased with a tax increase and it’s not going to be zero, but I can’t tell you at this point what that number is.”
When it comes to the city’s new police agency transitioning from RCMP to GPPS jurisdiction, Blackmore indicates that the process has been regularly discussed in the chambers for two years, leading her to believe it is unlikely there will be much discussion, if any, on the matter during council’s next budget talks.
“I think that we’re comfortable with where we’re at, the full transition won’t take place until 2026 and so there is going to be some overlap of services so we’ll see how that goes, but it’s not looking bad as far as the budget goes,” she says.
While discussing budgets as a whole, Blackmore calls the annual affair a “balancing act” for the city, being careful to ensure as many services as possible remain funded, while looking at methods to save money to avoid any unreasonable hikes for Grande Prairie taxpayers.
“Unfortunately, we provide a lot of services to the residents of Grande Prairie that come with a price tag, and there’s two options and we try to find a balance between them, one is to cut services, therefore spend less, or the other is to figure out ways to save money so that we don’t have to cut services and not have a tax increase […] it is a balancing act, that quite frankly, really doesn’t make anyone happy,” she says. “This council does not have the appetite for a big tax increase, we’re probably okay with a relatively small one, but we’re not interested in anything anywhere close to double digits.”
With budget talks being so close, Blackmore says based on what she has seen come out of administrative reports, she is confident they have done a “good job” aligning the city’s finances with the current council’s goals for 2025.
