People in Grande Prairie may see their taxes go down next year. Based on the decisions made in budget talks over the last two days, the city is projecting a 2.69 per cent tax decrease in 2019.
As part of that tax cut, the city was looking for $4.18 million dollars to take out of the budget for 2019. One of the proposed cuts was taking away half of the funding for large-scale events like the Bear Creek Folk Festival and the Grande Prairie Stompede.
A few councillors supported removing that funding including Councillor Jackie Clayton. She believes it’s not right to use taxpayer dollars to fund established events.
“I don’t think it’s reasonable, or realistic or fair with our taxpayer dollars to have this cushion for these events. They’re well planned existing events, they don’t need seed money anymore, they can stand on their own two feet.”
In the end, council voted to keep the full amount for event funding in place.
New to the budget for 2019, Council has agreed to put $500,000 towards housing initiatives that would go to towards finding things like land for future projects. They have also decided to pay to demolish the Leisure Centre in Avondale.
The facility was built in 1972 and was closed in 2011 when council planned to renovate the pool. In the end, when costs got too high, the city decided to fund the Bear Creek Pool instead.
Since then, the building has sat empty. Councillor Dylan Bressey was in favour of the city paying to demolish the building.
“I think that this is a facility that we built, that we used, that we used up. I think that it’s our basic responsibility to demolish this building now that it’s at the end of its usable life.”
Budget talks are expected to wrap up on Friday at 9 a.m. at City Hall.