Leah HennigIt’s budget season for the City of Edmonton. While city administration is presenting reports on 2024 spending and ideas for 2025 are beginning to form, now is not the time to be celebrating. After running a deficit in 2024, the City of Edmonton looks like it is going to have to make cuts again. And the Government of Alberta’s refusal to give municipalities adequate funding isn’t helping. To no one’s surprise, this is going to fall on the backs of Edmontonians.
Recently, city council has been going through reports of 2024 spending, and it is looking grim. “It’s probably going to mean some kind of reductions,” Aaron Paquette, councillor for Ward Dene told City News. Additionally, back in August, the city warned that it would likely have to hike property taxes in 2025. With a budget gap of $88 million, this isn’t exactly surprising, but it certainly is disappointing. City Council doesn’t seem to be doing a satisfactory job at handling the budget. And Edmontonians are the ones feeling the brunt of these shortfalls.
Yet, the government doesn’t seem to want to take responsibility. “We have a high level of expectations from Edmontonians,” Mayor Amarjeet Sohi told the Edmonton Journal. But in turn, we have high expectations of our governments — why shouldn’t we? With the average Canadian household spending almost half of their annual income on taxes, it only seems fair that we expect the people we trust with our money to use it wisely.
Instead, the City of Edmonton has been putting money into public art and unused, defective bike lanes. Meanwhile, Edmontonians are facing five bridge closures between 2025–29. While the arts and city improvement are important, in times of economic downturn, the government truly needs to be focusing its resources on issues with more immediacy. By focusing on peripheral projects, Edmontonians’ day-to-day is affected, from high tax rates to less services to traffic congestion.
Though the City of Edmonton isn’t entirely to blame. The Government of Alberta, for example, has been cutting monetary support to municipalities under the United Conservative Party (UCP) government. Meanwhile, the UCP projected a $5.5 billion surplus earlier this year. This is even double what the government initially projected. Ironically, it hasn’t been paying its taxes, though it has the money to do so, as it likes to brag about. The amount of property taxes the Alberta government owes the City of Edmonton could make up a significant chunk of the $88 million deficit. Yet, the provincial government continues to get away without paying its property taxes, and Edmontonians continue to feel the crunch.
In order to make up for the shortcomings of the budget, the City of Edmonton proposed reducing the amount of tax forgiveness earlier this year. Yet, the provincial government continues to get away without paying their property taxes. With 2025 looking as dire as 2024, so-called solutions like this could be in our future again. The city has made smaller cuts like cancelling waste calendar mailouts. Raising bus fares and eliminating funding for suicide prevention programs could also be on the table. These budgeting habits are really putting Edmontonians through the wringer. It’s undeniable Edmontonians need inexpensive transit and reliable mental health resources more than a beautiful downtown. Cutting funding to less pressing projects, like public art work, should come before changes to necessary services.
Budget 2025 isn’t something Edmontonians should be looking forward to. While we can hope that it’ll be better than last year, our governments’ budgeting habits don’t make me super optimistic. Edmontonians should be demanding that the municipal and provincial governments get their acts together and offer us something better than we’ve gotten. Afterall, Sohi says we do have a high level of expectation.
