By Curtis Galbraith

City council approves budget, but not without some opposition

Dec 3, 2018 | 9:20 PM

Property taxes in Grande Prairie will be going down 4.1 percent in 2019 after city council approved the new operating and capital budgets at Monday night’s meeting.
 
The move did not go unopposed, though.
 
Councillor Dylan Bressey says while he is excited about seeing a tax cut while increasing important services like police and roads, he does not like an idea to refinance loans that is included as well.
 
“I think it’s a poor way to get temporary tax relief. I think that to take out debt to increase reserves doesn’t make sense to me. I really support decreasing taxes, but that should be done by taking a hard look at our revenue and expenses, not at the cost of $22-million over 30 years to refinance some loans.”
 
The city’s website says 33 loans with an average interest rate of 4.13 percent will be consolidated into the one loan. This is expected to lower the tax burden $4.8-million per year for five years and an average $4.1 million over the first eleven years. 
 
Bressey thinks there are better ways to spend money.
 
“This provides tax relief for 11 years. I think doing the hard job of looking at our revenue and expenses provides tax relief permanently, so I’d rather see us do that.”
 
Councillor Wade Pilat says while he is not “in love with” this idea, he does like to see taxes going down.
 
“I think it’s to also to show the community that we are trying to find a way to get our taxes a little bit more in line with the County (of Grande Prairie). Not just the County, just (to get) our spending habits in line. I think we achieved that and when we look at the next three years, I’m confident that we’re going to continue to see negative, maybe zeros, not high tax implications coming up in this term.”
  
Pilat thinks that the city has the right staff in place to go ahead with this.