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By Courtney Almeida

city services

City planning fee changes to decrease property tax burden

May 1, 2019 | 5:30 AM

As part of the City’s approved budget for 2019-2022, a comprehensive review of all of the City’s fees and charges was undertaken on Monday. As a result, a number of adjustments have been proposed to council which would see changes in the cost of various city services and programs.

If approved by council, the new fee adjustments would bring in approximately $450,000 annually for the City of Grande Prairie and approximately $225,000 for this year, as adjustments are scheduled to take effect on July 1.

The review of fees comes as part of Council’s efforts to reduce the residential property tax by 4 percent.

“Apart of that is to look at our mix of revenue and see if we’re getting the right proportion from the different areas. Part of that discussion has to be user fees,” says Mayor Bill Given.

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Given describes the process used by management to come up with the new rates, saying that they, “looked at all the different fees and charges individually and did an assessment of when they were last updated. As well as what the current market rate was for similar fees and charges across municipalities both across the province and in cities of our size. As well as, within our local market and where it made sense, compared to the County of Grande Prairie in particular.”

The City’s transit fares have not been changed since 2005. Now, bus passes across the board from youth to senior will all see increases.

With regards to the topic of transit, “the discussion really centered around, how do we ensure that transit is still an accessible service for the people who rely on it. The decision was to move forward with administration’s recommendation to increase the fees and I think that was largely based on the fact that the fees haven’t been increased in nearly 14 years,” said Given.

Given says that while Council recognizes that there are impacts on users, “we need to ensure that the fees we charge for that service are current with our costs.”

He explains that additional adjustments have been made to transit services since the initial fee was implemented. “14 years ago, the City of Grande Prairie didn’t have the low-income transit passes that we have today.”

Over the last few years, the City has introduced several different programs to support members of the community who may find fees and charges a barrier to their participation.

“We’ve added a recreation access program and it allows people to get a reduced rate on Punch Passes at the Eastlink Centre or our outdoor pool, that will be coming on stream this Summer. We’ve also added a low-income transit pass option and so there are a number of different areas where Council has instituted programs to support individuals or families in our community that might not be able to meet the market rate.”

City arenas which include the Twin Ice Arenas, Dave Barr Community Centre and Revolution Place will all see increases to ice rental, drop-in programs, youth hockey/skating programming and non-ice arena rental costs. Revolution Place ticket service charges will also be increased.

At the Eastlink Centre, pool, track and room rentals will rise in cost. However, as was implemented at the beginning of April, membership fees have seen a decrease. The new prices saw Family, Adult and Senior memberships decreased by 15%, Student Memberships will decrease by 20%, and Youth and Child Memberships are going down by 25%.

Ball diamond, track and pavilion rentals, and tournament fees will all be raised at South Bear Creek.

At the Ernie Radbourne Pavilion, City event charges will increase, and Day Camp rates and auditorium rentals are also expected to rise.

Some services such as cannabis production, distribution and retail store licences were skipped in the review process as they were only recently implemented.

Moving forward, a change of practices by the City will be had and an annual review of fee adjustments is set to take place as part of the yearly budget approval process.

“In the past, the City had approximately 16 bylaws and policies that had some kind of user fee, everything from land development to enforcement services, to recreation passes and transit. Management had received direction from council to consolidate all of those fees and charges into one bylaw that was easy to understand and to ensure the rates that we were charging were reasonable in comparison with other municipalities, as well as that they were up to date, “said Given.

Current recommendations will be brought forth to council at the next meeting on May 6, where final decisions will be made.

“I think the message here is that council is doing its due diligence to ensure that we are not over burdening our property tax payers and that we are ensuring that the people who access our services are doing it at a reasonable rate.”