Kevin Hanson – Division 1
Quick Bits
Council has no public meetings in August. This gives administration a well-earned break in the schedule and affords them opportunity to catch up where needed before our busy governance activities resume in September. This fall, there are four Special Council Meetings added in September/October to deal with what we are expecting to be significant public hearings:
Sept 11: Business related to a new Prairie Gateway Area Structure Plan, including amendments to the Rocky View/ Calgary Intermunicipal Development Plan to support this new plan in the Shepard area, a collaborative effort with the City of Calgary.
Sept 25: Redesignation of lands in the North Springbank Area Structure Plan from Special, Public Service District (S-PUB) District to Commercial, Highway (C-HWY) District to facilitate the development of a Gas/Electric Station and auxiliary commercial establishments.
Oct 2: Consideration for approval of the Springbank Area Structure Plan to guide future land use, subdivision, and development proposals within the plan area.
Oct 16: Consideration to amend the Conrich Area Structure Plan to facilitate development within the Future Policy Area. Located north and south of Township Road 250, east of the City of Calgary.
2025 Rocky View Budget Preparations
Each year, RVC budgets, plans, and invests in the future based on residents’ needs, community priorities, and Council’s strategic goals and objectives. Based on the April 2024 Citizen Satisfaction Survey, residents identified areas that need attention. For the 2025 budget, administration has prepared brief surveys for residents’ further input, for the following areas:
- Strategy and Vision
- Growth and Development
- All Services
- Public Engagement
- Economic Development
- Building Permits and Inspections
The surveys opened August 1st and are available until September 16th. In-person workshops will also be available in September. Following this, Administration prepares the draft 2025 budget for a Special Council Meeting in November/ December, where residents can also speak to Council directly. See all the details of the engagement here: https://engage.rockyview.ca/budget-engagement-2025
2025 Service-Based Strategic Planning & Budgeting Process
Council had a very comprehensive workshop July 24th, that outlined progress on changing our budget process to better align with our Service Delivery improvements. The budget cycle work to date has been:
i. Understanding the services we deliver (2024),
ii. Making service-based budget decisions (2025), and for next year:
iii .Monitoring our service performance (2026).
This was also our first detailed look at the changes administration have been making to our budgeting approach as we pivot from Departmental-Based revenues and expenditures to modern Service-Based budgeting.
The old-fashioned departmental budgeting is simple and easy to compose. It is also simple for Council to have an opinion about head count or a high sticker-price expenditure in any department. But there are many cons associated, including:
- Overall poor transparency to Council, Residents, and Stakeholders of value received
- Difficulty correlating increasing costs within departments due to any one service
- Difficulty for Council to decipher the true net cost of departments / programs
In the past, RVC also put significant effort into layering the allocation of shared resources, revenues, and grants and subsidies into the individual departmental budgets. Despite attempting to paint a picture of net bottom line cost to taxpayers, it was still difficult to justify/explain to residents the value for their taxes.
Since the beginning of our term 3-years ago, Council’s strategic direction has been to improve the delivery of services from Rocky View County. Part of that strategy was to transition away from a departmental-based budget to a services-based budget. This provides several benefits, including:
- Defensible service-framework-based capital and operating budget asks by administration
- Creation of direct linkages between financial commitments and defined service levels
- Better focussed Council decisions for individual services, including costs and risks
Designing and implementing a new system for RVC budgeting with its many unique services is complex and has been a multi- year process. It required a cultural shift in the organization from department-based siloed thinking, to a cross-department service-level ways of thinking. With 1-year remaining in the transition, a few budgeting wrinkles come to mind:
- Extremely interdependent cross- departmental services (I.e., Special Events)
- Who presents the budget to council for the diverse services? (We will soon see…)
Given the contentious budgeting deliberations recently experienced by Edmonton and Calgary, I know the services- based budgeting approach RVC is taking will have a positive impact on the ability of Council to govern well. We will have the tools in place to make difficult choices in
a high inflation environment, by adjusting service levels. And thatwith the bonus of improving transparency of value for money to the residents.
Contact: KRHanson@RockyView.ca or call 403.463.1166.
