2020 Foothills County Budget: It’s GOOD NEWS: a hold-the-line “0” increase budget along with no reductions in service levels! On November 27, 2019, Council passed a motion to adopt this first pass at our 2020 Municipal Budget, as our operating budget. When we dive into more details on operations and capital, Council and Staff may still make adjustments to include more roads on our road matrix list (permanent dust control surface) or make alterations or additions to the items we have reviewed. Also, we’re waiting for more information from the Province, which we won’t have until February-ish 2020 (assessment values, education tax requisition amount), and whether we have a surplus or deficit from 2019 (it’s looking like we won’t have a deficit from 2019). Our goal is to maintain the “0” increase to be responsive to the difficult economic times that many residents find themselves in, even though we may yet have to rework some things. Thank you to our Council for their input and to our Departments for all their work to provide this comprehensive and thoughtful budget estimate.
However: That said, we have now encountered a “plot twist” on our budget, despite our best efforts. Residents and council asked for help with addressing rural crime, so the Province has announced a new policing cost model, as one of their measures, that is aimed toward getting 300 new RCMP & 200 staff to tackle rural crime. Thanks – I think? So, this means that a new provincial tax will be collected by us, similar to the education portion of your property tax bill. We’ll separate it out on your tax notice so you can see it. As we plan for a 1% increase that will be tagged onto our 2020 taxes, we await the results to see if this equals more service or any new officers in our area. Further, we will be increasing taxes up to 3% from this requisition alone, over the next 3 years in order to pay for 30% of this new policing cost. Our required portion, approximately $644,000 will scale up to $2,000,000 by year 3. There will be a new police advisory board, which will see representation for us by the Rural Municipalities Association. The rate of tax will be subject to review every 5 years, so it’s a wait and see on a number of fronts, including: results and payments over time.
Water Servicing Plans: While we cannot give you all the details yet, Okotoks and Foothills County are collaborating to provide water servicing for future growth in our Central District, Hwy 2A Industrial Corridor and Okotoks. What’s new is that it was determined that there is no piped-water option from the City, so we have continued to look for available water licence, study options for sourcing raw water from the Bow River south of Calgary and make plans for scaling upgrades to infrastructure. The key thing is that we are working together to create a win-win for our water-challenged area. We hope that the scenarios we are studying will equal results shortly, which would bring opportunity and certainty to investment in our communities. Of course, any work that will be undertaken must yet be approved by our councils and would then be subject to the Alberta Environment review process.
Renewing Enhanced Policing: We now have a year of experience behind us with obtaining Enhanced RCMP Policing through over-time shifts. After the dust settles on paying for these shifts and seeing some fine revenue, we think it is worth giving it the go-ahead for 2020. We will continue to watch that the fine revenue offsets the overall cost of approximately $250,000, as we await the revenues to flow in over a number of months to cover approximately $100,000 of our outlay. With this type of extra policing, we can measure the amount of hours, location and results of a greater police presence. Since we do not know if the new police cost model will provide any new officers or increase in service here, we will continue with this initiative until we know more from the province.
Our Top Goals for 2020 include: continuing to develop the Hwy 2A Industrial Corridor by getting water and fiber optic internet services up and running, supporting residents to tackle rural crime, surviving the workload to do the Calgary Metropolitan Region Board growth plan which is due by December 2020, and applying permanent dust- control surface to roads on our matrix list – keeping in mind a potential reality check that may come from the effects of Mother Nature and any increase in oil prices, where a 1 cent increase will cost us approximately $50,000. !
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Best Regards,
Councillor Suzanne Oel
