can now weigh in<\/a> on what investments \u2014 or cuts \u2014 they think the city should make.<\/p>\nMayor Andrew Knack campaigned on getting more everyday people involved in shaping the city\u2019s priorities for the next four-year budget. That process is now underway, with a survey open until May 1, and in-person engagement sessions scheduled next month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy call to Edmontonians is to please get involved,\u201d he said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese decisions we make about the budget will affect you in the next four years and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n
Knack\u2019s call for public input comes as the city needs to make some tough financial decisions.<\/p>\n
Stacey Padbury, the city\u2019s chief financial officer, said a lot of work has been done already to find efficiencies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis means that there is relatively little room left to cut costs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Inflation and population growth also continue to drive up the price tag of delivering the same services, Padbury noted.<\/p>\n
But at the same time, there is an understanding that property taxes can\u2019t go up to the same degree they did last time around, Knack said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is an affordability crisis that is happening, the price of gas, everything that’s cumulative right now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Knack told reporters property taxes were artificially kept too low during the pandemic years, leaving the last council to play catch-up with consecutive sizable tax hikes.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy goal is to not have either of those two extremes in this next four-year cycle \u2014 to have something more moderate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Both Knack and Padbury said that leaves service levels as an area of spending\u00a0that needs a hard look.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Knack said he wants to know if there are areas Edmontonians might be willing to compromise on. He gave the example of perhaps having city crews mowing the grass less often if it means firehalls can be built without driving up property taxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should actually embrace those tough conversations, because they are the conversations that council goes through every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Edmonton Chamber of Commerce wants to see business interests have a seat at the table, vice-president of economy and engagement Heather Thomson said in an interview on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn previous budget iterations, we haven’t seen as much investment as we’d like to see from a business perspective,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Thomson said the city needs to put money into projects that attract new sources of revenue \u2014 ventures that will boost the downtown and Edmonton\u2019s commercial tax base for example.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would \u2026 allow for the city to balance its budget and not put so much pressure on the residents to make up such a substantial amount of the tax base.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the election, the chamber had called for the city to strike a fiscal task force of business leaders to have a say in the budget process. Knack has previously said he wants all Edmontonians to have a say, which he said this engagement process will provide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":{"0":"post-560930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-edmonton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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