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When the dust had settled and the last vote was cast in the City of St. Albert’s 2013 municipal budget deliberations, the proposed property tax increase had decreased nearly two percentage points compared to when the process started nearly three months ago. At the end of the meeting on Thursday, Dec. 6, when the last of the budget motions were voted on, the City’s “tax-o-meter” sat at 3.27 per cent, down from 5.14 per cent when the numbers were first presented to council in September. Council dealt with the bulk of the motions at a meeting the previous Tuesday, knocking the tax increase down to 3.48 per cent that afternoon, and did some further trimming on Thursday. One of the issues that caused the most debate on Thursday was funding for the St. Albert Public Library. Library representatives had come before council earlier
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in the process asking for an increase of about $166,000, but Mayor Nolan Crouse put forward a motion to limit that to about $95,000, or three per cent. However, Coun. Cam MacKay — who serves as council’s representative on the library board — proposed a compromise that would essentially decrease the library’s request by $31,400 by charging more for common area costs. “If you want to go higher :Xd than [$31,400], DXZBXp the board is :`kp ZfleZ`ccfi going to have to face some more difficult decisions that perhaps could impact employees or books, and those are the two areas that are not easy decisions to make,” MacKay said, also noting that a new membership fee structure coming into effect in January would also see library revenues decrease by
about $30,000. Councillors also voted down business cases for a Capital Region Board planner and an emergency communications officer. Coun. Cathy Heron said that, even though she voted to postpone the position to 2014, she had concerns that having a staff member dedicated to CRB matters at the regional meetings would mean losing experts in the area around the :Xk_p table. ?\ife “My biggest :`kp ZfleZ`ccfi problem is that I want the area-specific people at the subcommittees,” she said. “... I think we can manage one more year, but in 2014, we need to look at it seriously again.” Meanwhile, a project to install QR codes on public art pieces and historic sites to allow quick access to detailed information was left in
the budget at a cost of $25,000, as was a natural areas assessment at a cost of $121,000. “One of the characteristics of St. Albert that our citizens want us as a council to continue to protect and uphold are the green spaces and natural areas included in the city,” said Coun. Wes Brodhead. “This is work that is going to assist us in maintaining and ensuring that development proceeds in a reasonable N\j fashion relative 9if[_\X[ to our natural :`kp ZfleZ`ccfi areas.” Also added in on Thursday was a corporate analyst staff position, which was meant to be a blend of two other analyst positions — one in the economic development department and one in the corporate and strategic services division — that had been removed from the budget earlier
on. “This proposal is trying to take a portion of what each of the positions would have done, so we would need some time to write a proper position description with roles and responsibilities,” city manager Patrick Draper explained. “But we definitely do need analytical capability in our staffing complement.” One issue that was not dealt with Thursday was a late motion by Coun. Len Bracko to spend $3,000 to convert up to three of the city’s least-used tennis courts into pickleball courts. Pickleball is a game similar to tennis, played on a smaller court — the size of a doubles badminton court — with a wiffle ball and a hard paddle. Councillors felt that, since it was a small amount of money, it could be dealt with later in the winter, before the final tax rate is set early next year. Formal approval of the 2013 municipal budget is expected to take place at city council’s regular meeting on Monday, Dec. 17.