BANFF – Banff council has set the goalposts for 2025 service review.
Council directed Town staff any new service level requests will have to come forward with funding from reserves, grants, associated revenue or the Town’s successful funding from the federal government’s Housing Accelerator Fund.
Mayor Corrie DiManno made the motion arising at the July 8 governance and finance meeting with the intent to ensure the municipal tax increase is 7.91 per cent when service review starts.
“I think there’s many factors that has led to this piece of direction,” she said. “No. 1, we’re facing a 7.91 per cent [municipal] tax increase just at the start line and no doubt we’re going to endeavor to reduce that during the budget process.
“But when we get to the budget process, I really want us to utilize reserves, particularly visitor paid parking reserve, because of how self-sustaining it is and I think our work plan is quite comprehensive and I want to try and keep this budget really focused on our strategic priorities.”
DiManno highlighted it doesn’t include any council initiatives that may be brought forward during service review, with council members able to make motions to add or remove from the budget.
A staff report noted the municipal tax increase to maintain service levels would be 2.53 per cent for 2025. The projected municipal tax increase is roughly eight per cent, with council reviewing all new requests at service review.
“The decisions we make here do affect and flow through all the way through into subsequent years. Every step along this cycle has impacts on subsequent steps,” said Lauren Aebig, the Town’s director of corporate services.
She said the Town is starting with a tax-funded base budget of $25.25 million and estimated inflation is 2.5 per cent for roughly $631,166. A one per cent municipal tax increase or decrease is $249,000.
Aebig reminded council that inflationary aspects could potentially impact the budget when service review begins.
Banff’s governance and finance committee reviews and adopts a financial plan each year to begin the budget process. The first step leads to a strategic planning session in August, with department work plans and budgets being established.
“The cycle starts in the early summer with the setting of financial principles and policies that are used by administration to evaluate current programs and services and determine what new service level requests to bring forward during service review in the fall,” stated a staff report.
Service review is set to begin in either November or December, with public consultation received, and the budget typically adopted in January.
“Feedback provided during service review forms the foundation of the budget, which lays out how the organization will invest in operations and projects for the next three years, and the financial cost associated with this” stated the staff report.
The tax rate bylaw is traditionally passed in either April or May.
The staff report notes property taxes would be due by 4:30 p.m. on the final working day in June, or if it falls on a weekend it would be the first working day in July.
In 2020, the municipal tax levy was $17.16 million and increased to $24.78 million in 2024.
In the same period, the total tax levy – including Bow Valley Regional Housing and the education tax – went from $27.13 million in 2020 to $35.6 million in 2024.
The Town has about $15 million in debt with capital investments, which as of 2022 was about 27.4 per cent of its debt limit ratio.
“Historically, Banff has used very little debt overall. … That can be a good and bad thing,” Aebig said. “It’s definitely good to keep debt at a manageable reasonable level, but there is opportunity to utilize debt other than other sources of funding for especially large infrastructure projects that will have a long lifespan.”
A pair of amendments added any emergency needs and transit services were exempted from DiManno’s motion, particularly with Roam continuing to expand and outgrow its existing infrastructure.
Paul Godfrey, the Town’s director of operations, added at last year’s service review it was reported to council maintaining the Roam fleet in the existing facility is “not sustainable”. The Town and Roam are in talks to determine who will provide mechanical servicing for the fleet – with the Town likely to maintain that role – but yet to be determined.
He added if the Town continues in the mechanical servicing role, the Roam facility in Banff’s industrial compound will likely need a “rapid design of how we can retrofit that building to meet the current demands and future demands.”
Council previously gave Town staff direction to use the market wage adjustment based on the average of the Conference Board of Canada compensation planning outlook index and Alberta Consumer Index Price. The report noted it was 2.65 per cent in April, 2024. The July rate is anticipated to be released in September, with it returning for the final rate.
The province requires the tax split between non-residential and residential to be no more than 5:1. All municipalities have to reach it by 2027, with the Town hitting it in 2024 with a split of 4.6077.
A motion arising from Coun. Kaylee Ram will have Town staff come back with a report for suggestions on potentially bringing the municipal tax increase down to six per cent without impacting services such as snow clearing, community programming, traffic and emergency management and transit.
“Finding efficiencies from all departments by those respected people who make up the department teams,” she said of receiving a report. “I’m not here to micromanage. I’m not an engineer. I’m not an urban planner. I don’t think that it’s our job to necessarily look at the specific lines and say ‘this is cut’ because we don’t know the inner workings of what those departments are. … We may not be the ones setting prices for rent or prices for food or services in the town, but this is in our purview to make an effort of an action where we can.”
Though coming back in a report – meaning it’ll be up to council direction if anything is cut – Coun. Grant Canning said it’s important to not remove services residents rely on for the sake of scaling back municipal taxes. He noted that with the intent to find $500,000 in savings, it’ll likely mean removing something significant from the budget.
“That isn’t fireworks. That is going to be much greater than fireworks. That is actually going to cut into core services,” he said. “I always understand this dichotomy where there’s requests of core services from residents and then people saying we pay too much in taxes. … That is a dilemma.”
Canning added an issue that remains in the background is catching up on capital contributions that were briefly stopped during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Aebig said the direction is to contribute $484,500 in 2025, but it’s not anticipated to catch up to previous targets that were disrupted by COVID-19 until 2034.
“I think it’s really important we don’t lose sight of that because we’re not even back to where we should’ve been let alone making up for all the things we took away from it,” Canning said.
2024 TAX LEVY
- Municipal: $24.78 million
- Education: $10.33 million
- Bow Valley Regional Housing: $494,00
- Total: $35.6 million
