In Alberta you
have in excess of 400 small municipalities, many are doing well with thriving
economies and others are similar to the Crowsnest
Pass in that they are struggling
financially.
The provincial government allows Municipalities many ways to
raise revenues such has property taxation, linear taxation, franchise fees,
user fees, fine revenues etc. Most people understand property taxes, unfortunately
in the Crowsnest Pass
we have a very limited commercial tax base, so fast approaching 90% of property
tax is collected from residents. Franchise Fees I am sure after the last six
months most people know what they are. User fees are such things as the utility
bill we pay every second month, ice time at the arena, rental of a municipal
hall, etc. Fine Revenue we now have our own Community Peace Officers who some
predict will bring us in large sums of money.
Lastly, there is Linear Taxation, from my conversations with
people very few understand what Linear Taxation is. Real simple explanation it
is the Tax dollars that CPR, power companies, gas or oil companies, windmills
etc pay to be allowed to run their lines through your municipality.
The Crowsnest Pass
in 2011 brought in $587,000 in revenue from Linear Taxation which sounds like a
lot, but it’s not when we compare to our neighbours To the north we have MD of
Ranchlands that brings in $4,000,000 a year in Linear taxation its area is
large and a lot of oil and gas lines run through its municipality. To the east
we have MD of Pincher Creek which brings in $3,000,000 a year just from windmills.
Also keep in mind that these municipalities are very rural have little
infrastructure and very few facilities to maintain. In simple terms costs are
low and revenues high quite the opposite to the Crowsnest
Pass.
You might think this situation is unique to the Pass its not,
look at Cold Lake
right in the middle of oil and gas country, one would assume that they are
rolling in money. Over the last ten years that community’s population has more
than doubled, putting tremendous pressure on its local government to build
roads, put in water and sewer lines, build new facilities etc. You would
imagine that they have all kinds of tax base, not to the degree they need most
of that oil and gas development is taking place outside of their municipal
boundaries, but all the people that are coming there are living in Cold
Lake. They attempted to share
revenues with the surrounding municipalities and had some minor success, not
enough, they even went as far as to dissolve their municipality to force the
province to assist them. George Cuff and his company went in did a report for
the province the last I heard was that the province refused their request to be
dissolved, they made some minor agreements with surrounding municipalities and
the province told them to basically live within their means.
Back to the Crowsnest
Pass, I sat on council for six
years it became apparent after a few budget cycles that money is not something
the Pass has an abundance of. We looked for other sources of revenue the
administration pointed out the opportunity that sat to the North of us with
Ranchlands. We met with Ranchlands administration and council a number of times
and spoke to various ministers about moving some of those linear tax dollars towards
the Crowsnest Pass.
You can see how much success we had, maybe this council will have better luck
with the powers to be in Edmonton
and convincing our neighbours to the north to share with us. I hope so.
Council is right, previous council was right and I am sure
councils prior to the one I sat on looked at this issue. There is an inequality
between municipalities on this linear taxation issue and there are municipalities
that have much higher costs than others. But I suspect if a municipality like the Crowsnest
Pass was in the financial position of a MD of Ranchlands we would be telling
them to get their financial house in order prior to coming to us cap in hand.
