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October 6 , 2004
Lynda Moffat on City Taxes
If anyone tells you that they will lower or freeze your residential property taxes, please do not believe them. In many ways, running the City of St. Albert is just like running a business. As the owner and operator of a successful small business in St. Albert, I fully understand the need to ensure good financial management.
As the City of St. Albert continues to grow, it will require continued improvements to its infrastructure and services in order to maintain the high quality of life that we all take pride in as residents of this fine city. As a municipality, we must also face increasing costs of doing business – the same costs we all must plan for at home such as higher insurance rates, gasoline prices, health care cost, etc.
In a recent letter to the St. Albert Gazette, Councilor Doug Ritzen (who is not running in the upcoming election) indicated that the City of St. Albert is now in better financial shape than it was as of December 31, 2000. I am proud of the position our City is now in, and proud of the serious commitment all members of our current Council have demonstrated to be good stewards of your tax dollars. As part of the Council that got us to this stage, I am committed to continuing to ensure good fiscal management and as a successful businesswoman I will bring solid business experience to bear on this part of the job.
One of the biggest barriers to keeping taxes low in St. Albert has been our lack of business and industrial growth. We simply do not have the commercial or industrial tax base that many of our neighboring communities have. As a result, there is a substantial reliance on residential homeowners to make up the bulk of tax revenue for the City of St. Albert. It is my plan to immediately enter into negotiations with Sturgeon County in a spirit of cooperation to ensure that we deal with our future land needs as required by the municipal development plan, which indicates that our community should have a 20 year land supply for future growth. This kind of growth is essential to provide a diversified tax base that will remove some of the pressure on residential taxpayers.
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