Medicine Hat City Hall

By Charles Lefebvre

Alberta Budget 2019

City keeping eye on provincial budget

Oct 23, 2019 | 2:31 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — Mayors across Alberta will be keeping a close eye on the provincial budget, which will be tabled in the Legislature Thursday afternoon.

Medicine Hat Mayor Ted Clugston says the budget he is expecting cuts to come from the province.

“I think the new government has been very, very clear that they are going into austerity mode, and I don’t think there will be any surprises,” he said during an interview with CHAT News last week. “It will be an austerity budget of some type.”

“They’ve talked about leaving primary education and health care primarily untouched, which means the municipalities and post-secondary institutions could bear some of the brunt.”

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The MacKinnon Report, prepared by former Saskatchewan Finance Minister Janice MacKinnon, was released in August, and included recommendations on Alberta should handle its finances going forward. Finance Minister Travis Toews has previously indicated the report would be used to help the province develop its budget.

One of the recommendations in the report was cities in the province shouldering more of the costs of infrastructure projects.

Clugston says he is expecting cuts to the Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI), a program which provides grant funding to municipalities for projects such as roadways, bridges and public transit.

“We do expect that will be cut,” he said. “We don’t know, we’re kind of thinking the 10 per cent mark, but we’ll wait and see, but we can adapt to that. MSI is capital money, so we can delay projects, or stagger them over time if we have a cut in funding.”

The budget will be tabled at 3:15 p.m. on Thursday.