By Alex McCuaig

AUMA report

AUMA report critical of provincial budget and impacts on cities

Oct 26, 2019 | 12:07 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – The organization representing Alberta’s cities says it’s members are ready to meet fiscal restraint challenges but is raising concerns about how Budget 2019 is affecting provincial urban municipalities, according to its analysis released Friday afternoon.

The Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA), headed by Brooks Mayor Barry Morishita, calls out the provincial government’s restructuring of infrastructure funding for cities. Specifically, calling the dismantling of the City Charter Fiscal, “a broken election platform promise,” and raising serious concerns about the state of the provincial-municipal partnership.

In a statement released Friday afternoon, AUMA president Morishita said, “despite a lack of consultation from the government on a new municipal funding framework, AUMA will continue to advocate for a framework that supports the province’s financial goals while also meeting the needs and responsibilities of our communities.”

AUMA’s report also states that while the province reduces its budget by 2.8 per cent over the next four years, that could result in urban municipalities seeing reductions in infrastructure funding of nearly ten time that amount.

While the report states AUMA’s members are committed to working with the province, “the funding allocated and costs downloaded to municipalities in this budget mean that the tools, strategies and resources for success may be out of reach.”

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AUMA is also calling on the province to share the more than $300 million in tax revenue from cannabis sales to help mitigate the costs of the, “administrative oversight of cannabis legislation, including stores, land-use planning and more.”

The organization is also looking for the province to commit funding to high-speed Internet to help businesses, modernization of recycling programs and to work collaboratively with the cities in red-tap reduction.

The report highlights that cities can not run deficits – unlike the provincial and federal governments – and, “municipalities will have to make tough decisions without adequate support for items that were cut in this provincial budget.”