The UCP Needs to Pay their Bills!

Through subsequent reports requested on Council Committees (which can all be found through City of Edmonton website in the appropriate meetings) we now have a good picture of how much the City has had to spend on issues the Provincial Government failed to address or pay for. Luckily for you, we have been cataloguing these reports as they came in and started to create a bill.

The most shocking revelation we saw was that the Provincial Government has chosen to not pay taxes on their properties in the City since 2019, something working people are just not allowed to do. Not only that, we heard this week that even though they have no intention to pay their bills they are also passing legislation to stop any other order of Government from paying for them. This simply means that the working people of Edmonton are the only ones left to pick up their bill!

Yesterday, in a press release, we learned that in order to keep up with rising costs the City of Edmonton is anticipating an 8.7 property tax increase. This increase doesn’t even allow the city to replace deteriorating infrastructure or our aging capital assets let alone pursue any projects badly needed in our city. It simply just covers the rising cost of everything. If the Government of Alberta paid their bill to the city that would account for 7.2% of the property tax increase leaving working families with 1.5% to bear.

The bill brings to light the following:

• $60 million in unpaid property tax grant funding the government is delinquent on paying
• $14 million in ongoing, yearly property tax grant funding
• $5 million in ongoing, yearly services they REQUIRE the city to do but won’t pay for
• $8 million in ongoing, yearly revenue from fines which they decided to claim instead of leaving it in our city
• $28 million in ongoing, yearly, and projected to increase MEDICAL ONLY calls that Edmonton Fire Rescue Services had to respond to which should be covered by Ambulance funding which is their responsibility
• $11.3 million in ongoing, yearly, and projected to increase opioid / shingela response funding and mental health services that the city has had to provide which is squarely Provincial jurisdiction and needs to be funded through health care
• $17 million ongoing, yearly, and projected to increase due to population growth, funding that would be what Edmonton would get if we had the same per capita funding as Calgary

Working Families Edmonton has put together a petition please take a moment to sign it and share it widely as we all call on the Provincial Government to pay their bills! Enough is enough, they need to pay their bill now and stop downloading THEIR COSTS onto Edmonton’s working families!