Innisfail council approved the Town’s operating budget of just over $28 and a half million dollars last week along with a capital budget of a little more than $21 million for 2025.
Mayor Jean Barclay points out that a tremendous amount of work went into this year’s budget. She had they had great discussions over the last several weeks to end up landing where they have on the budget. She says “well this year we settled on a 2.82 per cent property tax increase as of budget. We don’t know what the assessment growth will be. We will know that next year and can adjust the mill rates at that time. We’ve also added in a one per cent Fortis franchise fee increase and a one per cent ATCO franchise fee increase. I believe last year we were just over 4 per cent on our property tax increase, so better this year but there are still lots of challenges.”
She explains one of the items that stands out to her about this year’s budget. Mayor Barclay says “one highlight of this year’s budget is we have an asset management tool that makes it very clear that how much we are under-funding our infrastructure every year. So we have dedicated two per cent tax increase in this budget to reserves to go towards shoring up our reserves for future infrastructure needs.”
Mayor Barclay notes the Aquatic Centre discussions have been going on for quite a while and certainly the facility is aging out with some issues and they need to make some decisions. She says “of course we were hoping to potentially build a new Aquatic Centre and attach that to the existing Twin Arenas but having advocated to other levels of government for the last three years there doesn’t seem to be any provincial funding. We have applied for a grant through the federal government. We will probably hear more about that next spring sometime. I think, realistically, we are just going to have to look at modernizing the existing facility because the number we have for that is just over $12 million ($12,266,219).” So that is where things have landed for the time being, according to Barclay. She estimates that building a new Aquatic Centre would be up around $30 to $35 million dollars now, which is impossible for them.
Meantime, Mayor Barclay says the user-based utility rates will increase in 2025, reflecting an increase from the regional water and wastewater systems. The rising rates will help cover the increased delivery costs incurred by the Town.
Innisfail’s water rates will be up by 25 cents per cubic metre in 2025 from $3.01 to $3.26, while the wastewater rates will jump up by 31 cents from $4.00 to $4.31.
