Council to have tough budget decisions forthcoming
By Lethbridge Herald on March 12, 2026.
Herald Photo by Alejandra Pulido-Guzman Even though provincial educational property taxes are increasing, Mayor Blaine Hyggen says heÕs hopeful there will be buckets of money to pull from the province, to help alleviate some of the burden of local tax payers to cover infrastructure costs.By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman
Lethbridge Herald
Mayor Blaine Hyggen said Wednesday he understands the frustration from residents about the increases to provincial educational property taxes in a time of affordability crisis.
“There are certain things that we can control, and as council we control the municipal portion of tax, but there are also things that we can’t control, and that’s what comes down from the province,” said Hyggen.
He explained that having to collect provincial educational property taxes is part of the municipal government act, and all cities and communities do that.
“That is part of the tax bill. What you’ll see it’ll be split up. You’ll have the municipal portion, the education portion, as well as the Green Acres requisition that they’re able to do in the community as well,” said Hyggen.
He said now council has some tough decisions to make with the upcoming budgets, both operating and capital budgets.
“We’ve heard we have over $250 million of requests out there for different projects, and definitely nowhere near those dollars that are available,” said Hyggen.
He said they may have around 10 per cent of the money available for projects, and therefore, it’s going to be a challenge coming up with it during this budget.
“We know there’s some frustration out there on how we’re going to try to keep taxes low, because we’ve heard time and time again taxes are going up,” said Hyggen.
He said those budgets will be focused on needs other than wants, and he mentioned one of the big needs the city has is expanding the city’s water and wastewater treatment facilities.
“I know our administration knows what we need to be able to move forward with some of these projects, and the start is definitely water and wastewater. This is the base for everything that we need to develop in our community,” said Hyggen.
As mentioned by Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer Darrell Mathews during city council meeting Tuesday, municipalities are receiving roughly half the per person provincial funding they did 15 years ago to help support local services and infrastructure.
Matthews explained Tuesday that any increase in costs or reduction in provincial support must ultimately be offset by increased in local revenues such as property taxes, utility rates, per user fees or through adjustments to service levels.
But Hyggen said not all hope is lost when it comes to being able to get financial help from the province for those projects.
“You may not see Lethbridge announced at the budget, but there might be buckets of money that are announced for infrastructure and that we could pull from,” said Hyggen.
He said it is a matter of waiting until the provincial budget gets finalized at the end of the month
“This is a proposed budget, it’s not finalized yet and it’s my hope that maybe there’s more that comes up before this is finalized, and some decisions are made to be able to alleviate some of the burdens that we’ve seen as a community,” said Hyggen.
19-18
I’ll be very interested to see what the city considers as needs vs wants. In the past the city has spent tens of millions of dollars on the needs of very small minority of citizens. Hopefully these nice to have projects are not repeated.