City officials gathering budget feedback at community events

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on August 25, 2022.

Herald photo by Al Beeber Andy Cimolai speaks to city councillor John Middleton-Hope and deputy mayor Jenn Schmidt-Rempel about the My Two Cents survey that allows residents to create their own budgets with an easy-to-use online tool.ca

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

Residents are giving the City “my two cents” worth of input as it seeks opinions on upcoming budget deliberations.

The “my two cents” project at getinvolvedlethbridge.ca gives residents a chance to offer their opinions on where their property taxes are best spent.

After inputting their property value, residents are taken to different pages where they can create their own city budget by adding or subtracting money they want allocated to services including police, fire and emergency services, parks and cemeteries, community services, transit, infrastructure, governance and community development, streets and roads and corporate services.

By sliding the mouse over a dollar figure, residents can add or subtract the percentage they feel each service deserves.

At the end of the survey, respondents will see how much of an increase or decrease their tax bill would be if city council agreed.

Deputy mayor Jenn Schmidt-Rempel and city councillor John Middleton-Hope along with City communications manager Tara Grindle and staff were at the downtown farmers market on Wednesday at Festival Square getting feedback from residents about budget matters.

A booth will also be set up at Arts in the Park Saturday at Legacy Park on the city’s northside starting at noon.

Schmidt-Rempel said feedback has been strong and “people are really excited to see us out.”

According to Grindle, “it’s good to have that face-to-face conversation with people because it’s complicated. Budgets are complicated and people don’t even think about all of the things that council has to consider. It’s not an easy job, I do not envy them at all.”

Schmidt-Rempel said some of the suggestions have been great, including one by a person about a geo-thermal pilot project.

Middleton-Hope said the city is averaging about 80 residents in a couple of hours at in-person events.

“Lots of folks have some interesting thoughts,” he said, adding some have gone to the website to see how they can build the budget.

If a person has a tax bill of about $3,000, he said, the model allows a person to build into the budget. If a person is paying $680 out of their budget for police services, they could increase or decrease that amount.

“What we’re finding is that people that are using the scale on all these different services and so forth are increasing services but only adding about $100 per tax bill. So it’s interesting they’re doing that.

“Lots of folks have conversations, lots of folks have comments about how they would like to see the budget spent. Social programming is really important, emergency services is really important. It depends on the age group. Most of the folks we see that are coming to talk with us and spend the time are probably people 55 to 75, 80 and they like to spend the time talking about what the advantages are of the various services that are provided. Lots of criticism on things like transit, for example, and garbage bins and recycling and those kinds of things.

“But at the end of the day, I think people really get a better understanding for how the budget is built and how we spend the taxpayer’s money,” Middleton-Hope added.

People can build their budgets online until Sept. 9.

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