Amarjeet Sohi, Edmonton Ward 12 Councillor

Budget talk

As we get closer to debating the contents of the 2010 budget, I want to share some information about what the proposed budget contains and what I think we might be able to achieve. Council held a Public Hearing on the budget on November 25, and we’ll begin debating and making amendments next week. This post contains some thoughts on transit, community safety, environment and sustainability, and other community services.

Transit: What’s in the Budget

- ETS has proposed an overall budget requiring tax levy of about $109 million. That covers all bus, DATS and LRT service throughout the city.
- The headline item is the opening of the South LRT extension to Southgate and Century Park in April 2010. That service will cost about $4.6 million to run.
- There are also some changes to bus service to allow connections to the new Transit Centres in the Meadows and Lewis Estates.

What’s Not

- There are a few new communities that have bus service in Peak Hours (rush hour), but not during midday hours, evenings, or weekends. I want to explore the cost of providing service to meet these needs.
- A few of the newest neighbourhoods don’t have any bus service at all. I think we have to at least explore whether we can provide service in these areas.
 

Budget season underway at City Hall

Budget season is underway at City Hall.

On Nov. 10, Administration presented its recommendations for the 2010 budget. Earlier this year, Council directed Administration to keep the budget to a 3% increase, plus 2% dedicated to neighbourhood renewal. We’ll debate the budget over the next month and finalize it mid-December.

The budget process is always difficult, and this year will be no exception. It looks like the most controversial item this year will be the Police budget. The Police Service cannot maintain existing service levels within the 3% budget increase. If Council doesn’t grant the Police an increase of 9.9%, or $13.7 million, early indication is that we may have to decrease the size of the service by 200 officers (which we'll try to do through retirement and attrition). The recession has also placed major demands on other services, like transit and libraries – in hard times, people need these more than ever. Visits to our libraries grew by over one million in 2009, and transit demand continued to rise as well.

LRT expansion - your voice matters

On November 9, Council will hold a Public Hearing on the proposed route for the future LRT extension to Mill Woods.

This is the result of the motion I made in Council last year to expedite route planning for the Mill Woods leg of the LRT. Over the past year, City staff have considered numerous possible routes and consulted with hundreds of residents.

The proposed line will serve almost 50,000 riders a day.

LRT is one of City’s biggest priorities, but at a cost of $900 million to $1.2 billion for the Mill Woods line, we can’t afford to build it on our own. Of every dollar you pay in taxes, only about five cents goes to the City – we need funding from the provincial and federal governments to make this happen.

There is a lot of excitement about LRT, and we’ll get where we need to go - but we need Edmontonians' help.