Tax increase could rise to 6.9% as Edmonton city council funds tourism marketing, DATS, transit cleaning
CBC
Edmonton city councillors made a number of budget decisions Wednesday that could push a 2026 property tax increase from 6.4 per cent to about 6.9 per cent.
Council has been moving money around for the last few days as part of its fall budget deliberations, trying to keep its property tax increase under control. A number of operating expenses were funded from other line items, but the tax levy was turned to in order to fund Explore Edmonton.
It previously funded Explore Edmonton year over year with one-time funding. Councillors spoke about the importance of providing financial certainty for the organization after failing to do so for years.
Explore Edmonton, which is the city's tourism marketing organization, will receive $11 million each year from the tax levy, which for 2026 amounts to a 0.47 per cent increase.
Coun. Michael Janz said he believes the move will pay economic dividends for the city.
“I think that we’re making wrong-headed decisions … if we’re shortchanging on pieces that are going to grow our economic development, grow our city and actually put us in a more financially resilient position in the future,” he said.
Some councillors said they thought council should have instead funded the organization for only one year again, finding money from a source besides the tax levy.
“I think pretty much everyone wants to fund them on an ongoing basis, it’s just a matter of when,” said Mayor Andrew Knack, who voted against the motion.
Coun. Aaron Paquette said under normal circumstances he would have preferred to find a tool besides the tax levy to fund the organization. However, because the city’s financial reserves are already so depleted, he believes it was the best option.
“It’s just too constrained, so I’ve got to go with this one,” Paquette said.
Two items that did not originally see funding in administration's budget proposal were maintaining service levels for transit-cleaning services and Dedicated Accessible Transit Service (DATS).
But councillors chose to pay the nearly $3 million required to keep DATS service levels up.
Without the additional money, administration said there would be a 10 per cent reduction in service, which works out to about 120,000 trips per year.
Administration said it has been seeing more demand for DATS since the pandemic.
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