NDP Municipal Affairs Critic Joe Ceci, in Red Deer on Mar. 1, 2022. (Supplied)

By rdnewsNOW Staff

Municipal Affairs Critic, Joe Cici

NDP says UCP picking the pockets of property tax payers

Mar 2, 2022 | 11:03 AM

Alberta’s NDP is calling on the UCP government to reverse its decision on what they say will drive up property taxes for Albertans by increasing municipal borrowing costs.

“Albertans are already struggling to make ends meet as they pay more for income tax, more property tax, more school fees, more tuition, more interest on student debt, more camping fees, more for auto insurance and more for utilities,” said NDP Municipal Affairs Critic Joe Ceci, in Red Deer on Tuesday. “Increasing borrowing rates for municipalities will further download costs onto Albertans and make monthly bills even more punishing.”

Due to the size and security of the Alberta government, the NDP says the province can borrow money for capital projects at a better rate than a city, a town or a county can. Party officials say the province would then loan money to local authorities at the same low rate it receives from financial markets.

However, the NDP says the province now claims it can’t afford to keep offering Alberta’s borrowing rate to municipalities despite Alberta expecting strong resource revenues this year.

In a memo to local governments, the NDP notes that the provincial government announced it will be adding a 0.5 per cent to 0.75 per cent premium to borrowing rates for local authorities. The NDP says this is effectively a new provincial tax on every single municipal capital project in the province.

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The NDP suggests the increased borrowing rate will add millions of dollars’ worth of interest payments to municipal projects. It also comes at a time, says the NDP, when the UCP announced in this year’s budget that it is cutting municipal infrastructure spending by $1 billion. The opposition says this cut coupled with higher interest rates means local authorities will have to borrow more money and pay more interest to continue building infrastructure projects.

“This extra money will come directly from property taxpayers’ through higher property taxes,” said Ceci. “It’s wrong for the UCP to be taking money out of the pockets of Alberta families and small businesses like this and this decision needs to be reversed immediately.”