The Town of Hinton faces increasing financial demands from non-profits, civic agencies and other groups seeking money for services that surely should often be funded by other levels of government, or even private charities. Especially as many of these services address problems much bigger than Hinton and are shared by many towns in rural Alberta.
Consider that the list of around 13 such groups the Town of Hinton currently funds to the tune of $1,050,000 per year, about 7.3% of our net municipal taxes, includes the Golf Course ATB loan ($154,000), the Hinton Health Care Foundation ($500,000), the Wild Mountain Music Festival ($7,700), Yellowhead County Airport ($92,000), Community Futures ($10,000), the Visitor Center ($34,000), Pathway to the Park for the West Yellowhead Trail Society ($50,000), the Historical Society and Museum ($55,000), Recreation Sites outside Hinton ($20,000), STARS Critical Care and Transport ($20,000), the Arts Society – to run the Performing Arts Facility ($64,000), the Hinton Mountain Bike Club ($29,000), Hinton Disc Golf ($10,150), and potentially the food bank ($15,000). And the list of actual or hopeful recipients seems to grow annually.
Here it’s important to grasp that just because something is a good thing doesn’t mean it’s a responsibility of government, at the municipal or any other level. And there are many ways to help provide services for folks in Hinton.
For example, we could set an overall funding budget for these types of services/projects (dollar amount or percentage of revenues), and work to prioritize funding within this budget, thus potentially keeping taxes lower in the future to the overall benefit of everyone including lower income taxpayers. Which might mean developing better criteria of what to fund. Of course we could also continue to lobby the appropriate higher level of government, provincial or federal, when services are downloaded to the Town.
As the recent fire situation has shown the Town and its citizens are caring, compassionate and humane individuals ready to respond to needs of others both within and outside of our town. But Town Council must face other serious financial pressures for things that are core municipal duties, such as water treatment plants ($80 million), aging town infrastructure*, fire-fighting equipment and the new waste treatment plant ($10 million), let alone a $ 50 to 70 million recreation center. So your utility bills are likely to increase in the next year by as much as $500 to $700, per year per household, just to start saving for a needed water treatment plant in the future. Which alone amounts to the equivalent of a 10 to 15% tax increase depending on what your overall taxes are.
As usual, if we had all the money in the world, we’d be happy to fund all kinds of worthwhile projects, but we don’t, and we have to think about what we fund and why as well as how much. For example, three of the groups that the Town of Hinton funds that do work in the county, Yellowhead County does not fund, i.e., the Wild Mountain Music Festival, STARS and Recreation Sites outside of Hinton.
I don’t have all the answers maybe you could share your opinion on this topic, and do so prior to the start of budget discussions so we have as many ideas and as much sense of public preferences as possible.
Stuart Taylor, Member of Hinton Council
*28% or $147 000 000 of the Town’s assets are at or near the end of their useful life, and we are going to have to figure out how to pay for their replacement. Recent water line breaks in Calgary and Montreal should serve as an early warning to us.
