Crowsnest Pass Taxpayers’ Association Member Meeting

April 16, 2024

Bellevue Legion – April 16, 2024 - Municipality of Crowsnest Pass 2024 Budget – Audio Presentation (Anonymous)

So the debt limit that I was referring to at the meeting last night, on the bottom of page 78, of the 2024 budget for the Crowsnest Pass, explains the debt limit is 1 ½ times revenue for the municipality. They actually have a debt limit of $28.0 m and that the debt that they are carrying right now is just under $10 m. At the time this document was produced, it was $9.931 m. The debt servicing limit is .25 times the revenue. This means they are allowed to borrow enough money where they can have debt payments of $4.6 m a year. But the actual servicing debt of the $9.9 m is $888,000 per year. Those are all big numbers. But, if you just step back and look at the Crowsnest Pass like a business and compare it to anyone else running a small business or a small farm….. whatever example you want to use. When you go back to when they took this $1.1 m tax grab because property values went up….. I mean….. if you compare it to someone who owns a small business or farm and take some zeros off of the numbers…..say you own a small farm and you owed $900,000 on it instead of $9.0 m, you are servicing your debt at $90,000.00 a year. If you had a bumper year over and above what you had budgeted for your future, for example, you had an extra $110,000.00, what would you do with that money? I think everyone’s priorities as a small business owner would be to reduce their debt and they would certainly have a meeting with the other shareholders in the business and discuss what to do with that money. I would be willing to bet that their consensus would be to pay down their debt because they would have $90,000 going to interest every year. So, invest it into the farm because we are going to be more profitable every year and make more money if we pay that debt down.

The municipality did not do that with this windfall. That is the biggest concern that everyone in this community should have. Then why are they reaching out and borrowing more money every year when they have this massive influx of tax dollars that so many municipalities would be over the moon for. They have a budget. Their budget was just fine. No big surprises! There is a budget roll out of long-term debt information right there on page 78 that goes to the beginning of 2028. They have all of their spending forecasts there and they have forecasted increased spending every year. Along comes an extra $1.1 m dollars. Instead of putting it towards the debt, they just continue to borrow more and increase people’s taxes. That’s not prudent business. The taxpayers in Crowsnest Pass are paying more taxes than most other people in other municipalities or the rest of the country. But…. that’s besides the point. The point is that they are not making prudent decisions in the best interest of the people and the taxpayers of the Crowsnest Pass. Any normal household would do something like this.

*With regards to the Bellevue Revitalization Project, residents offered suggestions that would reduce Borrowing Bylaw 1171 and, thus reduce the debt.