City Council Increases Explore Edmonton Budget By $6-million

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Published Feb 12, 2024 • Last updated 19 minutes ago • 3 minute read

city hall Edmonton City Council to provide Edmonton Explore with $6-million one-time funding to sustain operation costs. Photo by Greg Southam /Postmedia

Explore Edmonton is doubling operating budget from $3-million to $6 million on a one-time basis using reserve funds.

At a special city council meeting Monday, a motion to provide a one-time cash infusion, doubling the organization’s operating budget, was passed unanimously. According to Explore Edmonton, the funds will be used to pay for insurance, property taxes and additional operational costs.

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Coun. Ashley Salvador said the motion will provide Explore Edmonton with an opportunity to “tread water” and allow them to avoid axing programming in the immediate term. It will also provide an opportunity to have future conversations about mandate programming and base funding in the future.

“Collectively, this is still less than what they need. It’s temporary stabilization, but the $6 million will at least allow for base operations to continue and importantly, allows for time to have that longer term conversation about aligning programming and mandate with funding in a more permanent way to provide that stability,” said Salvador.

Explore Edmonton, an agency of the City of Edmonton, is in charge of events such as K-Days, Canadian Finals Rodeo and Farmfair International. They also manage the Edmonton EXPO Centre and Edmonton Convention Centre.

The organization initially asked for their budget to increase by $3,011,000 on a one-time basis with funding from the Financial Stabilization Reserve (FSR). The increase would use $991,000 to fund insurance, utilities, loan repayments and property taxes due to the City of Edmonton in the first quarter of 2024 and $2 million to fund the base operations for 2024.

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The adjusted increase of an additional $3 million will go towards funding base operations, increasing the amount to $5 million from $2 million.

During the Fall 2023 Supplemental Operating Budget Adjustment (SOBA) deliberations, council passed a motion directing administration to bring forward an unfunded service package during the Spring 2023 SOBA to increase tax-supported operations funding for Explore Edmonton by $6 million in 2024.

Explore Edmonton’s asked for this one-time funding because the current base budget of $11.7-million has not been adjusted for inflation since 2021, when the organization was first established.

“To limit the overall property tax increase, direction was provided to all civic departments and boards and agencies to manage inflationary pressures within their existing budgets,” said the report.

Coun. Erin Rutherford, who supported the motion, raised concerns about how by dipping into the FSR and continually making decisions on a “one-by-one basis” will back council into a corner.

“We’re having less and less to even pull from. Pulling this from the Financial Stabilization Reserve is not ideal when we could have just increased the tax levy and given then that sustainable funding at the fall SOBA,” said Rutherford.

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“If this is something that was really important to us as a council, that would have been the best process and the best time to have that. I’ve been very clear, it was in my campaign platform and to this day that that tourism and our entertainment industries are huge economic drivers and we need to support them. I just do not like the process that we as a council are going through right now.”

In December, city staff projected a $52-million deficit for the year-end budget.

The city’s projected year-end balance for the financial stabilization reserve as of Dec. 31 is $140 million, which is currently $ 16.5 million above the required $123 million for 2023, but below the target balance of $205.1 million.

However, with the projected $52 million deficit, the reserve would fall below the minimum balance which would force the city to dip into reserves and adopt a strategy to be implemented in the 2025 operating budget to boost the balance from 2025 to 2027.

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