One of the many requirements of the new MGA will be an Intermunicipal Collaboration Framework. This is for those municipalities outside of the greater Calgary and Edmonton regions. The provincial government intends to work with stakeholders to define the requirements. From their posting, they indicate the regulations will include: minimum requirements regarding Intermunicipal land-use planning; minimum […]
The new Alberta Municipal MGA intends to fix an issue that, at face value seems like a noble effort. The feedback received during the MGA review process indicated that the commercial tax rate has been growing at rates faster than residential rates. Funding The proposed solution is to limit the commercial tax rate to 5 times that […]
November 20, 2015 The Alberta government is working its way through the process of publishing the “Sunshine List”. This is a list of everyone deemed to be making a large salary that is employed by the provincial government. There has been much discussion about whether this is a good idea or not. The province’s Bill 5 […]
Following Calgary’s foray into bike lanes Canmore and Banff are giving some consideration to bike lanes. Link to Article
If you have followed the Calgary press over the last few weeks, you will be riveted to the noise around the 2016 budget deliberations or lack thereof. The excitement is surrounding the 4 year budget cycle passed by Calgary Council last year that has a 4.7% increase for this coming year. The budget last year was duly […]
Recently both Calgary and Edmonton have been pressed to publish what is known as a “sunshine list”. A sunshine list details all municipal employees who earn more than $100,000. Included are salary, benefits, position and name. Ontario has had the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act since 1996 which includes the province, municipalities and a host […]
This article is the first of a series of articles about municipal performance published in papers across Alberta. October 15, 2014 By Patrick Bergen – pbergen@smarttowns.ca Managing Director of Smart Towns Inc. – a company that builds excellence in municipalities through comparative analytics. It’s that time of year again. Municipal councils are huddled with […]
A recent article highlighted the support that Smart Towns was able to provide to the Town of Chestermere for their upcoming budget process. Courtesy of the The Chestermere Anchor. At the December 2 meeting of Council, the 2014 preliminary budget was approved causing an increase of 4.95% in 2014. This increase means that […]
Recently we had a chance to work with Ian Matthews from Up & Running Technologies to offer support to understanding the very interesting direction that the internet will be going. Courtesy of UrTech.ca, see full article here. Below is the list of Top Level Domains that are under consideration to be released in 2014. I […]
Alberta has seen many changes in economy and expectations of what citizens want from their muncipal leaders. It has experienced both booms and recessions in the past decade. The provincial cencus shows a growth of 10.6% from 2001 and to 2006. This is more than double the Canadian national rate of 5.2% for the […]