With the release of Alberta’s provincial budget late last week, Drumheller-Stettler MLA and Wildrose Opposition member Rick Strankman is disappointed at the tax burden to Albertans in the budget presented by the Progressive Conservative government.

“Flabbergasted,” is the word the MLA said best sums up his reaction to the provincial budget.

“As an Albertan, I’m dismayed that at the behest of this government, we’re spending this much on taxation. It’s a complete embarrassment as far as I’m concerned.”

Strankman said Wildrose investigations into the budget show  59 levels of new tax, everything from land titles to registries to as much as 35 per cent increases in fine levies, but he was uncertain how that was split between traffic and vehicle violations and civil violations.

"But the flat tax is gone, that’s $793 million bucks right there for an increase.”

He said with the tax grab on vehicle gasoline, perhaps a slot should just be added at the gas pumps for Albertans to deposit a five dollar bill every time they fill their vehicle. The province added a four cent per litre tax to gasoline in the new budget.

In response to concerns or rumors this is a pre-election budget, Strankman said, “Why all the fanfare over something that’s not going to be approved? You’re playing with Albertans lives here.”

He notes 28 million dollars has been set aside in this year’s budget for Elections Alberta, and he doesn’t know when a provincial election will be called. As of press time, the Progressive Conservatives had not called an Alberta election.

In response to critics that say the PC party has mismanaged Albertans money, the MLA said a northern Alberta newspaper shared a previous quote by the province’s now Finance Minister Robin Campbell who said unfortunately when times are good, the governing party tends to spend like drunken sailors. Strankman said when oil was at $107 per barrel, the province still wasn’t putting any money away, they were still doing deficit budgeting, and to him that means they thought oil prices were going to climb even higher than the $107.

Strankman said the opposition parties are unable to critique the budget in the legislature as Alberta’s Legislative Assembly is now on a break until April 13.

“Municipally, we didn’t do that bad. It could have been a lot worse,” Drumheller’s Mayor Terry Yemen said of the provincial budget. The Town will receive an unexpected $67,000 from an operating grant they thought would be eliminated but remained unchanged. 

“There’s a significant amount of money that’s been set aside for flood mitigation and I’ve already reached out to our MLA and suggested the Town of Drumheller has been patient long enough. We’ve waited, and God Bless them, there’s lots of damage done in Calgary and High River, but it looks like that’s the only mitigation the province has done so far.” 

Drumheller has a flood mitigation grant application into the Province, filed last fall, for $12 million dollars. The original notification date from the province of December was pushed back, and the Town of Drumheller is still waiting to hear, along with a number of other communities in the Red Deer River Basin as well as across Southern Alberta.

The train bridge in Newcastle shows the rising Red Deer River prior to the flooding in Drumheller in June, 2013.

Floodway mapping first, funding second for Drumheller

    When the province of Alberta announced its 70 million dollars flood mitigation funding for 21 projects on Thursday, April 2, Drumheller was left off the project list.
    The Honourable Kyle Fawcett, Minister of Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development, the department awarding the mitigation dollars, said the province needs to finalize the valley’s floodway map first.
    “Until we have that in place, and consult with our partners, it didn’t make any sense to move forward,” the Minister said.
    The Town of Drumheller, with the aid of Palliser Regional Municipal Services, has submitted a mitigation project plan to the province, and have been in ongoing discussions with the province on floodway mapping.
    On current unmitigated flood maps, a significant portion of the town of Drumheller is in the floodway.
    “You know, the criteria we certainly used was, first of all, which projects were able to be funded that allow us to mitigate the most amount of risk,” said Minister Fawcett.
    The Village of Carbon was among those receiving money, being awarded $175,500 for flood mitigation work.    
    The Town of Drumheller had submitted a request of $12 million dollars into the province for mitigation projects under the Alberta Community Resiliency Program (ACRP), and understood they would be informed at the end of 2014 whether they would receive funds.
    The province said this is the first allocation under the ACRP, which will see $500 million dollars distributed over a ten year period, to towns and cities in need of flood protection.