City of Grande Prairie Budget 2021

Welcome to the City of Grande Prairie's 2021 budget engagement!

The City of Grande Prairie is in the final stages of drafting the 2021 budget and introducing the final phase of engagement for public input to inform the proposal being presented to Council in the fall.

With recent global changes, we recognize the need to have a budget process that enables us to respond quickly, develop solutions and provide evidence for our decision makers.

Council has directed administration to present a budget for 2021 with a tax increase within the range of 0% and 2.5%.

The Budget 2021 engagement launched in June 2020, with the survey, Idea Space and Q&A. An online budget allocator was additionally completed that allowed residents to view how much of the average annual tax bill goes to each City service, and vote on whether they would increase, maintain or decrease funding on each item. The City also completed a targeted stakeholder engagement session with the Grande Prairie and District Chamber of Commerce.

Current Budget Engagement Opportunities

The survey, Idea Space and Q&A have been extended, and are available at the bottom of the page.

We have also introduced Balancing Act: an easy-to use, interactive tool to communicate financial information to residents and collect informed feedback. Use this tool to learn how the City’s operating budget is allocated, create your own balanced City budget and provide comment to help shape the City of Grande Prairie operating budget for 2021.

Our engagement focuses on gaining a better understanding of the services we provide that residents value the most.

Results from our Citizen Satisfaction Survey completed from January 13 to January 31 are also being used to inform the budgeting process.

Before jumping into the online engagement, we encourage you to review the following documents in our Document Library to help inform your responses:

• 2021 Budget Engagement – What We Heard So Far Report
• 2020 Tax Brochure
• 2020 Capital and Operating Budget
• 2020 Budget Engagement- What We Heard Report
• Covid-19 Response Timeline

We thank you for your participation and input to the 2021 Budget so we can make budget decisions that get the most value for your tax dollars.

Final results from the total budget engagement will be compiled in a final ‘What we Heard’ report and made available on this engagement page in advance of budget deliberations in November.

Background

Since 2019, Council’s budgeting process has focused on balancing fiscal constraint with the need to provide a strong level of service and tying major investments to Council priorities. It has also been an administrative focus to review all City operations to maximize corporate efficiency through the application of LEAN principles and other strategic initiatives. To see an example of this, view the "Eastlink Centre LEAN Update" in the Document Library and stay tuned for more updates on similar initiatives across the organization!