After a city council meeting regarding the 2024 provincial budget, St. Albert is expecting to pay 5.7 per cent more in education property taxes this year.
This increase mainly concerns residential properties, with non-residential buildings having the tax only raised by 1 per cent.
This education property tax is added on top of regular property taxes, but instead this money is used by the province for K-12 schools. However, Mayor Cathy Heron suggested that the city could try to keep a portion of the tax for themselves.
In 2023 alone the city of St. Albert paid $36 million in these taxes, with this year seeing an increase of about $2 million.
Compared to other municipalities across the province, the tax increase in St. Albert isn’t so bad. The average increase across the province is around 9 per cent.
City council is also looking at ways to tell residents that this increase is chosen by the provincial government and not the city itself.
