The budget for St. Alberts upcoming municipal has taken a significant leap from last election cycle, with the amount of allocated funds jumping to $930,700.
The new budget is over three times the cost of the 2021 election, which had $261,200 of allocated funds.
This is primarily a result of the new provincial Bill 20, which requires the creation of a new permanent electors register and prohibits the use of electronic vote counters.
The budget increases the cost by $669,500. The largest single item increase is for manual counting staff, costing the city $280,000. There is also $175,000 allocated for the permanent electors register.
The city is looking to hire around 400 workers for the vote counting.
St. Albert is also needing to allocate about $37,000 for security, as the vote count will be split over multiple days. Security is needed to watch the ballots overnight to ensure that there is no tampering.
