Yellowknife factoring $629K carbon tax grant into budget

Yellowknife’s mayor says this year’s $629,035 carbon tax grant from the NWT government relieves some pressure on the city’s 2025 budget.

Rebecca Alty said the funding was not included in the city’s draft 2025 budget. She received a letter from the territorial finance minister outlining the amount on Tuesday.

“That’s good for our bottom line,” Alty said during the second night of council’s budget deliberations.

City manager Stephen Van Dine cautioned, however, that when the municipality will receive those dollars remains unclear.

The NWT government recently began sharing 10 percent of its annual carbon tax revenue (after offsets are removed) with community governments.

Bike lanes, the dog park and a transportation plan

During deliberations on Tuesday night, a majority of councillors voted in favour of adding $10,000 to try painting bike lanes on some roadways in Yellowknife and $45,000 to improve the city’s dog park. Councillors voted to remove funding for two municipal enforcement officer positions.

A good portion of the meeting focused on the city’s upcoming master transportation plan.

Councillor Tom McLennan proposed creating a reserve fund to implement recommendations from the plan, which the city aims to work on in 2025-26 to address all forms of active and public transportation “in a pragmatic and affordable manner.”

“In my view, the reserve is the most effective and efficient way for council to show our commitment to this planning process and to avoid the many instances we have seen over the last few years where money and time have been spent on planning but no or very little action has been taken,” McLennan said.

Van Dine and Kavi Pandoo, the municipality’s director of corporate services, advised that it would be better for council to discuss funding methods after the transportation plan is released.

Councillors Cat McGurk, Ryan Fequet and Ben Hendriksen voted in favour of McLennan’s proposal. Hendriksen said money from the carbon tax grant would be an ideal funding source for the reserve.

“The whole purpose of that carbon tax rebate is to put it towards carbon reduction,” he said.

Alty said the city was supporting the transportation master plan by allocating $300,000 in the budget to complete it. She said it would be better for council to discuss funding implementation of the plan in the 2026 budget.

Alty added there are other projects in the 2025 budget that the carbon tax grant could fund, echoing Van Dine’s point that the city doesn’t know when it will receive that funding.

‘I want us to have a little faith in ourselves’

Following the vote, McLennan gave an impassioned speech about how he believes city council’s process for addressing community issues is “fundamentally broken.” He proposed cutting funding for the transportation master plan from the budget altogether.

“We really need to ask ourselves if we can afford [the plan] and if we are willing to follow through, given that we’re not willing to allocate resources up front,” he said.

“Asking for a plan, that is easy and it feels good. We get to sit in these chairs and think we’re doing something, that we are addressing the issues,” he added. “We are only addressing the issues if we actually implement the advice we receive.”

Other councillors voted against that idea.

“I want us to have a little faith in ourselves,” deputy mayor Garett Cochrane said. “Just because we didn’t say tonight that we’re going to attach something to it, doesn’t necessarily make the actual plan an atomic failure.”

He said he wanted to give city staff time to come up with ideas on how to fund the plan’s recommendations, including through grants.

More: Catch up on night one’s deliberations

Councillors tabled votes on several other budget proposals until Wednesday night.

Those included waiving admission fees for the fieldhouse and reallocating booking clerks and cashier staff to other recreation facilities, removing a customer service booking supervisor position for the new aquatic centre, and increasing the contract budget for a dog pound service.

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Correction: December 4, 2024 – 17:02 MT. This story has been updated to state that councillor Ryan Fequet also voted in favour of the master transportation plan reserve fund proposal. Remarks by Tom McLennan regarding a process being “fundamentally broken” were updated to clarify he was referring to a city council process.

December 6, 2024 – 18:07 MT. This article initially stated the city had received the same $629,000 sum in the form of a carbon tax grant last year as well, based on 2023-24 reporting by the NWT government. In fact, the territory said by email on Friday evening, the money being talked about is the last financial year’s grant, which simply hasn’t made it to the city yet – this $629,000 will be the first such grant the city has received.