The City of Grande Prairie is implementing a new method to support beautification and community enhancement, without raising taxes.
The City’s new “Community Enhancement Fund” was approved during GP’s 2025 budget talks, and will allow the city to commit ten per cent of a given year’s budget surplus to enhance the community through a variety of projects.
City of GP Chief Financial Officer Danielle Whiteway explains that while city administrators balance the budget every year, some years do see extra money, so the new fund is a “win-win” for both the taxpayer and the city itself.
“We do have a balanced budget each and every year, but a budget is still a budget, and some years we do end with a bit of a surplus, unspent dollars,” she says. “The idea is that any time that we may have a year-end surplus available, that ten per cent of that be dedicated to future enhancements.”
“That doesn’t raise taxes in any way and the funding would only happen if there were years where perhaps we have that surplus, and we’re able to put in ten per cent.”
Previously, beautification and community enhancement have not seen their own specified fund, other than the public art reserve, meaning any projects would have been covered by capital taxes. Whiteway says both the current council and current administration are committed to keeping taxes low, and the new fund will allow for even more beautification projects, without any additional cost to cover them from Grande Prairie taxpayers.
“Obviously with council and administration being cognizant of tax increases and trying to keep those as low as possible, we have been limited,” she says. “This opportunity will allow for more projects to be taken on, [and] currently when we have these types of projects, they mostly have to come from capital taxes, there are really not many grant programs and such available for these types of projects, so they usually have to be capital tax funded.”
Whiteway adds that generally, grants do not cover projects like community enhancement and beautification, so the city having it’s own funding source will essentially guarantee at least some amount of money will be committed to beautification and community enhancement.
“Beautification and enhancement aren’t covered by many of those programs, so it’s a great idea for us to have something, and we’re only going to do it when we have the capacity to do so, and it helps us to not raise taxes while putting forward these types of projects,” she says.
“Public art is considered a community enhancement and beautification, so it could be art, it could be within our parks, what comes forward as ideas I don’t know, but it could incorporate enhanced landscaping in some areas, maybe allowing for more flowers or planters, there could be lots ideas that come forward from council and the community.”
Additionally, as part of council’s decision, the public art reserve was folded into the new Community Enhancement Fund.
