(Photo: LNN)

By Christian Oldale

City of Lethbridge to continue funding exhibition with contingencies

Dec 11, 2024 | 9:44 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – After long discussions at meetings, Lethbridge City Council has decided to use both contingency funding and surplus dollars from the current budget to support the operations of Lethbridge & District Exhibition (LDE).

With the announcement, the city says that no additional tax increase will come for residents in 2025, maintaining the 5.1 percent tax increase for the next two years.

Unused grant funding has been identified to pay down the loan by more than $7 million. This, along with refinancing from a 30-year to a 10-year term and moving from external to internal borrowing will save City taxpayers $15 million in interest costs, according to City officials.

Mayor Blaine Hyggen said,

“We know an additional tax increase was not something our community was in support of. In the end, there is no win-win option. Our contingency and surplus funding is there for emergencies and that is what we were faced with today. I’m confident that over the next two years, we can continue to find efficiencies to reduce the money needing to operate the Agri-food Hub.”

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In addition, Council passed a motion to refinance the debt related to the construction of the Agri-food Hub & Trade Centre to save $15 million in interest during the next 10 years.

The Finance Department of the City has created a strategy to reduce the $17-million loan LDE is currently paying to the City for their portion of the Agri-food Hub project.

The decision from council was not unanimous however, as Councillors Jeff Carlson and Rajko Dodic voted against the tax deferral.

The City says the decision will allow LDE move forward with critical sales initiatives to book new events, secure sponsors and grow other revenue streams, helping them to continue reducing the deficit, which has already been cut by $2.4 million in the last year.

Hyggen added,

“Council sees the value and benefit the Agri-food Hub & Trade Centre brings to our community and we don’t want to lose that,” says Mayor Hyggen. “We are also encouraged by the huge strides made by LDE to become more efficient and increase revenues in the last year.”

The decision and previous deliberations came after a financial presentation from City administration at the Economic & Finance SPC meeting on November 27, as well as a presentation of the findings from the third-party review by Deloitte Canada on November 26.

READ MORE: Lethbridge News Now.

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