Municipal Indicators give Whitecourt a benchmark from which to gauge the community’s risk

Late last year, Whitecourt Town Council received a report from Alberta Municipal Affairs (AMA) highlighting the 2021 Municipal Indicators Dashboard. Generated annually by AMA, the dashboard provides results of financial and governance indicators and predetermined benchmarks, which measure how a municipality is doing. There are thirteen indicators for municipalities to measure against, and they are deemed either at risk or not, depending on how they measure.

Of the thirteen indicators, two are considered critical indicators, Audit Outcome and Ministry Intervention. If a municipality triggered either one, they would be deemed at risk. If a municipality triggered three or more of the non-critical indicators, it would be the same result. Staying below both of those triggered thresholds keeps municipalities from being considered at risk.

The remaining eleven indicators are Tax Base Balance, Tax Collection Rate, Population Change, Current Ration, Accumulated Surplus/Deficit, On-Time Financial Reporting, Debt to Revenue Percentage, Debt Service to Revenue Percentage, Investment in Infrastructure, Infrastructure Age, and Interest in Municipal Office.  

“This is the one that started a few years back, a change of format for Municipal Affairs. Whitecourt was the test dummy for it if some of council remembers. We had Municipal Affairs come to our Planning Session to run through the plan and these new indicators for all the municipalities in Alberta,” explained Town CAO Peter Smyl.

Director of Corporate Services Judy Barney walked Whitecourt Town Council through the dashboard, highlighting one indicator that Whitecourt was flagged for. “We are not at risk. We did have one indicator that we did not meet the threshold for, and that’s Investing in Infrastructure. We were very close. It’s a threshold of one (percent), and we were at 0.93 (percent). So, we were very close on that.”

Barney explained that AMA asked for an explanation as to why the threshold was not met. “We’ve attached a report for you that describes the explanation for where we are at. That fact that currently, we aren’t meeting the indicator, but when you look at our twenty-year capital plan for the next five years, we see that we are definitely meeting and exceeding the indicator.”

Infrastructure, be it roads or buildings, need replacement and upkeep, and municipalities often carry out the work on an ongoing schedule to help spread out the costs. Instead of paying for a major project in one year, they stretch it out and pay over several years. For 2021, Whitecourt didn’t have as much as the threshold required, but the next several years show that Whitecourt will meet it. The Town’s response to AMA stated that a “high rate of inflation, limited availability of manpower and material resources, and not having an ICF agreement in place” affected current investment in infrastructure, causing project delays and deferred fleet replacement.

“One of the important things is that this didn’t have an effect on service levels, which is another thing this indicator is measuring. So, we also indicated that to them.” Barney said that 2022 could yield a similar result. “We have some capital investment (planned), but we see more coming in the future. I just wanted to give a heads-up on that.”

Major projects from 2022, including the Water System Upgrades, roadway at Rotary Park and pathway updates, street improvements and heavy equipment additions to the fleet, will bring Whitecourt near the indicator’s threshold. Once numbers are released later this year, it’ll be known how close the community landed to the one percent. Planned subdivision developments in the future will push the community past the benchmark.

One interesting indicator, which measures the public’s interest, is the last one listed, Interest in Municipal Office. It gauges whether there is enough community engagement happening in municipal elections. The indicator triggers if an election occurs and the number of candidates running does not exceed the number of councillor positions available. Whitecourt typically sees a healthy balance at election time. Still, it’s interesting that AMA uses this specific data to measure municipalities, showing the importance of having residents be willing to run for municipal office.