Several City Council members, including Airdrie's Mayor Peter Brown, have expressed grave concern over the recent collective RCMP agreement and what it means for the city's budget.
 
Mayor Peter Brown said that one of the stipulations of the collective agreement, a $20,000 salary increase and retroactive pay going back to 2017, will hit the municipal budget. He roughly estimated that the retroactive pay alone will figure around 3.2 million dollars in the city's budget.
 
"If you put that in the context of a tax increase, just to cover that $3 million," he said. "It definitely is going to impact us."
 
While Mayor Brown stressed that the RCMP is absolutely deserving of this pay increase, he underlined that the federal government did not invite all the stakeholders to the table. He lamented that the federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCN) should have been part of the discussions. 
 
"We recognize that there's accountability and responsibility at our level to manage and pay our employees at the rate that they deserve," Brown said. "But that wasn't to our discretion, right, that was handled through the federal government."
Mayor Brown, along with Councillor Kolson and Councillor Jones all cited that, unlike their provincial and federal counterparts, municipalities do not have the luxury of running deficits, meaning that money has to be found somewhere, though at this point it is hard to say where it will be found and what the total figures will look like in the city's budget.
 
"I would be remiss to say one way or the other, that there'll be a tax increase or not," Brown said. "Until I see the whole budget, I don't know what the impacts are going to look like specific to the RCMP [pay] increases."
 
City Councillor Al Jones, who is also running for re-election on October 18th, also weighed in on the collective agreement.
 
Jones, like Brown, believes the RCMP are deserving of the increase.
 
"I do not begrudge the RCMP. They deserve it. The problem is it's retroactive," Jones said.
 
Jones, like his counterpart Councillor Kolson, said that the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted the city's ability to generate revenue, making it even harder to find money in an already tight budget.
 
"Genesis Place was closed for a good portion of the year, as were our hockey arenas. Like any business, we still have to keep the heat on," he said. "Our revenues suffered in the millions."
 
Jones said the city will have to find the money somewhere, somehow.
 
"We're going to try to obviously mitigate that by trying to find some savings elsewhere, find creative ways to deliver services that might be more affordable. looking for alternative sources of revenue," he said.
 
The union representing RCMP members, the National Police Federation (NPF) would not provide comment on the collective agreement. In a written statement to Discover Airdrie, Fabrice de Dongo, the media relations manager for the National Police Federations wrote, "Our attention now turns to focusing on opportunities to improve training capacity, equipment and mental health supports for our Members across the country."
 
de Dongo added that it's not the place of the NPF to comment on any financial discussions or arrangements among and between local governments and any government agencies.
 
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