At the most recent City Council meeting (Feb 21), a resident asked Airdrie City Council if there was a way to see exactly where their taxes are going, such as how much goes towards Genesis Place or towards cleaning the roads. 

Tina Petrow, a Councilwomen for the City of Airdrie, would like to see an easier way for Airdronians to see exactly what percentage of their taxes are going where. 

“I'm always trying to brainstorm ideas and trying to collect ideas from residents or from our administration on how we can improve these processes and make the make it a little easier for people to see where their taxpayer dollars are going.” 

Right now, the City of Airdrie has a circle graph under the tax assessment that you can see what percentage of your property taxes goes to cover anything like community protective services, fire and police, or waste and recycling. 

“It says some percentage goes to community development but I'm not sure everybody in the city would know what community development refers to and what that covers. If we can make that process easier for people to see exactly where their tax dollars are going, it makes it beneficial to the community. They'd have general knowledge and maybe a little more insight into how the city functions.” 

Petrow says she thinks the resident was asking for specific numbers in certain city functions, which could be hard to do. 

“I've seen in other communities where they have a very broken-down infographic that showed, for example, for your garbage, you're paying this, or for your organics, you're paying this, and for your arenas, you're paying this.” 

Petrow continued on, “I think that’s where I would like to see us get to is a very easy-to-digest structure.” 

There hasn't been an exact motion to make an infographic says, Petrow, but she did say the Council has had these conversations quite frequently about the communications process. 

“The average person doesn't have time to go read through our budget documents. The easier we can make it for them, I think the easier it is to understand where your dollars are going.” 

 

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