The city manager for Red Deer says Budget 2025 was "quite positive" for Red Deer and Central Alberta, providing a lot of investment into infrastructure in addition to restoring grants in lieu of taxes.
Last week's budget included $557 million over three years for the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre expansion and $22 million over three years for an interim cardiac catheterization lab.
"We've been advocating for the catheterization lab for a very long time, and it's one of those critical investments that our community needs as part of our health infrastructure," said Tara Lodewyk.
The budget also included $11 million over two years to support the expansion of the Red Deer Regional Airport.
"The Red Deer Regional Airport has been growing and expanding and has been on a growth trajectory for a long time and the province has invested quite a bit of money there and it's great to see that we'll be able to finish the expansion," she said.
The Highway 11 Twinning Project will also see $208 million over three years.
"Highway 11 is one of our major corridors out to Rocky Mountain House and then into the mountains and it is important because we know it connects from a logistics point of view, Central Alberta to the West and it is great to see that continued investment."
Red Deer is also set to benefit from an announcement that will see the province increase grants provided to municipalities in lieu of property taxes on provincially owned property.
"What they were doing is only paying 50 per cent of what those taxes were," explained Lodewyk. "With the changes in this budget, they'll be paying 75 per cent of those taxes to municipalities in 2025 and 2026, with 100 per cent to be paid in 2026 and 2027. Now this equates to quite a bit for municipalities and as an example, when they're paying 100 per cent in Red Deer, that's about $4 million that our tax base isn't having to pick up."
Lodewyk gave her thoughts on what the U.S. tariffs are going to mean for Central Alberta.
"I think we're all still trying to figure out what that will mean for us, as well as the impacts of what our federal government will do in response to the tariffs put in place," she commented. "It has caused us to think about where we get our goods and what we purchase and take an extra pause to look where things are coming from. It also has helped us unite around Canada and do some positives around how we do our internal trade. The impacts will be felt in our communities and it will have an impact on the economic climate that is in Alberta and it will be localized as well. We're just trying to figure out exactly what that means, but we do purchase quite a bit from our neighbors to the south."
Sign up to get the latest local news headlines delivered directly to your inbox every afternoon.
Send your news tips, story ideas, pictures, and videos to news@centralalbertaonline.com.
CentralAlbertaOnline encourages you to get your news directly from your trusted source by bookmarking this page and downloading the CentralAlbertaOnline app.