By the sounds of the last Village of Clyde council meeting and the response from Alberta Municipal Affairs, the municipality is in way over its head.
The ministry has ordered the village to come up with a capital plan to complete $4 million worth of imminent and dire infrastructure projects in the next five years. Council knew that would be impossible and told the minister so this past summer.
Well, the minister said too bad but was willing to give village administration some time to meet with his staff to come to some kind of solution.
Now it’s up to the village to parse through its budget for the upcoming year, and for the next five years, to see if it could somehow meet the criteria.
Did we mention that this is all because of the village viability report? The report found the village wasn’t viable, one reason being its financial sustainability, yet council of the day wasn’t having any of that and was determined to exist.
Obviously councillors had their reasons for that decision, but did it make financial sense? It doesn’t seem so.
And now we, and councillors and administration and residents, are experiencing the consequences of that decision.
They already know that the village doesn’t have $4 million lying around to pay that infrastructure bill. If the village were to use up its entire debt limit, all of its operating budget revenue, and current grants, that would only roughly amount to $1.68 million — less than half the bill, and that doesn’t include other village expenses.
That math doesn’t include potential grants but the village would need a hefty sum to make up the difference.
As a municipality, providing services and maintaining infrastructure are part of the deal. Yet this is proving to be an extremely tricky thing for Clyde to do.
And if the village doesn’t do it, what happens next will be up to the minister.
No one wants to see that, including councillors and staff, so hopefully their request to have a bit more time to work out the kinks will be granted.
We hope they figure it out by then.
