Lethbridge’s top politician says the decision to defer taxes to keep the Agri-Food Hub and Trade Centre creates an opportunity to find savings over the next two years to hopefully not have that tax increase.
According to Mayor Blaine Hyggen there were several options put forward by administration on how to keep not only the facility but the Lethbridge and District Exhibition operating, but he believes the option council came to Tuesday night presents opportunities such as finding savings that will cover the costs over the next couple of years.
“Maybe it’s pie in the sky thinking, but it’s something that I just wanted to be able to have that chance to do [and] look for those cost savings efficiencies,” Hyggen says.
He says around the horseshoe opinions on the issue varied from some councillors wanting to close down the building because of the risk of future costs, to others who believed keeping the building open meant taking ownership of the costs and implementing the additional tax increase. However, the majority of councillors agreed on the deferral because they said they heard from people in the community who wanted to keep the building but did not want the additional taxes.
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“I think about things like Whoop-Up Days, the Ag Expo, the Home and Garden Tradeshow [and] the farmers market. These are events that our community absolutely love and we wouldn’t know, if this building was closed down, where they would take place.”
Hyggen says in the past year there have been huge strides made towards the LDE becoming more efficient as revenues last year saw an increase.
Hyggen also commends the work done by city administration throughout this process as they put together the options that were presented to council and reviewed the third-party report. He says this was not a position that anyone wanted to be in and at the end of the day there was no win-win but city staff worked extremely hard on finding the best options they could.
