A city user fee and subsidies review is now underway.
The city’s Governance and Policy committee began laying the ground work for standardized and consistent fees and charges for city services like transit tickets, renting community space or facility passes on Monday.
The review arose out of questions in the 2011 budget discussions and the reopening of the G.H. Dawe Community Centre.
Darren Kuz, the city’s divisional strategist, told the committee, that the city has inconsistent application fees across the organization which leads to confusion.
The committee, comprised of all city councillors, adopted guiding principles when setting fees including having the most benefit for the most people; the starting point when calculating the user fee should be full cost of providing the good or services; all citizens should pay for the societal benefit when the use of a service benefits the society as a whole and the city should provide a subsidy to individuals who could not otherwise afford a good or a service provided by the city.
A draft report outlining the recommendations is expected to be presented to Red Deer City council by Dec. 31.