Radio Interview with Mayor Dan Daley

Galen (Host): Joined by Olds Mayor Dan Daley and Dan, this week at the Olds Council, you guys were setting the tax rate bylaw for 2026.You had a couple of options you were considering. What did you guys decide to do and why?

Mayor Dan Daley: Yeah, thanks Galen. We had two options. One was to reduce the tax rate by 5% or half a percent to balance the operating and capital budget for the upcoming year. The other option we had was to leave its status quo as to what the tax rate is presently. With that, we can balance our operating and capital budgets for the upcoming year as well as put over $500,000 into our reserve account for future projects and infrastructure upgrades.

Galen: So you guys decided to keep the status quo for this year?

Mayor Dan Daley: Yeah, so Council did vote in option two, which was to keep the tax rate at the rate that it is at now to ensure that we have some leeway and some money to put into reserves.

Galen: Excellent. And obviously, another component to that is you've got provincial requisitions and you've got federal RCMP costs in there as well that aren't controlled by the town. Is that correct?

Mayor Dan Daley: That's correct. The residential tax bill, or any tax bill in town actually, is comprised of a number of different parts to it.
One of them is the municipal tax rate, which is money that comes to the Town of Olds for, of course, all our services and our projects that we do here.
Then, of course, you have your education tax, and that education tax goes directly back to the province again. We collect that on behalf of the province. And then, of course, we've got the Mount View senior housing requisition, which helps support our senior housing here in our community.
And within the municipal tax part that we collect is what we pay for the RCMP services here in town, which is just over $2 million, I believe, that goes back to the federal government to fund that organization.

Galen: And obviously, a good thing for everyone to know that these aren't all things that the town controls.

Mayor Dan Daley: That's right. We are collecting on behalf of the provincial government, the Mount View seniors housing, as well as the federal government when it comes to RCMP services.

Galen: Audited tax statements, you also had a presentation yesterday. How did that go, and what gives you some hope about the numbers you saw there?

Mayor Dan Daley: Yeah, so the audit was presented to us. It was a clean audit. Everything is in order as it should be, and we are all complying with the Municipal Governments Act.
Some of the good news that came out of there is that our debt level has come down. We've lowered that down a bit. We're sitting at just over a 50% debt service level right now, where four or five years ago, we were sitting close to 85%, 90%. And so we've come down considerably on that, as well as we were able to have a surplus for the 2025 year, and that money goes into reserves as well for future projects and infrastructure going forward as well. So we had some really good news yesterday in our financial audited reports, and we're just going to continue to work on that financial security and working on our projects to make it a great town going into the future.

Galen: Excellent. The Long Sky Land was discussed yesterday. Where is that, and what is happening there?

Mayor Dan Daley: So the Long Sky Land came into play. Back in 2016, there was a land swap to accommodate for the Rotary Park with the Town of Olds, and there was also some arrangements that were made for paving sidewalks and sewer infrastructure underground that was paid for by the Town of Olds. And in that agreement, there was also a tool for them to repay that money back to the town as the land developed. And so it's come to a point now where the landowners are wanting to divest themselves of this property, and so this was about $2.9 million that was owing to that company. And so we made the decision to go ahead and negotiate with the developer to have a land transfer instead. And so the Town of Olds is negotiating on 60 acres of land north of the Walmart and east of the Toboggan Hill. So there's three parcels there that we'll be negotiating on.

Galen: And so what will happen next with this

Mayor Dan Daley: So if we can come to an agreement and all the legal i's are dotted and t's are crossed, then town of Olds will own those three parcels of land and we'll move forward then to develop an area structure plan so we can then start marketing those properties to developers and start working towards regaining those funds back into the Town of Olds again.

Galen: Also at yesterday's meeting, with a lot of information to process, was a presentation from the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) there. And the AUC will obviously be part of the process here with the power plant portion of the Synapse data center application, and there's currently an application into the AUC from Synapse that went in earlier this month. So as part of their presentation, what stood out to you about what they were able to describe about the process?

Mayor Dan Daley: So I agree, there was a lot of information that came to us in that presentation. It was great to hear. Them giving us direction, and also the citizens of Olds direction on what they can do as far as if they want their input and they want their voice heard in regards to this project going forward. They gave a lot of information about what does work, what doesn't work, and how their process moves along. And so it was just really good to hear that they are non-biased. They're going to make the best decision possible when it comes to economic, social, and industrial needs for the area.
So, you know, I have a lot of faith in their decision and I'm sure they're going to utilize as many professionals from their industry that they can to make this decision.