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Homeowners moving into Edmonton’s new suburbs should be asked to pay more for fire stations, new interchanges and facilities such as the Lewis Farms Recreation Centre in this upcoming budget, Mayor Don Iveson said Tuesday.

He laid out the five principles he’ll bring to this fall’s budget debate and said Edmonton’s existing business owners and residents can’t be asked to cover the roughly $1 billion it would take to provide services for the new areas planned and under construction.

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“We do need a new way forward,” he said, responding to loud calls from business leaders to a limit in the property tax increase. “I’m squaring the circle.”

“Growth … with the right formula in place, should indeed pay for itself,” he said. “It’s no longer fair and justifiable for me to go to a business owner on Fort Road and say, you have to bear as much of the cost of a new interchange on the Terwillegar as everyone else.”