The City is preparing to take on $500 million in debt, in order to fix up Yellowhead Trail, details on the financials will be discussed in about a week, but it will translate to an increase in property taxes for Edmontonians.

Yellowhead Trail is about to get a major overhaul, the ten year project is expected to close off access from 89 Street, 107 Street and others, and new interchanges built.

In total, the entire project is expected to cost $1 billion.

“The feedback that we’ve had from citizens is that the Yellowhead is a decades-overdue investment, that there’s no time like the present to get moving on it and the sooner we can do it, the better we’ll be able to take advantage of a more competitive construction climate,” Mayor Don Iveson said Thursday.

The City will contribute $510 million, with some of the funds generated by a tax increase of 1.76 percent over the next decade.

“It’s just using a mortgage to fix a billion dollar challenge,” Iveson said. “Half of that we’ve gotten assistance from senior orders of government because they saw it as an important economic investment too.”

The federal and provincial governments are covering costs for the other half of the project.

However, the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation doesn’t agree.

“They’re not acquiring an asset that they can later sell like individuals can, they’re not going to go and sell a road, it’s debt that is just going to have to be paid off by taxpayers,” Paige MacPherson with CTF said in a phone interview from Calgary.

MacPherson said the city should have considered breaking up the project over a longer time period.

“I think that considering you’ve got the north leg of Anthony Henday [Drive] about ten blocks away, it does bring into question whether this is necessary spending,” MacPherson said.

However, Iveson said making Yellowhead Trail a freeway is worth it.

“It is spread over a long period of time and it deals with a significant congestion and traffic safety challenges that we have, so council has deemed it a priority for us,” Iveson said.

Financials on the project will be discussed by councillors next week. Design work and land acquisition is underway, and that is expected to take up to five years.

With files from Breanna Karstens-Smith