Calgary council votes to increase taxes
Posted Apr 26, 2018 7:37 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Calgary’s council has decided to raise future tax rates, meaning the average household will be paying about $400 to $500 more than today annually by 2022.
Councillors voted 11 to 3 to increase property taxes 2.65 to 3.45 per cent for 2019, with annual increases of between 2.5 and 3 per cent between 2020 and 2022.
The annual impact of the property tax increase is about $48 to $64 per household, while waste and recycling rates will go up 30 per cent in the next four years as well.
But like a lot of things at City Hall these days, it’s the way it all happened which is getting the attention.
The three no votes were Jeromy Farkas, Sean Chu and George Chahal, with Farkas suggesting a zero per cent increase over the next four years, arguing the rainy day fund could cover the difference.
However, he was almost laughed out of the building with that suggestion.
Councillor Jyoti Gondek chided her colleague, saying tough decisions about services can’t become a popularity contest.
Ward Sutherland also mocked the idea, saying he would be the hero on the front page by jokingly proposing a five per cent decrease, adding if they were stupid they’d do that every year.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi put it this way, “Do I want to look like a hero and say, ‘Ah! There will be no tax increases!’ or do I want to be realistic and talk to people about what inflation is meaning to the provision of city services?”
“It’s not zero, but it’s not – before I became mayor increases of five, seven, eight per cent were common – we’re not looking at that either, we’re looking at a tax increase that is about inflation for the next few years,” he said.
He believed most Calgarians would support the decision.
“We asked people in 34 service lines that the city does, which of these should we be cutting and which of them should we be spending the same or more on, and in all 34 people said the same of more,” explained Nenshi.
