New Calgary city council debates 2022 budget

Debate has begun at Calgary City Council over next year’s budget, and what kind of property tax increase you can expect to pay.

The increase is expected to be between 0.64 and 1 per cent, which is lower than the 3.46 per cent that was initially approved.

The City of Calgary says in a statement that administration is proposing freezes or decreases to specific user fee and rate adjustments for 2022, like for blue, black, and green cart rates.

The boost to your bill could be on the higher end if council approves a requested $6-million increase for the Calgary police budget, so CPS can hire more officers.

“(Additional funding would help) to improve community-based policing and engagement with diverse communities, to improve investigative outcomes to Calgarians as those relate to violence and gun violence in our city,” said Calgary Police Service Chief Mark Neufeld.

“Helping to support CPS employees who’ve had a difficult time over the last 18 months and to recruit great new police officers.”

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Neufeld says added funding could help with call diversion as well, so police officers aren’t always responding to people in crisis.

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Neufeld says while the budget already has new positions for CPS built into it, the 38 new positions would be on top of that.

Should CPS get the boost, property tax rates could jump to .99 per cent.

“What I’m really hoping we do as a council this year, as opposed to last year, is avoid rhetoric,” said Mayor Jyoti Gondek. “The entire debate we had last year was designed to inflame people that is not what a council should do. That is not good governance.”

This is the fourth year in the budget cycle – and many of the councillors brought up concerns they heard while door knocking.

City Manager David Duckworth, who worked on the budget, says we’re in a good position to be flexible.

“We’re actually in a good place to consider reinvesting. Strategic places. You heard about downtown strategy, affordable housing, snow removal, and transportation improvements,” said Duckworth.

The Fall Citizen Survey was also released.

It shows Calgarians do like living here, with 80 per cent of the 2,500 person sample size saying the quality of life in Calgary is good.

Places of concern were traffic and roads, crime, and transit.

Meanwhile, 68 per cent of Calgarians say we need to act now to address climate change. Right now, there is no new money in the budget to address it – but several councillors called attention to it.

“What we heard is, right now we are missing those dollars, so I think there will probably be some asks coming forward from members of council who believe in this and how important it is for us to show initiative so we can get some matching dollars from other places,” said Gondek.

A final decision on the 2022 budget is not expected until the end of the month.

– With files from Tom Ross and Taylor Braat