Calgary council will debate lowering property taxes from approved 7.8 per cent
Posted Jan 23, 2024 9:04 am.
Last Updated Jan 23, 2024 2:25 pm.
A debate will go ahead on whether or not to trim Calgary’s recently raised property tax rate.
On Tuesday morning, city council voted unanimously to bring a Notice of Motion to the next council meeting, which will be Feb. 27.
WATCH: Calgary city council approves property tax hike, announces new investments
The discussion during the executive committee meeting proposed the increase be lowered from 7.8 per cent to 5.8 per cent.
Coun. Terry Wong put forward the motion and was supported by five others.
“This is responding to the public. The public are saying ‘We need you to reconsider because number one: you didn’t tell us, and number two: we cannot handle the affordability portion of it,” he said. “The clearest motivation is we heard this back in November when we were talking about budgets and a 7.8 increase was one that many residents never accepted in the first place because again, when we approved a four-year business plan, they expected a 3.5 per cent increase.
“So, the fact that it was more than double that was one consideration.”
The motion would mean city administration would need to find a way to cut $23 million out of the budget, which the city’s chief financial officer said would have to come from “across the board.”
“The first consequence for the non-residential tax shift — weren’t not changing that — and so it’s still 53 [per cent] to 47 [per cent], and therefore the non-residential still get the tax competitiveness that they’re looking for,” Wong said.
He explained that the rebate would come back to Calgarians fairly easily.
“The second part of the equation is there will be a rebate, and the rebate will be added to the tax bill so in other words, we’ll use the residential tax rate calculated out and then minus off of that the rebate push and so the final amount is the amount that will show up on your tax bill,” Wong said.
Coun. Sonya Sharp was one of the councillors who supported the Notice of Motion.
She was asked what cuts she would be comfortable with.
“I would say nothing that’s consequential, so nothing public safety, or affordable housing,” she said. “I would say look internally — there’s line items that indicate HR or IT doesn’t effect constituents or Calgarians. You’ve got corporate inflation costs — you can scale back.”
“You can go in and surgically look at departments — if it takes across the board, then it takes across the board, that’s been done before,” Sharp added. “But, across the board last time really only affected one department.”
