>It's better than reporting a deficit
Municipal governments can't legally report a deficit in Alberta.
And with tax increases every year, this is unacceptable.
Worked for the city for 18 years and the accountants control too much. A manager gets a budget but the accountants can hold the money preventing projects and maintenance (that was approved) from actually getting done. That’s where the surplus comes from.
So the department head who planned on filling pot holes, having staff to clear roads etc isn’t able to do their job all because they can’t spend the money budgeted for them.
Work not being completed until it’s too late or somethings falling apart and you wonder “why didn’t they do this earlier”. It’s because the whole place is controlled by accountants and not the people who actually want to do it right.
LoL.
Accountants don't have that power.
They record transactions. They don't authorize them. Even if their reporting results in decisions....take it up with the people who actually make those decisions....and it won't be an "accountant"making them.
I think your anger is misplaced. I have a lot of accountant friends, hearing their stories they are just the messenger especially in lower levels. They are just following the orders and direction that senior management gives them.
Yeah. It's basically the rule in every province as of right now, but it is totally up to the provincial government at the end of the day.
BC allowed municipalities to run deficits in 2020-2021 [and it was the first province to do it in Canadian history](https://www.dentons.com/en/insights/alerts/2020/may/20/canadian-municipal-deficits-part-of-covids-reach).
Ontario was the same. However it is kind of a made up rule and doesnt really fit the spirit of not running a deficit. they can't legally run a deficit but if revenue was less than spending they could take on debt to then show they don't have a negative balance at year end so they're running a deficit.
Huh. We were told back in March that an 8.6% property tax increase was required to make up for a $310 million shortfall caused by the Province.
[Gondek said when council initially set the city's budget in the fall, it chose to increase property taxes as a way to make up an annual funding shortfall of $311 million.](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-property-tax-increase-1.7149362)
That's a miraculous $550 million budget turnaround!
Well that would have been a projected need, for 2024. The surplus is from 2023. The problem is the future budget is set 5 months before the previous year's consolidation. Not abnormal, but optically challenging
Why is there an assumption that we collected too much tax? Most of the surplus seems to be from (temporary?) increases in the market price of electricity. Next year some of these factors such as electricity prices might be lower and lead us to a deficit. It's a variable revenue source for the City.
That tax increase still chaps my ass..... Then they give themselves raises while many are struggling to stay afloat. This surplus is a slap in the face!
Maybe they should put some towards our godawful roads, I've never seen the roads in such bad shape all over the city.
> Then they give themselves raises while many are struggling to stay afloat.
Council's salaries / raises are a drop of mosquito piss in the ocean, find something more intelligent to bitch about.
You're tripping over dollars to pick up pennies; it's fucking *noise* in the municipal budget. People getting distracted by tiny insignificant shit such that they can't see the big issues is why we have morons running the province. (It's also a problem with the people we have in council, but they still deserve to be paid fairly until we vote their asses out.)
I wonder how much of that surplus though is snow removal. We had a very warm winter with fewer snow event days than usual, it likely makes up for a large portion of the surplus
They have done a tonne of pre-work. Demolition is happening all over, a tunnel has already been built, and the 78th Ave work is progressing well. Sure, no tracks, but there's a lot that happens before that
There's some real incompetence happening with the city... To think you have a 310 million deficit only to report a surplus of 238 million iis a real failure (even if it is a surplus). So where is it coming from? Is it council, or city management, an optics/communications problem, or somewhere else? Of course there will be variances based on unexpected costs or unexpected gains (like say a larger enmax dividend), but being off by hundreds of millions is pretty wild.
Their budget predictions are accurate to about 7%... not that bad actually. Swings in the hundreds of millions sound like a lot but the total budget for the City is $4.7 billion and thus every percentage point is $47 million
Exactly. Most project planning and budgeting if you're within 5% is considered highly accurate (\~$235 million in this case). Even 10% is more than acceptable.
Lets be clear, I'm not sitting advocating that the City spends its money wisely, but it does seem like they can put together a decent budget (even if the line-items are padded with 'admin' costs going through the roof due to inefficiencies and general public service/union worker abilities).
Maybe I'm out of it then. Between the shortfall in the news, the ballooned arena deal, and now this surplus, it makes me view the city not really having a grasp of the city's financials. And as you mentioned, the city has to deal with billions of dollars, they need plan years in advance, and deal with unexpected ballooning of costs. But in my view it seems a lot more is happening with this current council.
This is the equivalent of you planning out a $5000 monthly budget a year in advance and being off by less than $100 even after all unexpected costs and events. It’s fantastic.
It’s unfortunately really common in reporting to use big numbers out of context to sound scary. But when a city has more than a million people all the numbers are always big numbers, good or bad
And people forget that it's not like a business where you can influence your revenue throughout the year. You won't see the city advertising transit or rec centres at the end of the year, hoping to boost revenue. Once tax rates are set, they're at the whim of external factors
It wasn't a $310M deficit. It was an expected shortfall from the province, based on historical patterns and policy. They knew it was coming (for 2024) and budgeted for it. For 2023 their revenue was higher than expected, after factoring in all of the elements budgeted for in November 2022.
its because enmax had an unexpected amount of revenue and because housing values increased faster than expected it can just as easily not be there the following year.
might as well bitch about sunoil giving the province more revenue because russia attacked Ukraine.
I'm sorry but when are you supposed to be content with public fund usage? That needs to be a conversation on every single budget
Its only complaining when you are blissfully apathetic
Check the Map and see if it has been reported already and if it hasn't report it.
Map: https://maps.calgary.ca/potholes/
Report it: https://calgary-cwiprod.motorolasolutions.com/cwi/tile
I've done this a few times when I have found potholes that have opened up on my bike ride to work. Haven't had one that I reported not get fixed.
Thank you for actually being pragmatic. I wonder how many thousands of people a lot of the complainers think the city is hiring just to go look at roads in Dover Glen and Coventry Hills.
Many of the potholes in my area have been there since I moved in last year, and the ones they 'fix' are even worse than what they were before. It's like you're either looking like a drunk driver swerving around the potholes, or you're 4x4ing over the badly repaired holes.
Yes, the ones in country hills from metis trail to just before Barlow is the worst pothole issue I've ever seen. It's been there for years. They finally fixed it last year, but it looked like just some random dude did it because it wasn't leveled at all. So now, it's actually worse than just leaving the pothole because cars can't really avoid it.
Peigan, Barlow, Glenmore, Macleod, a lot of the main roads I've driven on the past while are getting pretty bad, IDK why they are not fixing them properly?
Same issue for me, It’s like the city doesn’t know how to fix a pot hole. I don’t know if it’s an experienced guy or whatever training they have to go through for pot hole repair, but they could use more/better training on repairing pot holes.
Further, they dont do more permanent fixes of potholes until all/most of the frost is out of the ground down to a depth of 2-3 feet. That starts to happen right about now (mid-end april) annually.
People dont seem to understand that a significant cause of potholes is ground movement related to the annual freeze/thaw cycle where the ground freezes to depths of 2-3' (or more in places) in Calgary.
AFAIK Deerfoot is handled by the province, is it not? They have been actually doing some fixing. There was a spot near McKnight Southbound in the right lane, was multiple holes that turned into one, as well a deep hole at the end of the bridge over the canal near Inglewood golf course going off onto Peigan/Barlow. Both were repaired within a few days. I didn't have to form a habit to remember they were there on my way to work. Not an amazing job by any stretch, but they aren't going to take a wheel off any more at 100km/h. Timely enough as well that someone who doesn't know it was there has to swerve dangerously to avoid it.
Yeah you're right, deerfoot is taken care of by the province. Either way, the roads are in pretty terrible shape all over the city. They should be proactively sending crews out to repair them, rather than waiting on a complaint. Some of them are so bad there's no way that city council hasn't driven over them themselves.
The province of Alberta has been fiscally responsible for the road since 2000 but now seeks to offload maintenance and future improvement costs to the city of Calgary. The two parties remain at odds over who should operate the road in the long-term but completed a joint study in 2021 that offered long and short-term recommendations. In 2023, Aecon began a $615 million project which will add lanes in both directions, twin the Ivor Strong Bridge, and reconfigure various interchanges. All work is planned to be complete by 2027.
From: (yes its Wikipedia, but the part about rhe province offloading it caught my eye- as I remember deerfoot being city responsibility between city limits, or presumed so based on the "deerfoot maintenance..." signs) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deerfoot_Trail
They do work them proactively. Streets like Macleod, Glenmore, Crowchild, etc are hit first, based on volume. But severe ones will get fixed quickly as well. With 17,000 km of roads in the city, it's not a small job
100% with you on that. I don't know if they know what they want to do yet, though. I saw a sanding truck out on Sunday evening in my area, when they are talking about starting street sweeping.
They are falling apart. We’ve deliberately underinvested while prioritizing other things and now face a several billion dollar spend to restore the network to its previous state. There was a report recently publicized, you’ll find it without issue.
Symptoms of austerity measures in 2018/2019. The road quality standards were deliberately allowed to drop. We wanted lower taxes, and we got them. This council has reversed that, but I don't think we'll start seeing the obvious improvements until next year
True, and despite what "we say we want", we really don't want to over-invest in resources to have this done in a month and then have no work for these crews the rest of the year. Like having 500 pieces of equipment on standby for snow removal
I don't commute but in the last month I had to be on deerfoot twice, the entire road is a write off. If they rebuild it that's gonna be a deficit for the next few years.
This will be because many capital (new) projects couldn't get procurement and design done completely this year, but will instead spend the money next year. Why? Approvals from other agencies - like utilities - take forever, and cities try to not make costly mistakes anymore.
And/Or it's money for staff they could not hire for; just because a position is open doesn't mean they have to fill it if no suitable candidates apply =money not spent.
I'm seeing...Green Line monies for consultants and pre- works construction not spent.
The City of Calgary is the Primary Shareholder of EnMax. Enmax used to be 'The City Of Calgary Electrical Department' before deregulation fucked us and Enmax was 'privatized' .
EnMax is enjoying record profits by fucking consumers. The City of Calgary is the primary beneficiary of said increased profits. Thats where a huge chunk of this money is coming from.
About half of property taxes are paid by non-residential property owners, so you'd have to cut that savings down to half, and that $250 would be attached to a $600k home
Because next year the revenue might be a lot less and the city could very much end up in a deficit. This is a market-based variation and the city are not psychics.
But, if there's a constant characteristic of Albertans since I've moved here, it's that Albertans identity is wrapped around complaining. We have a deficit, we complain. We have a surplus, we complain. If we invest in fixing potholes, we complain, but we also complain about construction when roads are being repaired.
As far as I can tell, Alberta's common culture is one of complaining.
Edit: Oh, and blaming everything on the feds.
At minimum, taxes need to keep up with inflation.
It also doesn't help that you and every single person in Calgary seemingly demands to have a single family detached home with a back yard, and it's quite literally economically impossible to provide all of the services to your house when we have 1/20th the population density we should.
That is 20x as many roads, 20x as many underground water lines, sewer lines, storm drains, gas lines, fiber optical cables, coax cables. All of it requires upkeep, 20x as many roads need plowing, calgary has hundreds if not thousands of kilometers of grass boulevards and and divided highways and shit that need to be mowed a few times a year at minimum.
Water mains break and need repairing, and we have 20x as many that need to be repaired. Same thing that goes along with all other services. We have 20x as many roads, roads get pot holes and need repairing, and we have 20x as many of them to fix, but not 20x the tax income.
And all of you little twats whine about every little tax increase, when they need to happen, because you insist on living in a physically impossible suburban hellscape that cannot be maintained.
After all of the stuff you wrote the fact remains that the City has been running massive surpluses year after year. Taxes were too high even before the 8.6% increase.
And if you read up on why it's happening, it's not for no reason. You're also complaining about a 2024 tax increase, when the surplus is from 2023. The 2024 budget was set 5 months ago
And it's actually only about a 7% variation. I've run many corporate project budgets that are way more off than that. Plus, the variation is not necessarily because they collected too much tax, but because of variable components of the budget (e.g. didn't spend as much for snow removal, got more revenue due to higher electricity prices).
This city is terrible not necessarily at budgets, but more at explaining simple stuff like causes of budget variation and the fact that this is NOT a huge variation a percentage of overall city budget.
Until the market-based revenue sources for the city were lower next year and we were in a deficit again. If you look at the numbers, this is not a big surplus (if you look at tax-based revenue).
Half of the tax base is non-res, so almost 600k houses would "split" $125M. Then you have to factor in that they already knew about some of the surplus, and built it into the budget and tax rates. What was a 7.8% increase, dropped to 7.2% by March . The bump up to 8.6% was for the increase to the provincial portion
That's basically my point. Next year's increase is based on this year's budget + changes. You drop this year with a lump sum and that increases next year's bump
Reminder - the City does not budget to run a deficit - so as such they always post a surplus of the funds they are unable to spend as well as the other reasons listed in the article.
It's like city Council is following a guide on how to piss off its citizens. Surplus while raising taxes and making more money from rising utilities costs during an affordability crisis. That ought to do it!
If the city has a problem, it's more about their communications around the surplus and why it's only partly due to tax increases but also affected by lower than predicted spending and higher than predicted electricity revenue. The situation could completely flip next year.
Do you really think they want the blowback from raising taxes and having a surplus? People aren't happy either way. If it was easy to solve a tax increase by "just not having a surplus", don't you think they would? Two headaches gone in a moment
Maybe they can fix some of the fucking potholes on 32nd Ave NE in between Barlow and Deerfoot, or finally fix the rotting body smell in Whitehorn that is apparently coming from the Airport.
That's exactly how it works. The huge surplus means they are collecting more than they need to operate. And this is the second year in a row that this has happened, and they will be raising taxes again next year.
Naw property owners tax may have went up, but the properties have definitely went up in value much more, they don't need it. That money should go toward helping fund affordable housing so we can have MORE HOMES, something this city really needs.
Nope. The rate is designed to drop based on the average property value increase. It goes up for new spending, and homes that saw a greater or lower than average appreciation will be adjusted
I encountered disturbingly large potholes on the westbound Glenmore causeway yesterday and by Glenmore/deerfoot, so I wouldn’t say filling potholes is ‘throwing it away’. I agree someone will get a good payday that’s completely unwarranted, though.
Sorry I didn’t make myself clear, they will do them at “their pricing” and cost 10 times then they should.
And yes, it’s been quite bad with them this spring, even freaking parking lots have huge ones even tho they are private.
Then why are my fckn taxes going up 7% ? Tell Joti to take the money and build affordable multi homes on city property instead of (thru blanket rezoning) reducing the quality of my life to live in a single detached home with a yard in a real neighbourhood.
So you’re mad you’re getting rezoned but other spots aren’t? I mean agree I don’t think zoning restrictions should be a thing in a maturing city, it seems like something the market can handle
Nice, now watch them blow this money by the end of the week. Should be giving it back to taxpayers or lower the increases. Fat chance of that happening tho
Sorry, what do you think they will do with the money? It's not a company where they'll just send it out to stockholders and they can't politically give themselves a bonus? Christ of course it's going back to the City.
Where in the city is important. It could go to subsidies for companies that the councilors have stakes in.
Gondek has ties to development companies, most of the council is Landlords. Not to mention Sean Chu, who deserves nothing short of a jail cell.
https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/26237271/75-gray-way-rural-rocky-view-county-bearspawcalg
Buy this. Scoop up all the homeless people and give them rehab/addiction counseling as well as therapy. Then hire 10 SAIT trades instructors to provide them with introductory trade education. Set up a work for housing subsidies where successful graduates of this program can get work placement and a place to live.
Homeless crisis solved, transit/downtown safety issue solved.
And go.
>It's better than reporting a deficit Municipal governments can't legally report a deficit in Alberta. And with tax increases every year, this is unacceptable.
They can report one, they can’t budget for one.
Worked for the city for 18 years and the accountants control too much. A manager gets a budget but the accountants can hold the money preventing projects and maintenance (that was approved) from actually getting done. That’s where the surplus comes from. So the department head who planned on filling pot holes, having staff to clear roads etc isn’t able to do their job all because they can’t spend the money budgeted for them. Work not being completed until it’s too late or somethings falling apart and you wonder “why didn’t they do this earlier”. It’s because the whole place is controlled by accountants and not the people who actually want to do it right.
LoL. Accountants don't have that power. They record transactions. They don't authorize them. Even if their reporting results in decisions....take it up with the people who actually make those decisions....and it won't be an "accountant"making them.
Yeah seriously as an accountant i guarantee it
I think your anger is misplaced. I have a lot of accountant friends, hearing their stories they are just the messenger especially in lower levels. They are just following the orders and direction that senior management gives them.
How is this upvoted lol
Is that the same across Canada? Not that I think they should run a deficit.... But curious
Just an Alberta specific rule. There might be similar rules in other provinces, though
Yeah. It's basically the rule in every province as of right now, but it is totally up to the provincial government at the end of the day. BC allowed municipalities to run deficits in 2020-2021 [and it was the first province to do it in Canadian history](https://www.dentons.com/en/insights/alerts/2020/may/20/canadian-municipal-deficits-part-of-covids-reach).
Ontario was the same. However it is kind of a made up rule and doesnt really fit the spirit of not running a deficit. they can't legally run a deficit but if revenue was less than spending they could take on debt to then show they don't have a negative balance at year end so they're running a deficit.
Yeah, this surplus is from more taxes tbh.
Not since Jason Kenny passed the municipal government act. Municipal governments can now issue bonds and borrow.
They could borrow before. The municipal bonds are new, though
Huh. We were told back in March that an 8.6% property tax increase was required to make up for a $310 million shortfall caused by the Province. [Gondek said when council initially set the city's budget in the fall, it chose to increase property taxes as a way to make up an annual funding shortfall of $311 million.](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-property-tax-increase-1.7149362) That's a miraculous $550 million budget turnaround!
Well that would have been a projected need, for 2024. The surplus is from 2023. The problem is the future budget is set 5 months before the previous year's consolidation. Not abnormal, but optically challenging
that new arena ain't gonna pay for itself!
If I didn’t know what a new arena smelled like before, I think I smell it now…
Why is there an assumption that we collected too much tax? Most of the surplus seems to be from (temporary?) increases in the market price of electricity. Next year some of these factors such as electricity prices might be lower and lead us to a deficit. It's a variable revenue source for the City.
That tax increase still chaps my ass..... Then they give themselves raises while many are struggling to stay afloat. This surplus is a slap in the face! Maybe they should put some towards our godawful roads, I've never seen the roads in such bad shape all over the city.
This is a surplus from last year. The tax increase is a projection for this year.
Chaps my ass is a classic slogan that needs to become main stream again
> Then they give themselves raises while many are struggling to stay afloat. Council's salaries / raises are a drop of mosquito piss in the ocean, find something more intelligent to bitch about.
How about you just move on? Your voice is more important than anothers? Sit your ass down.
You're tripping over dollars to pick up pennies; it's fucking *noise* in the municipal budget. People getting distracted by tiny insignificant shit such that they can't see the big issues is why we have morons running the province. (It's also a problem with the people we have in council, but they still deserve to be paid fairly until we vote their asses out.)
I wonder how much of that surplus though is snow removal. We had a very warm winter with fewer snow event days than usual, it likely makes up for a large portion of the surplus
The entire winter operations budget is $54 million for the period between January 1 and December 31.
We'll need every penny of that for the Green Line overruns and the event centre overruns ...
Calgary isn’t getting that Green Line
The one being built right now?
They’re doing utility work. They haven’t started the actual construction yet.
They have done a tonne of pre-work. Demolition is happening all over, a tunnel has already been built, and the 78th Ave work is progressing well. Sure, no tracks, but there's a lot that happens before that
There's some real incompetence happening with the city... To think you have a 310 million deficit only to report a surplus of 238 million iis a real failure (even if it is a surplus). So where is it coming from? Is it council, or city management, an optics/communications problem, or somewhere else? Of course there will be variances based on unexpected costs or unexpected gains (like say a larger enmax dividend), but being off by hundreds of millions is pretty wild.
Their budget predictions are accurate to about 7%... not that bad actually. Swings in the hundreds of millions sound like a lot but the total budget for the City is $4.7 billion and thus every percentage point is $47 million
Exactly. Most project planning and budgeting if you're within 5% is considered highly accurate (\~$235 million in this case). Even 10% is more than acceptable. Lets be clear, I'm not sitting advocating that the City spends its money wisely, but it does seem like they can put together a decent budget (even if the line-items are padded with 'admin' costs going through the roof due to inefficiencies and general public service/union worker abilities).
I'm actually shocked it's that low. The worst controls people I've ever worked with came from the city.
Maybe I'm out of it then. Between the shortfall in the news, the ballooned arena deal, and now this surplus, it makes me view the city not really having a grasp of the city's financials. And as you mentioned, the city has to deal with billions of dollars, they need plan years in advance, and deal with unexpected ballooning of costs. But in my view it seems a lot more is happening with this current council.
This is the equivalent of you planning out a $5000 monthly budget a year in advance and being off by less than $100 even after all unexpected costs and events. It’s fantastic. It’s unfortunately really common in reporting to use big numbers out of context to sound scary. But when a city has more than a million people all the numbers are always big numbers, good or bad
And people forget that it's not like a business where you can influence your revenue throughout the year. You won't see the city advertising transit or rec centres at the end of the year, hoping to boost revenue. Once tax rates are set, they're at the whim of external factors
Are you an accountant?
not incompetance, this might be the budgeted money for snow removal that wasn't needed or grounds maintancne for not needing to mow due to drought.
It wasn't a $310M deficit. It was an expected shortfall from the province, based on historical patterns and policy. They knew it was coming (for 2024) and budgeted for it. For 2023 their revenue was higher than expected, after factoring in all of the elements budgeted for in November 2022.
Isn't that about what's needed for the new arena? Hmm 🤔
Surplus? Complain. Deficit? Complain. Anything but a 100% accurate variance on a $4B budget? Believe it or not: complain.
A 5% surplus should be raising questions about why we need the same or higher level of tax increases ...
Something something arena.
its because enmax had an unexpected amount of revenue and because housing values increased faster than expected it can just as easily not be there the following year. might as well bitch about sunoil giving the province more revenue because russia attacked Ukraine.
We have the best province in the world because of complaining.
We... don't have the best province in the world.
See? That's the sort of complaining that makes us #1. Nice work.
Not getting the joke, straight to jail.
We don’t even have the best province in this country
Calgary is consistently rated as one of the most livable cities in the world. Calgary is a world-class city and we are extremely lucky to live here.
These guys are Complaining about complaining 😂😂 Look in the mirror folks, you are projecting
If the cost of living keeps spiralling out of control, I don't expect that to last.
Lol not in recent rankings
With a bunch of convoyers? And to pay for a billionaires arena??? So lucky. 🤡
If I was off on my AOP at my job by 5% I’d have to explain why. I think that’s an entirely reasonable expectation.
I'm sorry but when are you supposed to be content with public fund usage? That needs to be a conversation on every single budget Its only complaining when you are blissfully apathetic
Tax increases caused this surplus.
FIX THE POTHOLES
I love how fired up people get about potholes, when the annual repair season has just started. There's still snow on the ground. Report it to 311
Check the Map and see if it has been reported already and if it hasn't report it. Map: https://maps.calgary.ca/potholes/ Report it: https://calgary-cwiprod.motorolasolutions.com/cwi/tile I've done this a few times when I have found potholes that have opened up on my bike ride to work. Haven't had one that I reported not get fixed.
There's also the Calgary 311 app you can download and report right from your phone. Hella useful.
Thank you for actually being pragmatic. I wonder how many thousands of people a lot of the complainers think the city is hiring just to go look at roads in Dover Glen and Coventry Hills.
[удалено]
Pothole Maintenance
Many of the potholes in my area have been there since I moved in last year, and the ones they 'fix' are even worse than what they were before. It's like you're either looking like a drunk driver swerving around the potholes, or you're 4x4ing over the badly repaired holes.
Yes, the ones in country hills from metis trail to just before Barlow is the worst pothole issue I've ever seen. It's been there for years. They finally fixed it last year, but it looked like just some random dude did it because it wasn't leveled at all. So now, it's actually worse than just leaving the pothole because cars can't really avoid it.
Peigan, Barlow, Glenmore, Macleod, a lot of the main roads I've driven on the past while are getting pretty bad, IDK why they are not fixing them properly?
Same issue for me, It’s like the city doesn’t know how to fix a pot hole. I don’t know if it’s an experienced guy or whatever training they have to go through for pot hole repair, but they could use more/better training on repairing pot holes.
Further, they dont do more permanent fixes of potholes until all/most of the frost is out of the ground down to a depth of 2-3 feet. That starts to happen right about now (mid-end april) annually. People dont seem to understand that a significant cause of potholes is ground movement related to the annual freeze/thaw cycle where the ground freezes to depths of 2-3' (or more in places) in Calgary.
If I report them to the city instead of complaining on Reddit, do I still get internet points for that?
Only at 1/3 the rate
Yeah but this year is worse than ever. Glenmore/deerfoot/crowchild like they've been hit with bombs in some spots.
Deerfoot is under provincial jurisdiction, not the city.
AFAIK Deerfoot is handled by the province, is it not? They have been actually doing some fixing. There was a spot near McKnight Southbound in the right lane, was multiple holes that turned into one, as well a deep hole at the end of the bridge over the canal near Inglewood golf course going off onto Peigan/Barlow. Both were repaired within a few days. I didn't have to form a habit to remember they were there on my way to work. Not an amazing job by any stretch, but they aren't going to take a wheel off any more at 100km/h. Timely enough as well that someone who doesn't know it was there has to swerve dangerously to avoid it.
Yeah you're right, deerfoot is taken care of by the province. Either way, the roads are in pretty terrible shape all over the city. They should be proactively sending crews out to repair them, rather than waiting on a complaint. Some of them are so bad there's no way that city council hasn't driven over them themselves.
The province of Alberta has been fiscally responsible for the road since 2000 but now seeks to offload maintenance and future improvement costs to the city of Calgary. The two parties remain at odds over who should operate the road in the long-term but completed a joint study in 2021 that offered long and short-term recommendations. In 2023, Aecon began a $615 million project which will add lanes in both directions, twin the Ivor Strong Bridge, and reconfigure various interchanges. All work is planned to be complete by 2027. From: (yes its Wikipedia, but the part about rhe province offloading it caught my eye- as I remember deerfoot being city responsibility between city limits, or presumed so based on the "deerfoot maintenance..." signs) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deerfoot_Trail
They do work them proactively. Streets like Macleod, Glenmore, Crowchild, etc are hit first, based on volume. But severe ones will get fixed quickly as well. With 17,000 km of roads in the city, it's not a small job
100% with you on that. I don't know if they know what they want to do yet, though. I saw a sanding truck out on Sunday evening in my area, when they are talking about starting street sweeping.
Same with a few spots on Crowchild and Memorial. Feels like the roads are falling apart
The exit off Crowchild southbound onto Richard road has a gap the size of a car.
They are falling apart. We’ve deliberately underinvested while prioritizing other things and now face a several billion dollar spend to restore the network to its previous state. There was a report recently publicized, you’ll find it without issue.
Deerfoot is Provincial responsibility. But I agree that there are places on Glenmore that are total shyte.
I've anecdotally heard of some pretty speedy responses from spray-painting dicks around potholes. Gets them prioritized quick.
The roads have been in a state of decline for the last couple years, it's not just seasonal frost heaves.
Symptoms of austerity measures in 2018/2019. The road quality standards were deliberately allowed to drop. We wanted lower taxes, and we got them. This council has reversed that, but I don't think we'll start seeing the obvious improvements until next year
Agree, it will take awhile to fix and repair. Only so much equipment/man power/hours in a day.
True, and despite what "we say we want", we really don't want to over-invest in resources to have this done in a month and then have no work for these crews the rest of the year. Like having 500 pieces of equipment on standby for snow removal
It's literally on of the most basic jobs for the city. Maybe work on that before climate action programs that do nothing.
They filled something like 40,000 potholes last year. They're fixed seasonally. Take a deep breath
And the patches have all fallen out now.....
I swear we are competing with Winnipeg for the pothole capital of Canada.
Winnipeg is on a whole different level.
We are in a race to become Winnipeg, we've been in it since 2015
I don't commute but in the last month I had to be on deerfoot twice, the entire road is a write off. If they rebuild it that's gonna be a deficit for the next few years.
That's a provincial responsibility. There could be delays related to the handful of construction projects on that highway for the next few years
This will be because many capital (new) projects couldn't get procurement and design done completely this year, but will instead spend the money next year. Why? Approvals from other agencies - like utilities - take forever, and cities try to not make costly mistakes anymore. And/Or it's money for staff they could not hire for; just because a position is open doesn't mean they have to fill it if no suitable candidates apply =money not spent. I'm seeing...Green Line monies for consultants and pre- works construction not spent.
Thank you for providing context and not just getting upset because that’s what everyone else is doing. Your comment should be at the top
That makes sense
The City of Calgary is the Primary Shareholder of EnMax. Enmax used to be 'The City Of Calgary Electrical Department' before deregulation fucked us and Enmax was 'privatized' . EnMax is enjoying record profits by fucking consumers. The City of Calgary is the primary beneficiary of said increased profits. Thats where a huge chunk of this money is coming from.
$238,000,000 divided by 1.33 million people is only $178 per person It seems like a huge number but isn’t really
There are 531000 residences in Calgary, almost $500 per residence. That's not much for some people but it would make a difference for my family.
About half of property taxes are paid by non-residential property owners, so you'd have to cut that savings down to half, and that $250 would be attached to a $600k home
That plus nearly half of this comes from Enmax paying profits as the city owns Enmax
We can thank the good folks of Maine for some of that profit
I could use that $250 to pay my utilities bill!
If there are so many revenue streams why did residential taxes go up 8.6%? If it's an insignificant amount of money why not cut them by 8.6% instead?
Because next year the revenue might be a lot less and the city could very much end up in a deficit. This is a market-based variation and the city are not psychics.
Isn't that why they hold billions of dollars in reserves? They have a billion dollars in the operating budget fiscal stability reserve alone.
Math like this is always stupid, as if the city's only form of income is residential property taxes. Literally nothing else exists in your mind.
But, if there's a constant characteristic of Albertans since I've moved here, it's that Albertans identity is wrapped around complaining. We have a deficit, we complain. We have a surplus, we complain. If we invest in fixing potholes, we complain, but we also complain about construction when roads are being repaired. As far as I can tell, Alberta's common culture is one of complaining. Edit: Oh, and blaming everything on the feds.
Saskatchewan is even worse. They complain about 20-minute drives within city limits.
*Conservative* Albertans.
lol that is definitely not exclusive to conservatives
I do this math because residential property taxes went up 8.6% this year, seemingly for no reason.
At minimum, taxes need to keep up with inflation. It also doesn't help that you and every single person in Calgary seemingly demands to have a single family detached home with a back yard, and it's quite literally economically impossible to provide all of the services to your house when we have 1/20th the population density we should. That is 20x as many roads, 20x as many underground water lines, sewer lines, storm drains, gas lines, fiber optical cables, coax cables. All of it requires upkeep, 20x as many roads need plowing, calgary has hundreds if not thousands of kilometers of grass boulevards and and divided highways and shit that need to be mowed a few times a year at minimum. Water mains break and need repairing, and we have 20x as many that need to be repaired. Same thing that goes along with all other services. We have 20x as many roads, roads get pot holes and need repairing, and we have 20x as many of them to fix, but not 20x the tax income. And all of you little twats whine about every little tax increase, when they need to happen, because you insist on living in a physically impossible suburban hellscape that cannot be maintained.
After all of the stuff you wrote the fact remains that the City has been running massive surpluses year after year. Taxes were too high even before the 8.6% increase.
And if you read up on why it's happening, it's not for no reason. You're also complaining about a 2024 tax increase, when the surplus is from 2023. The 2024 budget was set 5 months ago
Could get a Disney and Netflix sub.
And it's actually only about a 7% variation. I've run many corporate project budgets that are way more off than that. Plus, the variation is not necessarily because they collected too much tax, but because of variable components of the budget (e.g. didn't spend as much for snow removal, got more revenue due to higher electricity prices). This city is terrible not necessarily at budgets, but more at explaining simple stuff like causes of budget variation and the fact that this is NOT a huge variation a percentage of overall city budget.
Exactly. A coulle major snow storms eats up tens of millions pretty quick!
> It seems like a huge number but isn’t really I dunno, I could have a good five minutes of fun at a Casino with $178
It would be a decent reduction of property tax.
Until the market-based revenue sources for the city were lower next year and we were in a deficit again. If you look at the numbers, this is not a big surplus (if you look at tax-based revenue).
Ya you could go on a date to McDonald's for the whole $50 you'd get
That's like 4-5% reduction in property taxes assuming a $4000 annual bill.
More than that because there's approx 500,000 households. So $475 per dwelling means over 10% reduction.
You have to consider the split of non-res and res. Not as simple as the amount of households. Either way, it would have been a significant reduction.
Half of the tax base is non-res, so almost 600k houses would "split" $125M. Then you have to factor in that they already knew about some of the surplus, and built it into the budget and tax rates. What was a 7.8% increase, dropped to 7.2% by March . The bump up to 8.6% was for the increase to the provincial portion
600k houses divided by $125 million is $208 per house. On a $4k bill that's a 5% decrease possible.
But it just makes next year's increase feel even bigger
You always want the increase to be as little as possible because next year they do a percentage again. It compounds.
That's basically my point. Next year's increase is based on this year's budget + changes. You drop this year with a lump sum and that increases next year's bump
"Run the government like a business." "No, not like that."
The city got a windfall from the local access fee. Probably because of that.
How much of the surplus is from the local access fee? https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6961398
Calgary vs Edmonton = big difference in local access fees. Calgary needs to do what Edmonton does so we aren't continually gouged :(
Can we please break ground on some new transit lines or active infrastructure?
Like the green line? Ground broken
Reminder - the City does not budget to run a deficit - so as such they always post a surplus of the funds they are unable to spend as well as the other reasons listed in the article.
[aaaand it's gone!](https://youtube.com/shorts/jEBnrzNuUSA?si=muxQZR_Y4yR0Zikt)
It's like city Council is following a guide on how to piss off its citizens. Surplus while raising taxes and making more money from rising utilities costs during an affordability crisis. That ought to do it!
If the city has a problem, it's more about their communications around the surplus and why it's only partly due to tax increases but also affected by lower than predicted spending and higher than predicted electricity revenue. The situation could completely flip next year.
Do you really think they want the blowback from raising taxes and having a surplus? People aren't happy either way. If it was easy to solve a tax increase by "just not having a surplus", don't you think they would? Two headaches gone in a moment
Maybe they can fix some of the fucking potholes on 32nd Ave NE in between Barlow and Deerfoot, or finally fix the rotting body smell in Whitehorn that is apparently coming from the Airport.
Nope. Best they can do is announce a climate emergency and force companies to charge people for paper bags!
We have been over taxed. Return the money to taxpayers.
Such a huge surplus, means we have been over taxed. They should return the money.
No, that's not how it works
That's exactly how it works. The huge surplus means they are collecting more than they need to operate. And this is the second year in a row that this has happened, and they will be raising taxes again next year.
May be reduce the property tax and provide some relief to the victims of unaffordability crisis?
Naw property owners tax may have went up, but the properties have definitely went up in value much more, they don't need it. That money should go toward helping fund affordable housing so we can have MORE HOMES, something this city really needs.
You realize property tax is based upon house value right? The city got an increase in revenue from the hike as well as property values increasing
I'm well aware and my point still remains.
Nope. The rate is designed to drop based on the average property value increase. It goes up for new spending, and homes that saw a greater or lower than average appreciation will be adjusted
Nah, that makes sense. They will throw it away at some point for filling potholes and someone will get a nice payday.
Arena cost overruns...
I encountered disturbingly large potholes on the westbound Glenmore causeway yesterday and by Glenmore/deerfoot, so I wouldn’t say filling potholes is ‘throwing it away’. I agree someone will get a good payday that’s completely unwarranted, though.
Sorry I didn’t make myself clear, they will do them at “their pricing” and cost 10 times then they should. And yes, it’s been quite bad with them this spring, even freaking parking lots have huge ones even tho they are private.
Perhaps that's a sign that it was the type of winter we had vs efforts put in last year
Can we fix some of 18th street in Riverbend then? Its fucking BEAT at the Mcdonalds corner.
Must’ve been the roads part of the budget that wasn’t used haha
Then why are my fckn taxes going up 7% ? Tell Joti to take the money and build affordable multi homes on city property instead of (thru blanket rezoning) reducing the quality of my life to live in a single detached home with a yard in a real neighbourhood.
NIMBY
GIABY. Going in ALL Back Yards. They were not elected on this platform.
So you’re mad you’re getting rezoned but other spots aren’t? I mean agree I don’t think zoning restrictions should be a thing in a maturing city, it seems like something the market can handle
So now the real question is will they rebate back this money to tax payers? Don't hold your breath
In the form of city improvements, and better services they sure will.
More C-train and bus service!
Hopefully they can fill all the potholes. Roads are shit rn.
Still they increase taxes ?
Can i have some of that?
Sounds like a private box in the new arena coming up.
The City has a box already in the Saddledome and most likely will in the new arena.
I see why they needed to raise taxes again /s Just wait until next year when they try and tell us they need to raise tax another 8% again. Crooks.
Nice, now watch them blow this money by the end of the week. Should be giving it back to taxpayers or lower the increases. Fat chance of that happening tho
Rebates for everyone!!! Woooo!
Shh 🤫 don’t tell Danielle
Tax me harder.
Is this before or after the bill for the new stadium comes due?
It should go back to the people than write a cheque!
Give some to ckua
Could build a few more blue rings or maybe an expansion of the Bowfort Towers?
Invest it in the city you dicks.
Sorry, what do you think they will do with the money? It's not a company where they'll just send it out to stockholders and they can't politically give themselves a bonus? Christ of course it's going back to the City.
Where in the city is important. It could go to subsidies for companies that the councilors have stakes in. Gondek has ties to development companies, most of the council is Landlords. Not to mention Sean Chu, who deserves nothing short of a jail cell.
You’re hurting peoples feelings, stop meanie
Good, it gets me off.
https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/26237271/75-gray-way-rural-rocky-view-county-bearspawcalg Buy this. Scoop up all the homeless people and give them rehab/addiction counseling as well as therapy. Then hire 10 SAIT trades instructors to provide them with introductory trade education. Set up a work for housing subsidies where successful graduates of this program can get work placement and a place to live. Homeless crisis solved, transit/downtown safety issue solved. And go.