Six primary focus areas have been outlined as Calgary city council charts the path to its next four-year budget later in November.
The priorities were delivered publicly for the first time on March 10 at a special meeting of Calgary city council, after five closed-session meetings over the past few months.
The document includes Reliable and Sustainable Infrastructure; Safe City, Functional Transportation Network, Community Livability & Well-being; Balanced Growth & Evolving Neighbourhoods; Trusted and Collaborative Government.
Those six areas are broken down in a city presentation, with broad outcomes that are open to wide interpretation in the delivery of that priority area.
With its adoption by Calgary city council, the next step will be for city administration to put together implementation plans to achieve the outcomes, the resources required to accomplish the task, and the cost for those endeavours.
City of Calgary Chief Financial Officer Les Tochor said that in May, city council will be presented with the current base state that includes the cost of delivering city services at their current levels. After that, they will include different overlays for police, fire, transit, parks and other city services.
In July, there will be an early review of the developing budget, with potential assumptions, issues and adjustments, some that may require altered overlays, he said. Then, the November budget package will be delivered, and then city council will hear from citizens in the public hearing.
“Together, these touch points ensure work is aligned, sequenced and coordinated across the organization throughout the year,” Tochor said.
“The November budget package will include greater detail on service outcomes, costs, and cross-referencing to the strategic direction document from today to provide a clear line of sight.”
The ‘ambitious’ rearranging of deck chairs
Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot questioned how admin interpreted the wording in some of the areas, specifically the “ambitious” investment in transit.
“That, to me, is the epitome of give an inch and take a mile. Council made some additional investments in public transit in the last budget deliberations, specifically to start going down the path of addressing the issues identified in Route Ahead,” he said.
“But council didn’t give a blank cheque to continue to move forward with that same level of investment on a go-forward basis. So, the interpretation of ambitious to me, I think, is overreach.”
Ward 3 Coun. Andrew Yule, who did use the word “ambitious” when describing the level of investment needed, said that ultimately city council would have the choice in how ambitious that turned out to be.
“I would kind of caution my colleagues that this is a strategy that, like CFO Tochor said, we’re going to put different overlays, so ambitious will have several overlays for us to choose from,” Yule said.
“Ambition is still up to our ambition, and so I would hope that we can kind of keep that in because we had a transit presentation yesterday showing our Primary Transit Network, which looks pretty much the same Primary Transit Network that was around since Dave Bronconnier.”
Overall, Ward 14 Coun. Landon Johnston said that in reviewing last Calgary city council’s priorities, city administration fell short in delivering on those priorities, and that much of the language remains the same.
“I understand you’re coming up with different ways of monitoring and seeing what’s successful with this council’s direction. But, I mean, it just seems like we’re rearranging words around that the last council had,” Johnston said.
“What are we going to do specifically different, or, I guess administration… what are you guys going to do differently that is actually going to produce results?”
Chief Administrative Officer David Duckworth said he believed that the direction set by this council will be much more focused. He pointed to a much-slimmed-down list of key performance indicators, which under the previous council sat at 320.
“We will have a shorter list of the key measures and outcomes that this council wants to deliver,” Duckworth said.
“I’m confident this process will lead… to better results, so that at the end of your four years, my last quarterly report that’s delivered, you’ll be able to clearly show Calgarians whether you’ve achieved the things that you wanted to achieve or not. So, I think we will be more focused with doing less.”
Being financially sustainable is missing: Coun. Wyness
Ward 2 Coun. Jennifer Wyness said city councillors have engaged in a lot of different conversations, taking puzzle pieces on the table and putting them all together. She said, however, the document they produced lacked the foundation of focusing on the City of Calgary being financially stable.
“I really do want that as a metric on here, because without a financially sustainable city and the economy today, you’re going to struggle,” she said.
“You’re going to struggle to meet all of the asks of your community.”
Wyness said with a lot of different hands out for more money, including a $14 million ask for additional parks maintenance, she’s concerned about a large potential property tax increase.
“Every single decision a councillor makes has a financial cost to it, and I think this document may not seem like there’s a number to it, but when you look at inflation, when you look at what’s going on in the markets today, this comes with big numbers, and we can talk about that more at IPC, but this is a big number document,” she said.
Ward 4 Coun. DJ Kelly felt the document fell short. He said virtually every city service could find its way under one of these priority areas.
“I believe this document is far too large and free-ranging, and it offers very little in the way of direction to administration on what to prioritize,” he said.
“I think what we’re going to end up coming back from administration as a result of us not putting in additional work to get this document down to where I believe it needs to be is that we’re going to see a little bit of everything, from administration, we’re going to see very little in the way of prioritization or focus.”
Mayor Jeromy Farkas said that while the criticism is fair and that it’s not a perfect document, it is a good reaffirmation of what this council is interested in prioritizing.
“I would say the biggest challenge I have with this document is that it really could be in any city in Canada, and it could really be any time,” he said.
“So, when I think about wanting to set up a four-year plan, I’d love it to be time-bound, specific to the challenge that we have in front of us in the next four years as we’re looking at being the cusp of welcoming the two- millionth Calgarian.
“That’s one of the challenges that I have with this document, is that you pick it up and it’s very… It doesn’t necessarily speak to the specific moment that’s before us.”
The document was ultimately passed, as is, by city council.
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