Calgary Minute: Council Meeting, Spending Restraint, and a Rejected Rollback

Calgary Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Calgary politics

This Week In Calgary:

• There is a Combined Council meeting today which will include discussions on a very wide variety of issues. Council will be reviewing the Green Line's Q3 financials and risks, discussing upcoming consultations on the new Arena, debating supervised consumption sites, considering committee reports calling for the establishment of four new Business Improvement Areas, and more.
  
  
• On Wednesday there will be a Standing Policy Committee on Planning and Urban Development meeting which will be discussing a series of land use amendments.
  
  
• On Thursday there will be a Calgary Planning Commission meeting where they will be discussing Secondary Suite Process Reform, but a planned meeting of the Event Centre Assessment Committee is cancelled. The Event Centre Committee won't meet again until November - presumably there's no rush anymore, now that they already got that 11th-hour vote pushed through?

Last Week In Calgary:

• At the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) Convention in Edmonton, Municipalities were put on notice by the Minister of Municipal Affairs. Councillors were told that they will be expected to do their part to help bring the province's finances back to balance. The province is hoping that when they enact modest spending cuts, municipalities don't just raise their own taxes to compensate. Has the Minister met Calgary Council?
  
  
• Councillor Farkas' proposal to ask City Staff to accept voluntary wage rollbacks was, unsurprisingly, rejected by Union leaders. Given how many Calgarians have themselves experienced wage rollbacks as a consequence of the economic downturn, this would have been a common-sense compromise. We can't really blame the unions for saying no though, when Council refuses to even cut their own salaries!
  
  
• And, because every cloud has a silver lining, a report released last week found that the Calgary housing market is amongst the most affordable in Canada. This follows information released from Teranet-National Bank earlier this year that found prices are down 2.8% compared to last year and 7% compared to their peak back in October 2014. For those of you who own property and are looking to sell, we're sorry - every silver lining must have a cloud too?
  

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