Calgary Minute: Heritage Designations, Additional Officers, and Vehicle Accident Statistics

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

This Week In Calgary:

• We've upgraded our email system! If you previously subscribed to our newsletters but haven't received any until this point, we apologize for the inconvenience and we look forward to bringing you important updates and information about what's going on at City Hall! You can review any past newsletters you may have missed online, by clicking here. And, if you're still experiencing problems, well, then you're not reading this, are you?!
  
  
• There will be a Strategic Meeting of Council on Tuesday at 9:30 am. The two agenda items are listed as confidential and will be discussed in-camera (in secret). One item is listed as 2024-2026 Service Plan Highlights and 2023 November Adjustments Debrief, and the other is called Potential Changes to Local Access Fees - Budget Implications and Calgarian Impacts.
  
  
• The Community Development Committee meeting, originally scheduled for Wednesday, has been cancelled. The Intergovernmental Affairs Committee will meet on Thursday at 9:30 am. No agenda is available yet. Also on Thursday, at 1:00 pm, there will be a meeting of the Calgary Planning Commission. On the agenda are several land use amendments, as well as a confidential item regarding the recently passed housing strategy.

Last Week In Calgary:

• The Province committed $4.16 million in financial support to the Calgary Police Service for the hiring of 50 additional officers in the coming year. The funding encompasses officer salaries, one-time costs like vehicles and uniforms, and ongoing technology and support expenses. The first batch of 25 officers is scheduled for recruitment and training in January, focusing on high-crime areas in Calgary's transit network and downtown core. While the remaining officers are expected to be included in the 2024-25 budget, the Province says the funding is permanent, sustainable, and will not fall on the City. The funding initiative mirrors a similar effort in Edmonton, where money has also been allocated for hiring 50 new officers.
  
  
• Council heard an annual briefing on the Safer Mobility Plan. According to the briefing, Calgary has witnessed an increase in fatal motor-vehicle collisions in 2023 compared to the previous year. There have been 19 deaths reported in the first 10 months of this year, surpassing the total of 16 fatalities in 2022 and 14 in 2021. The briefing also revealed a rise in serious collisions, attributing the trend to heightened post-pandemic vehicular travel. The city experienced 437 serious injuries in motor-vehicle collisions in 2022, an increase from 401 in 2021. Although the pedestrian fatality count decreased in 2022, serious injuries rose by nearly 50%, prompting concerns about meeting the four-year target to reduce severe motor-vehicle collisions by 25% by 2023. The City is working on a new plan for 2024-28 with initiatives that include center-line hardening, speed humps, and in-street school crosswalk signs.
  
  
• The Infrastructure and Planning Committee unanimously endorsed municipal historic resource designations for four heritage buildings. The buildings include the Plaza Theatre in Kensington (a nearly century-old cinema), as well as the Cross and Lawless residences in Inglewood, and the Nimmons residence in Bankview (a heritage home built in 1898). The designations, if formally approved in a future City Council meeting, would safeguard these structures from demolition or alterations that could compromise their historical features, while making property owners eligible for conservation grants.

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