Calgary Minute: Issue 373

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

📅 This Week In Calgary: 📅

• The Community Development Committee meets today at 9:30 am, and one of the items on the agenda is a briefing on how much the City should spend each year to deliver its Home is Here housing strategy. Administration has laid out three funding options for the 2027-2030 budget cycle: a "Keeping the Lights On" option that holds spending at the current $93 million a year, a "Gaining Footing" option at $214 million a year, and a "Building Momentum" option at $526 million a year. At current funding, the City estimates it would enable about 400 non-market homes and house roughly 1,040 Calgarians a year, while the $526-million option is projected to enable 3,000 homes and house 7,800 Calgarians. The Chief Housing Office notes that the cost per home is rising, meaning fewer homes can be built per dollar than in earlier years. The briefing was requested by Council in May and is meant to inform the coming budget deliberations rather than trigger a spending decision now.
  
  
• Also at today's Community Development Committee, Councillors will consider approving $17.2 million in annual funding for 58 existing Family and Community Support Services programs whose current agreements expire at the end of 2026. The program is cost-shared with the provincial government, which covers up to 80% of the funding. Administration reviewed 64 programs with agreements ending this year and is recommending continued funding for 58, referring three to other City funding streams and dropping one it says did not demonstrate impact. The money freed up by the dropped program has been redistributed among the remaining 58. Administration warns that if funding is constrained, community organizations may have to reduce or discontinue programs in 2027.
  
  
• At the Executive Committee's 9:30 am meeting tomorrow, there will be a Notice of Motion from Ward 5 Councillor Raj Dhaliwal that would require the City to publicly disclose the state of infrastructure supporting each new Local Area Plan. Local Area Plans set the land use, density, and long-term policy direction that guide growth and redevelopment across Calgary, and the motion argues that residents and Council would benefit from greater transparency about whether the roads, transit, water, wastewater, stormwater, and community amenities can actually support the growth those plans contemplate. It would direct Administration to develop a standard way of presenting infrastructure readiness alongside each plan, including a point-in-time assessment of existing systems, the age and remaining service life of major assets, known constraints and gaps over a roughly ten-year horizon, upgrades that may be required, and who would be responsible for delivering or funding them, whether the City, developers, or utilities. The motion also asks Administration to make this planning information more accessible to the public. If the Committee agrees, the matter would be forwarded to the July 28th Council meeting for consideration.
  
  
• On Wednesday, at 9:30 am, the Infrastructure and Planning Committee will consider making permanent a set of downtown development rules that let certain projects skip the development permit process. The Centre City Enterprise Area, introduced as a pilot in 2017, exempts qualifying exterior alterations and small additions downtown from needing a development permit, and those exemptions are set to expire at the end of 2026 unless Council acts. Administration says the exemptions have saved applicants 60 to more than 120 days each, exempted an average of 192 permits a year over 2023 to 2025, and saved office conversion projects roughly $500,000 apiece in reduced fees and consulting costs. Real estate and construction groups that were consulted supported keeping the rules. If the committee agrees, the matter would go to a public hearing at the September 15th Council meeting for a final vote.
  
  
• In other news, the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the City, is developing plans to build housing on the park-and-ride lots at the Dalhousie and Fish Creek-Lacombe CTrain stations, and is studying a third site at Anderson Station. An initial round of public engagement wrapped at the end of June, with more feedback planned for the fall. The land corporation says the most common concern so far has been the loss of commuter parking, and it has not said how many stalls would remain. A City count on June 11th found the Dalhousie lot 95% full, with 701 of 737 spaces occupied. A former Calgary Transit planner argued that moving people, not providing parking, is the transit system's core mandate, and that lots sit underused on evenings and weekends. The land corporation aims to finish the regulatory work this year and seek Council approval early in 2027, with construction possible by late 2027 if private developers buy the land.

🚨 This Week’s Action Item: 🚨

Mayor Jeromy Farkas has floated extending the CTrain's downtown free-fare zone all the way to the Stampede grounds, reframing a program that Administration recently suggested may no longer be viable.

What do you think? Should the free zone be extended, kept, or wound down?

Reply to this email and let us know your thoughts!

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