Calgary Minute: Issue 375

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

📅 This Week In Calgary: 📅

• Calgary City Council will meet tomorrow at 9:30 am, and among the items they'll discuss is a legal briefing on whether the City can spend public money to influence Alberta's October 19th separation referendum. The briefing responds to a question from Mayor Jeromy Farkas, who asked at the June 30th meeting whether Council could deploy City resources and civic partners such as Calgary Economic Development to research the referendum's fiscal impact and to advocate publicly for Alberta remaining in Canada. The Acting City Solicitor advised that Council can direct staff to study the referendum's effects, but that publishing conclusions is more complicated because the Elections Finances and Contributions Disclosure Act bars the City from acting as a third-party advertiser. Spending more than $1,000 to promote or oppose the referendum question would breach the rules, though a simple Council resolution expressing support or opposition is likely permissible, and individual members of Council remain free to campaign on their own. Administration says it will seek written guidance from Elections Alberta before returning to Council with further legal advice.
  
  
• One of the items on tomorrow's agenda is a request for the City to guarantee up to $4.968 million in bank loans for Platform Calgary, the non-profit that runs the downtown parkade that the City calls the "Platform Innovation Centre", as it also contains some taxpayer-subsidized office space and meeting rooms for startup companies. The guarantee would cover an existing loan of about $3.968 million used to help build the parkade/centre, plus a new $1 million operating line of credit, and would let Platform defer principal repayments and lower its borrowing costs. Administration says there is no immediate cost to the City unless Platform's lender enforces the guarantee, and that the value of Platform's stake in the building exceeds its debt by roughly five to one. Platform has already received $1.7 million in ongoing City operating funding this year, along with $1.22 million in one-time grants, and this is the first time it has asked the City to guarantee its debt. The guarantee would count against the City's total debt limit but is not expected to affect it materially. Quite why taxpayers are subsidizing a parkade in the first place also appears to be immaterial to City staff.
  
  
• Also on tomorrow's agenda is a briefing on a plan to raise the franchise fee the City collects from ATCO Gas, a charge that ATCO passes on to Calgary natural gas customers through their bills. Council has set a target of $98.2 million in natural gas franchise fee revenue for 2027, an increase of $25 million, which will require the fixed rate on gas to rise from $3.15 to $5.67 per gigajoule. ATCO has asked to extend the current transition method for another year and delay a new billing formula until January 2028, to line up with the launch of its new billing system and avoid reworking software it plans to retire. The company will apply to the Alberta Utilities Commission for the changes by September 21st, and a public notice period will invite residents to comment at least 45 days before the filing. Franchise fees are one of the main ways the City raises revenue outside of property taxes.
  
  
• Calgary City Council held another multi-day public hearing to consider exemptions to the repeal of the city's blanket rezoning policy. Councillors heard from more than 100 speakers and reviewed hundreds of written submissions while deciding whether an additional 247 properties should retain higher-density zoning because development applications were submitted before the repeal. Mayor Jeromy Farkas argued that honouring those applications would reduce legal risk, while others maintained developers should be required to reapply under the new rules. Council also approved Ward 11 Councillor Rob Ward's amendment to keep secondary suites and backyard suites as discretionary rather than permitted uses. Supporters argued that maintaining discretionary status allows planners to consider site-specific factors such as lot shape, topography, privacy, and mature trees, while also helping avoid additional appeals to the Subdivision and Development Appeal Board (SDAB) that could delay housing approvals. We'll have more details about exactly which exemptions were and weren't retained in a separate email later this week.
  
  
• Finally, a Calgary judge has ruled that police can hold on to iPhones seized from former mayor Jyoti Gondek and former Councillor Sean Chu until next March, as an investigation into alleged corruption at City Hall continues. Police seized the devices in March as part of a probe launched last summer into a land-use vote in the neighbourhood of Bankview, and applied for an extension because they have been unable to unlock the phones. Justice Allan Fradsham found the devices remain necessary to the investigation, even though police acknowledged their forensic software cannot currently break the latest iPhone security. Court documents allege that a consultant who helps developers navigate City processes offered campaign donations above the legal maximum in exchange for a motion to reconsider the Bankview vote, which had initially ended in a 6-6 tie before passing 8-5 on a second vote. Police allege Gondek advised the consultant on how to approach another Councillor to secure that reconsideration. None of the allegations have been proven in court, and no charges have been laid.

🚨 This Week’s Action Item: 🚨

Eligible Alberta voters can now apply to vote by mail in the upcoming provincial referendums.

Special ballots are available to any eligible elector, including those who will be away during advance voting or on election day, and ballot packages will begin being sent out on September 1st.

Completed mail-in ballots must be received by Elections Alberta by 5:00 pm on October 16th, while advance voting runs from October 13th to 17th before election day on October 19th.

Learn more at the link below:

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