Calgary Minute: LRT Uncertainty, Business Closures, and Council Pay

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

This Week In Calgary:

• Council is back on Monday at 9:30 am with the first Combined Council Meeting of the new decade. Today's meeting agenda includes water security, waste management, and a bunch of land-use amendments.
  
  
• On Wednesday at 9:30 am there will be a meeting of the Standing Policy Committee on Planning and Urban Development. The Committee will hear from City Administration who will present a 2019 end of year report plans for 2020.
  
  
• Also on Wednesday, the City will be closing the Inglewood train crossing at 8th Street S.E. to all traffic including vehicle, bike and pedestrian traffic as part of an agreement with CP Rail made more than a century ago. City staff report that the 100+ year delay has not been a problem as this is about average for City projects.

Last Week In Calgary:

• Mayor Nenshi told journalists that there are key decisions that must be made early in the new year to lift the cloud of uncertainty surrounding the Green Line. He claims that those uncertainties have been caused by the Provincial and Federal governments, but remember, the Green Line has already shrunk to half the initial size and more than doubled in cost, all before construction has even started. The Provincial and Federal governments committed funds to the City's original Green Line plan, not any plan at any cost.
  
  
• Two more 17th Ave businesses - Purolator and Fishman's - have closed, and The Bownesian Grocer in Bowness, and many others, are fighting to keep their doors open in 2020. Chief amongst business owner's concerns we're mounting property taxes and difficult economic times. It's almost as if raising taxes in the middle of an economic downturn is a horrible practice that City Hall needs to abandon immediately.
  
  
• The five-person Council Compensation Review Committee met for a second time to examine Councillor salaries, pensions, and benefits. Despite the Mayor of Calgary making more than Alberta's Premier, the committee's review has been limited to comparing our Mayor and Councillor's pay to that of other Councils across the country. Meanwhile, many Calgarians have been forced to take pay cuts, or lost their jobs entirely, in recent years.

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