Calgary Minute: Police Spending, Plastics Bylaw, and a New Neighbourhood Process

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

This Week In Calgary:

• On Tuesday, there will be a Community Development Committee meeting at 9:30 am. The Committee will discuss regulating single-use items. A proposed bylaw would force restaurant and food service establishments to provide single-use foodware items only if requested by customers, as well as requiring a charge of $0.25 per paper shopping bag and $2.00 per reusable shopping bag by 2025.
  
  
• The Business Advisory Committee will meet on Wednesday at 9:30 am. The Committee will discuss the results of a previous engagement wherein the business community was asked about its needs in preparation for the 2023-2026 Service Plans and Budgets deliberations.
  
  
• The City of Calgary is seeking feedback on its User Fees and Subsidies Policy. Residents are asked to give their thoughts on four guiding principles - the full cost principle, the benefits principle, the resource efficiency principle, and the ability to pay principle. Feedback can be provided online until September 30th, 2022.

Last Week In Calgary:

• The way new neighbourhoods are approved has changed. While Mayor Jyoti Gondek wanted Administration to be the final decision maker in evaluating business cases for new neighbourhoods, some Councillors were opposed to removing elected officials from the decision-making process. Ultimately, some changes were approved by Council and now, Administration will follow a set of criteria to evaluate the business cases and then make recommendations to Council for final approval.
  
  
• The Calgary Police Service spent about $30,000 with the College of Certified Psychophysiologists, an unaccredited U.S. college. Three employees completed a Police Mental Health Certificate, 16 attended a two-day course, and two employees had enrolled in degree programs with the institution. The Calgary Police Commission said CPS is undertaking an internal review of how this occurred. CPS has suspended its affiliation with the college.
  
  
• The City of Calgary broke ground on the affordable housing redevelopment of Rundle Manor in the northeast. The 135 new affordable housing units are expected to be completed in early 2024. The investment into the development is $51.4 million and all three levels of government contributed. The one-, two-, and three-bedroom units will be rented below market prices, but not by much. A much better solution would be better to make all housing more affordable by reducing the cost of construction and increasing the supply of homes. As we've said before, this should be done by cutting government red tape and interference in the market, rather than offering subsidies for specific units.

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