Calgary Minute: Property Taxes, Pub Night, and Poll Problems For Gondek

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

This Week In Calgary:

• Monday morning at 9:30am, the newly struck Event Centre Committee will hold its first meeting. A Chair and Vice-Chair will be elected, and a schedule of meetings will be decided upon. Somehow, it feels like we’ve been here before.
  
  
• On Wednesday at 9:30am, there will be a meeting of the Intergovernmental Affairs Committee. The Committee will receive verbal updates from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Calgary Metropolitan Region Board. On Thursday at 1:00 pm, the Calgary Planning Commission will meet to discuss several land use amendments.
  
  
• A redesigned summer patio program is headed to a forthcoming Council Meeting for approval. The new program is being recommended by a committee, and involves waiving patio permit fees and doing away with the ugly orange barricades from last year. Hopefully, if all goes as planned, the new patios will be much more accessible and less of a hazard.

Last Week In Calgary:

• Surprise, surprise, now that it's not an election year, City Council has approved a property tax increase. Unlike last year's 0.2% tax cut, this year's taxes will be going up by an average of 3.61%. Note that this is the combined municipal and provincial property tax increase and the provincial portion is only going up by 1.7%, so the municipal tax increase is actually even higher than this average shows. Calgarians will find tax bills in their mailbox in May, and payments are due in June.
  
  
• In possibly related news, approval ratings for Mayor Gondek and Council are in. Mayor Gondek appears to have skipped the usual newly-elected-politician "honeymoon period", with just a 38% approval rating, 53% disapproval, and just 9% unsure. Mayors Nenshi and Bronconnier had approval ratings of about 85% and 75% respectively, after their first few months in office. The new left-leaning Council is fairing equally badly, with 37% approval, 48% disapproval, and 15% unsure.
  
  
• On Thursday, we hosted a Pints & Politics event at Hudsons Pub downtown. The turnout was fantastic with about 100 people joining us for snacks, beverages, and great political conversation. Don't worry if you weren’t able to join us this time, we’ll be making these events a pretty regular thing, and we’ll be rotating the venues throughout different areas of the City so that as many people can make it out as possible.

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