Calgary Minute: Stampede, Reserves, and the Stadium
Calgary Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Calgary politics.
Calgary Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Calgary politics
This Week In Calgary:
- The Calgary Stampede is in full swing which means there are no council or committee meetings this week. Expect to see City Councillors hobnobbing and pancake-tossing in every quadrant of our City this week!
- If you want to check out Stampede yourself, here's a list of the best free pancake breakfasts, and a more extensive list of all Stampede-related events.
- In the background, concern continues to grow about the Green Line LRT's costs and timeline. As we reported last week, the costs have gone up yet again for the project. At what point do the provincial and federal governments start to question their funding commitments, given that the money was promised to a very different project than what is now on the table?
Last Week In Calgary:
- A ThinkHQ poll showed that fewer than 4 in 10 Calgarians approve of the Mayor's performance, the lowest approval rating for a Calgary Mayor in several decades.
- Council's Priorities and Finance Committee disclosed that the City's "Fiscal Stability Reserve" slush fund is not nearly as flush as it was this time last year. Council has taken over half-a-billion dollars out of the fund, including $300-million for pet infrastructure projects, which is not the purpose of the fund at all. A rainy-day fund should be used to keep the City afloat and minimize harm to taxpayers when times get tough, not for building brand new projects while hiking taxes to pay for current spending!
- The ongoing Stadium negotiations are still being kept secret, with Calgary's Acting City Manager saying that details will only be made public after a funding agreement is reached with the Flames. The discussions were described as "productive" but the real question is... productive for whom? This is yet another example of the trend towards depriving taxpayers of any meaningful input into megaprojects that we're on the hook for financially.
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