Lower Property Taxes
Calgarians are facing another year of rising property taxes.
The City’s proposed 2026 budget maintains a 3.6% blended property tax increase, which translates to an average 5.8% rise for single-family homes.
On top of that, utility, waste, and recycling costs are projected to go up by 3.9%.
This budget also includes a one percent tax shift from businesses to homeowners, which significantly increases the burden on residents.
The budget offers little restraint on overall spending, asking residents to shoulder more costs each year rather than forcing City Hall to find efficiencies.
Council will begin deliberations on November 24th.
The budget will be debated, amended, and voted on from November 26th to 28th, making this a crucial opportunity for residents to influence how their money is spent.
Add your name to this petition and tell City Council you want:
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No new property tax increase for 2026
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Spending focused on essential services like roads, policing, and fire protection
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Cuts to non-essential projects and a halt to bureaucratic expansion
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Responsible use of reserves to avoid future fiscal crises
Sign the petition now and tell Council to Lower Property Taxes:
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Start with the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about, like laying off civic employees as we are way too big bureaucracy & little work is really getting done by these under motivated government workers.
We laid off two full police classes who graduated to unemployment back then & it was part of the reduction of civic employee layoffs that were necessary. Somehow we managed & we will manage again if we keep our spending focussed on core city functions & minimize luxuries.
Also, have you ever notice at a city worksite each employee has a nice company truck, car, machine & no one has to car pool in the company vehicle like they did back decades ago? That’s how the “crew cab” was invented & required as a crew would jump into the vehicle & head together to the worksite.
More efficient or just too large & expensive way of doing business?
Also, it’s time a value for service audit be performed on the issue of Council’s promise back in the day that rolling out black, blue & green bins will save Calgarians tax dollars by reducing waste in our landfills and actually converting green waste into compost will generate revenue for the city. These were themes & promises made when Nenshi et al rolled out the new waste management. Now we have specially designed trucks for each colour of bin to collect the various household waste. Can you imagine the huge increase in waste collection & fleet maintenance to keep this going? And how much green waste are homeowners disposing during the cold season? Yet our waste “user” fees keep going up.
Here are a couple ways to trim the budget & lighten the continue burdening on property owners (business or residential) with annual tax increases.