Calgary’s citywide rezoning public hearing and the lead-up to it were pricey, but Mayor Jyoti Gondek said that democracy has a cost.

Further, city administration has an estimated cost nearing $5 million to implement the 12 amendments tacked on to last month’s approved land use changes.

The month-long public hearing alone was $331,000, according to preliminary costs tallied by the City of Calgary. It also cost the city $944,000 to prepare for the public hearing, including staff overtime, mailouts, public engagement, advertising, social media and technical support. These are costs that are over and above employee wages.

The work related to 12 approved amendments has an estimated cost of $4.7 million. That would include staffing, system upgrades, communication and public engagement costs.

“The cost estimates are preliminary,” said Calvin Chan, senior planner in community planning.

“Further detailed estimates will be conducted as administration continues to determine the scope and resource for each recommendation, which will be brought forward for consideration during the upcoming mid-cycle adjustment process.”

Ward 1 Coun. Sonya Sharp, who voted against the citywide rezoning along with five of her council colleagues on May 14, questioned some of the costs, including the need for additional resources required for quarterly reporting. She felt much of the information they would track was already being accounted for.

“I think it’s important that we have these costs associated with the rezoning because it was so controversial, but (I’m) just not happy with the cost…” she said.

Finding the money for implementation

Coun. Sharp said that this report breaks down further costs to add amendments that made it “less bad for those that didn’t support it.”

“I think this is an ongoing conversation that we’re going to have to bring to budget; we’re going to have to find money in order to do this with all the other costs that are going to compound on moving forward to November,” she said.

Ward 7 Coun. Terry Wong said there’s also costs that aren’t captured in these amounts, like the time associated with Calgarians who took time out of their days to ensure their voice was heard.

He also wondered how much of the month-long hearing could have been cut off had there been better, more specific information addressing things like what the changes would mean for specific communities and what the impact would be to property values.

“If the Engage process had been much more, not just informative, but consultative or collaborative, not only asking, ‘what do you think about the bylaw,’ but also where the areas of improvement and could the areas of improvement have been addressed through amendments or alternative recommendations put forward by administration,” he said.  

“Then, the four weeks of public hearings could have been done much more efficient.”

Mayor Gondek said it was important to be transparent about the public hearing costs. However, she said you can’t put a price on democracy.

“We enabled, encouraged and allowed Calgarians to come forward and share their thoughts with us. They were able to express concerns that they had, they were able to talk about their experiences,” she said.

“You can’t ask for a better environment for council to make a decision; we were hearing directly from Calgarians. The cost of democracy is what it is.”

Mayor Gondek said they would examine the housing accelerator funding agreement to see if some of these implementation costs could be covered.  Ward 8 Coun. Courtney Walcott added an amendment to the approval of this report to look into cost coverage under that agreement.