Calgary budget discussion time approaches and councillors are gathering input from citizens on their priorities.

Coun. Sonya Sharp hosted dozens of Ward 1 residents Wednesday evening to get their take on priorities for mid-cycle Calgary budget deliberations coming up in November.

Sharp and her ward team posted nine different categories on the walls of the Vienna Room at the Varsity Community Association, and guests, who signed up to the town-hall-style event in advance, put a green (invest) or red (cut) dot on their areas of interest.

Bowness resident, Sharon, who asked that her last name not be used, said that she hopes Coun. Sharp comes away with a better of idea what citizens consider as priorities.

“I also think she’s heard it loud and clear in the last number of meetings, what is on the minds of this board,” Sharon said.

While the nine categories included the climate strategy, transit, parks, water infrastructure, roads infrastructure, taxation, public safety, affordable housing and city facilities, Sharon said there were many other smaller things she thinks Calgarians are taking issue with in the Calgary budget that weren’t on the list.

She wasn’t pleased with up to $5 million being spent on a rebranding strategy and she said the City of Calgary has a pattern of repeating work, like constantly reviewing how to handle drugs and addiction and disorder. She said it’s playing out again with the water infrastructure.

“For example, they’re fixing the water main on 33rd Avenue, but they’re patching it. Why didn’t we just drop a new piece of pipe in there?” Sharon said.

“They do this, they dig it all up, spend weeks doing it, and then how much time goes by and they’re going to have to do it again.”

While some who attended were OK with a modest property tax increase, those guests also said that they’d only be OK with it should that money be well spent. Sharon, however, wasn’t convinced a property tax increase was needed.

“I prefer to see lower taxes and a better use of money. I think this administration has been focusing a lot on the wrong issues,” she said.

Citizens guiding the mid-cycle Calgary budget adjustment: Coun. Sharp

Like her colleagues, Coun. Sharp is tapping into the collective consciousness to find out what citizen priorities are at this point in time. It’s an exercise she’s done in the past to dig into what’s important for ward residents.

“This budget is about the citizens. I will formulate my motions based on what I’m hearing. It’s not that I’m going to show up at budget and say, ‘OK, I think you can cut all of this in order to save money,’” Sharp said.

“What I fundamentally want to find out from the people that show up, the people I’ve talked to before and after, is surgically, what do you want us to look at? It’s really about them guiding this budget as it’s the mid-cycle.”

There’s only so much money to go around, property tax increase or not, but Coun. Sharp said she believes that citizens understand there’s always a trade-off with the investments they want. She said they saw the recent report on the cost to improve maintenance on city roads – and somewhere there’s going to be an impact elsewhere, perhaps in a place like snow clearing.

“Those things go hand in hand, because our weather is so hard on our roads, so it’s kind of like a catch-22. If we don’t snow clear and do that properly, then our infrastructure on our roads are going to feel that burden,” she said.

“So, there’s so much to think about when it comes to these budgets.”

Even since she was first elected to council in 2021, Coun. Sharp said that citizen priorities have changed. At first it was more about little things, low taxes and what Calgarians are getting for their money. It’s evolved to interest rates and affordability, inflation, population growth increasing its burden on citizens and now the City of Calgary is becoming a part of that, she said.

“Over the last couple years, I’ve really heard from Calgarians about the things we don’t need, that some of the projects that aren’t infrastructure projects, some of the vanity stuff that could have been paused,” Sharp said.

“It’s really shifted. There’s also a very strong tone of discontent from Calgarians.”