Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said she hoped that city admin brought their complete budget work to council last week, with no more surprises and extra cash discovered.

Last week, City of Calgary administration presented its numbers for the mid-cycle adjustment, which will guide budget allocations for the next two years. Back in September, former Chief Financial Officer Carla Male’s budget preview showed a proposed combined property tax increase of 4.5 per cent (6.4 per cent blended residential and 2.2 per cent blended non-residential.)

The latest budget version instead reflects the council-imposed 3.6 per cent combined property tax increase. The combined property tax is a blend of both residential (blended 5.5 per cent among property classes) and non-residential (blended 1.4 per cent among non-res classes) proposed property tax increases.

When former CFO Male presented to a Strategic Meeting of Council in September, the admin report said they’d exhausted all financial tools at their disposal, and in order to meet Calgary’s needs, an additional 0.89 per cent in property tax revenue would be needed from Calgarians.

“Multiple strategies were used to find efficiencies, rescope or reprioritize lower-priority work, improve budget estimates and reduce year-end variances to fund key priorities,” the admin report read.

“Even with this significant achievement, Administration can’t continue to deliver on all key priority projects and maintain service levels within Council’s directed overall 3.6 per cent increase.”

This report was approved or had consultation from 13 different General Managers or directors, including Chris Stewart, who was relieved of duties at the same time as Male.

The document was also approved by the current acting CFO Les Tochor and had consultation from the City of Calgary’s Chief Operating Officer Stuart Dalgleish and Chief Administrative Officer David Duckworth.

So, what changed in roughly seven weeks?

Calgary budget levers to pull

During a media conference Nov. 5, following the delivery of the revised budget, reporters were told that these changes had been the result of work done over seven weeks to pare down the initial budget estimate.

However, the final release of budget documents to the media was delayed by nearly three hours. Further, two of the documents had been last updated – the council presentation and the media release – less than half an hour before being provided to the media. Some of the documents contained information that still needed “adjustment,” CAO Duckworth told reporters. Those documents would be available for council this week and for the public a short time after that.

Duckworth said that for the past year, they’ve been examining opportunities to fund services and investments with the dollars the city has. He said over the past number of years, the City of Calgary has had healthy surpluses, and they’re trying to bring that down to a more reasonable number. It’s something they continue to refine, he said.

“You’re correct, back in September, the executive leadership team and I were not in a position… We knew some of the levers that we could pull, but we still needed to do some work,” Duckworth said.

“With that, Mr. Tochor and his team, and before that, Carla and her team, have been doing this every single day, looking for those levers that we can pull to try and unlock additional funds.”

Tochor said a review of investment income, where they appear to have found the bulk of the cash required to cover the previously insurmountable 0.89 per cent in additional property tax revenue, is an ongoing process.

“Last year, in November, we were able to confidently find additional dollars to go into that budget cycle,” he said.

“Where we find ourselves now is we were walking through the materials, updating our models, getting more information, and we felt confident now that we could support the 2025 budget with additional investment income.”

The City also said they were able to find savings by optimizing some long-standing employment vacancies and carrying that previously budgeted cash forward. City officials said they applied multiple strategies, including finding further efficiencies, rescoping or reprioritizing lower-priority work, improving the budget estimating process and reducing year-end variances.

Mayor Gondek has questions, and others too

Mayor Gondek said they, too, received revised budget information the day prior, and a note that a new presentation would be done. She said there’s likely to be more questions from councillors. It was only the week prior the mayor expressed her frustration that admin wasn’t able to meet the council-imposed 3.6 per cent combined increase.

“I have that question about why it couldn’t have been done back in September or sooner,” the mayor said.

“So, if there is a reason that the investment income forecast came late in the year, I’d love to hear that reason. If it’s just that we didn’t look at investment income as an option, I need to hear about that, too.”

The mayor said she was happy to see that administration retooled and brought back a budget that reflected council’s earlier decision. When asked if there could be even more cash discovered between now and Nov. 18 when the budget is presented, the mayor said she hoped in future budget processes that they could be given the most detailed information possible.

“I would really hope that administration has brought their complete work to us now,” she said.

“I think everyone’s a little bit surprised that we’ve been able to find this investment income that offsets what administration previously thought the increase was going to be. It’s good that we were able to find this, but I think we need to ask some questions about why we didn’t know sooner, and we’ll see if there’s any surprises.”

Still, some councillors are hoping there is more room to move. Ward 1 Coun. Sonya Sharp said it’s an election year – and anything’s possible. She thinks they can cut the property tax increase in half – or at least keep it under two per cent.

“I’m sure that we can find some more savings,” she said.

“I think there’ll be members of council that will bring motions forward to reduce the budget more, and there will be members of council that know that there’s extra money laying around and may want to spend it. It’s going to be dependent on what everyone’s appetite is.”

Sharp said that she too was concerned over how swiftly the revised budget was put together.

“I’m super concerned. I feel like this was a bit disorganized, thrown out in front of us and saying, ‘Hey, this is your documents,’” she said.

“The presentation was updated, which is great, but I do know that there was some chatter as we were sitting there, that they were talking about attachments that members of administration said, ‘we’ll send those to you later.’”

Budget deliberations begin on Nov. 18 and are scheduled to go until Nov. 22.