Calgary city councillors have so far managed to put a cap on further property tax increases for 2025 but did so while tapping surpluses to pay for a cluster of new investments.

Calgary city council has held the line on a council-imposed 3.6 per cent combined property tax increase after nearly a week of meetings to finalize the 2025 budget. However, there’s still more discussion to come on Friday.

Due to the number of amendments that were scheduled for debate, councillors opted to move into a fifth and final day of deliberations.

A clear theme emerged, however, with many of the proposed amendments drawing on City of Calgary surpluses for one-time cash. The “favourable variance” as the City calls it, is often annually redirected to the fiscal stability reserve (FSR). From the outset, Calgary city councillors were told there was a roughly $38 million surplus available for potential deployment this year.

Thus far, councillors have agreed to roughly $26 million in additional costs funded through that surplus cash, leaving $12 million to play with. There’s also an additional $20 million that would be drawn from the billion-dollar Reserve for Future Capital to pay for an amendment to do additional road resurfacing work.

Among the projects that would be funded with cash from the surplus are the new CPS gun range, heritage tax incentive funding, money for Grey Cup and HMCS anniversary celebrations, a third-party review of engagement, and the Inglewood pool. (The Inglewood pool still requires a reconsideration motion, which is expected to come up on Friday.)

It’s worth noting that while these individual amendments to this year’s budget have been approved, the final budget has not yet been approved. If it’s not approved as amended, none of these items would move forward.

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said they had two primary options: Increase the property tax even more to fund these needed investments, or fund them with this one-time cash.

“This year, we had to stay true to what we said in 2022 that the budget wouldn’t increase beyond 3.6 per cent. Calgarians can’t afford it,” she said.

“There’s no way we could increase the base budget this year. So, for that reason, we are trying to find ways to fund important projects one time, and then we will look at a stronger base budget into the future.”

‘Backflips’ in upcoming years

Ward 12 Coun. Evan Spencer said he’s been reluctantly voting in favour of the investments. They’re much needed but pose bigger problems for future councils. He said they discussed the use of one-time funding as a stopgap in this council’s very first budget back in 2021.

“When you look where we’re tracking as a city, in terms of our aging infrastructure, the rapid growth, we are just headed towards more pain,” he said.

“We’re never going to keep up or get ahead if we keep doing one-time funding. I thought council had learned that lesson.”

During deliberations Thursday, he referred to it as future councils doing “backflips” trying to figure out how they might pay for the programs and services council is taking on today with one-time surplus cash.

“Really, it feels like we’re playing a lot of games right now. My fiscally conservative colleagues have just broadly supported $43 million of one-time funding this morning before lunch,” he said.

“The solution is actually helping Calgarians understand where we’re at, the actual details of where we’re spending money and working together through what Calgarians want to pay for and what they don’t but we haven’t done that. We’re playing politics, and everyone else is losing.”

Ward 1 Coun. Sonya Sharp said she’s worried this plan of using reserves is going to put future councils in a lurch.

“The more we’re using this money as FSR, the less we’re going to have for the next council. It is very short-sighted for some of these members of council, if they return or not,” she said.

“We’ll see what happens. The reserves will run dry. And guess what happens when reserves run dry, you have to increase taxes.”

Ward 3 Coun. Jasmine Mian said every decision they make impacts how the future councils respond.

“When it comes to a lot of our funding decisions, we have to think through where are we making these investments, and are these things that people prioritize and do they value it,” she said.

“I think one of the benefits of one-time cash is it allows us to invest in emerging priorities for people.”

Calgary city council will get through roughly eight more amendments, before finalizing the budget on Friday.