When the dust has settled on Calgary’s 2025 municipal election come Oct. 20, Calgary city council will have shed, at minimum, a collective 61 years of knowledge.

That’s community relationships, administration connections, ongoing files, projects championed that may not yet be complete, and an intimate understanding of how the city functions that will be gone.

Of course, in any election, you could conceivably wipe out all the institutional knowledge around the horseshoe if no incumbents are re-elected. In this case, however, these are councillors who have already declared they’re leaving.

Couns. Peter Demong, Gian-Carlo Carra, Evan Spencer, Courtney Walcott, Richard Pootmans, Jasmine Mian and Sean Chu have indicated they will not run again in the 2025 Calgary municipal election.

Further, mayoral candidate Sonya Sharp or incumbent mayor Jyoti Gondek – or both – could be on the outside looking in, taking another 12 years and Sharp’s years in city administration away from the table.

The question is: What impact, if any will it have on the continuity of the next city council and some of the work that’s been done over the past years?

The answer depends on who you ask.

There was a large turnover in the 2021 election with nearly 60+ years lost with Ward Sutherland, Joe Magliocca, George Chahal, Evan Woolley, Druh Farrell, Jeromy Farkas, Shane Keating and Diane Colley-Urquhart.

Some would argue that this current council took some time to get up to speed, making quick decisions while their heads were still spinning from the election. Others would say that fresh perspectives and ideas were needed at the table.

University of Calgary political science professor Jack Lucas, who spoke with LWC earlier this year, said this kind of turnover can be challenging at the municipal level, particularly in the day-to-day functions.

“Some of the institutions that provide transition and continuity at other levels of government don’t exist at the municipal level, most notably political parties,” he said.

“Another important difference is the absence of cabinets at the municipal level means that the kind of transition planning and transition process that happens in, let’s say, provincial politics, it doesn’t happen in anything like the same way municipally, just because the institutions are so different.”

Transition planning

The City of Calgary provides new councillors with onboarding, and many of the new faces have some understanding of the role they have stepped up to take on.

This year, a revised 2025 Council Orientation Agenda was adopted. It outlined basic things like onboarding (computers, phones, key cards, IT training, expenses and ward office set up), and an orientation (organizational awareness, roles and responsibilities of elected officials, technical info to support upcoming meetings, etc).

“There is definitely an onboarding process supported by staff for new councillors, and the councillors report they always report that that’s very useful,” Lucas said.

“They also report that it’s a bit like drinking from a fire hose, because it’s  just a lot of information very, very quickly.”

Lucas said it’s the less formal work of being a councillor, like how to plan out your day, prioritizing tasks, dealing with casework or complaints and managing an ever-demanding schedule, that needs ironing out.

That can come from retiring councillors who act as mentors, Lucas said.

When LWC interviewed Peter Demong about his retirement, he was asked about the loss of institutional knowledge with an expected high council turnover. Demong said when he arrived on council 15 years ago, there were six new councillors – something he said was unheard of at the time.

“I have served with over 30 unique councillors or members of council over the last 15 years, and everyone brings a different tone and context to their job. The city will survive,” he said.

Demong said that at some point, you have to hand it over to someone else.

“It’s something this next council’s going to have to deal with,” he said.

Though there’s always the opportunity to mentor, he said.

“I was appreciative of the fact that I had some senior councillors when I came in that didn’t really take me under their wing, but I learned from them. I firmly believe there’s going to be some councillors that are going to stick around,” Demong said.

“But hey. I mean, realistically, I kind of joke about it, but if there’s a lack of knowledge, I’ve got a phone number – the same one I had when I got here. I’m more than happy to talk to people if they need some help.”

Turnover can be positive: Young

Lucas said there’s always a risk that retiring councillors, or their staff, don’t pass along information about ongoing files, or long-term relationships. He said every ward has these relationships or challenging files.

“If a councillor isn’t willing to pass information along about some of these constituents who really do have particular needs or particularly challenging files, then it can be like starting from scratch,” he said.

“That’s a real challenge as well. It’s kind of like you have the policy and policy-making part of the representatives’ role, but also the case work and problem-solving part that sometimes kind of goes under the radar but is really important for constituents.”

Lisa Young, political scientist at the University of Calgary, said that there’s always a learning curve for new politicians. City administration is a source of stability; however, it’s not the same setup as the bureaucracy at the provincial or federal levels.

“I do think that at the beginning of any council term, there’s a period not just of learning, but also of relationship building, as the council figures out how it’s going to work together,” she said.

“So, a lot of turnover can be a positive if you’ve got a dysfunctional council, but it can be a negative if you don’t have a dysfunctional council.”

Young said that political science literature on city councils shows that a high incumbency rate is often seen as a negative because there’s no turnover. There’s no opportunity for new voices to be heard, she said.

“Elections are seen as a bit of a non-event, because you know who’s going to win, because there are tremendous incumbency advantages,” Young said.

“Having councillors leave voluntarily means that you do have that opportunity for renewal, new ideas can come forward, segments of communities that felt that they weren’t being represented might have a chance to be represented.”

Young said the downside is that an inexperienced council might have trouble getting going in its first year.

Council is the balance against ‘professionalized administration’

Ward 9 Coun. Gian-Carlo Carra, who will not be running in the 2025 Calgary municipal election, said that he decided to run again last term because he was worried about the lack of continuity on Calgary city council in 2021.

He said the institutional knowledge in the transition between councils is important.

“In just a very real sense, council is a check and balance against the unfettered actions of a professionalized administration,” he said.

“There’s already a tendency towards that sort of like ‘yes, minister-type approach, and you need to have governors who know their job and who know the history and the circumstance in the context of the decisions they’re making, otherwise Council can’t do its job effectively, which is to provide a collaborative but thoughtful check and balance on the actions of administration.” 

Carra thinks having a two-thirds upheaval on council is unhealthy. He said it’s a testament to how difficult it’s becoming to be a local elected official.

That weighed on Ward 11 Coun. Kourtney Penner’s decision to run again for re-election this term. She said conversations she’s been having with folks in the business and non-profit community show that continuity is important.

“Having continuity is really important,” she said.

“I’ve also been asked by candidates who are running for the first time to stay on so that they could get that mentorship.”

Lucas added that there’s a general risk to cities in policy coherence, both from a financial perspective and public perception. While he doesn’t doubt incoming councillors’ willingness to get up to speed on important issues, a high turnover on council can present dramatic policy shifts. He used the example of the provincial government’s views on the downtown Green Line alignment.

“Coherent policy making is important,” he said.

“Sometimes, if you see a really dramatic shift on council,  and a correspondingly dramatic shift of policy can be like a little bit of whiplash for city administration and even for citizens in the particular community.”

When voters cast their vote Oct. 20, this could be something they take to the ballot box, Lucas said. In fact, Calgary voters could even ask the new councillors at their doors how they plan to get up to speed on important Calgary files.

“These kinds of questions, you can think of them as sort of job interview questions, are totally legitimate for voters to ask of candidates who are running in their wards, or mayoral candidates,” he said.

“As a constituent, you do want to have an elected representative who not only shares your values and policy preferences but also has the capacity to make things happen in relation to those values and policy preferences.”