Calgary’s new mayor said he’s hoping to cut the proposed residential property tax increase in half, as the new council gets set to review the budget.

Mayor Jeromy Farkas made the comments on Friday afternoon in a scrum with reporters, in advance of councillors getting the 2026 budget adjustments at the Nov. 10 council meeting.

The 2026 budget was first proposed to the last city council, with a combined 3.6 per cent property tax increase. While that’s the combined number, the residential property tax increase is slated to be 5.4 per cent for a typical single-family home in Calgary.  

This is the fourth year of council’s four-year budget process, and the tax increase is in line with what was proposed through that plan. Mayor Farkas said that council is still going through detailed briefings in terms of financial projects and the assessment values.

“There’s a lot of assumptions that went into setting the initial tax rate that the previous mayor council did several months ago,” he said.

“So, we’re going to be working very hard as a council to be able to lower the tax increase while still leaning in on the public safety and transit improvements.”

In the recent fall satisfaction survey, 50 per cent of Calgarians who responded said they could accept a property tax increase that met inflation in order to maintain or expand services.

Still, Farkas said they can find a way to lower it.

“I’m going to be looking to significantly reduce the tax increase that, specifically, homeowners, are facing by at least half,” he said.

“That’s the target that I’m going to be working with, alongside my colleagues, and working through the briefings, working through our various conversations, we think that that’s practical.”

Achieving property tax relief for homeowners

Ward 2 Coun. Jennifer Wyness said that with a new council, they’ll have to dig through the budget, recall what they heard at the doors during the election, and then lay out priorities.

“There’s definitely room in the budget to make changes, but at the same time, how much will be dependent on what this new council wants to prioritize,” she told LWC.

One area that could be revisited is the proposed one per cent shift from the non-residential tax share to the residential side. Calgary city council has been chipping away at this ratio for the past few budgets

“That’s realistic because, again, I was a councillor that voted against the tax shift, and I definitely see that as a mechanism on the table with this council,” Wyness said.

The City of Calgary’s municipal tax shift website heavily favours the redistribution to city homeowners instead of businesses, citing the Municipal Government Act ratio of 5 to 1 reliance on business taxes versus residential taxes.

According to the City’s information, a one per cent redistribution in tax share results in a two per cent increase in taxes for residential property owners. If it’s reversed, it could single-handedly reduce the residential property tax to 3.4 per cent. Though business tax would go from 1.4 to per cent to a 3.4 per cent increase.

These are the questions new councillors will have to grapple with as they dive into the budget documents.

Ward 3 Coun. Andrew Yule said he’d have to get up to speed on the impacts of the tax shift and what a potential reversal would mean.

Plus, he said, he wants to hear from ward residents and has scheduled a town hall for Nov. 20.

“I started kind of looking into that as well: where do we land on that residential versus non-residential tax burden?” Yule told LWC.

“I think it’s really important that we have a fulsome discussion as a council where, especially you know me being brand new, I’m learning a lot over the last two weeks about what that means.”

Calgary Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Deborah Yedlin has lobbied often to ensure the tax shift continues. She said it was important that continued into the 2026 city budget.

“Obviously, for the Chamber, the issue of tax fairness from the perspective of property taxes, residential and non-residential properties, is an issue. We want to make sure that we are as competitive as we can be from a business standpoint,” she said in a media scrum after Mayor Farkas spoke to the Chamber last week.

If not from the shift, where will the money come from?

As for getting the tax rate down with potential cuts, Yule said he’d have to learn more about the ramifications of such actions.

“It is something I have to contemplate over the next two weeks,” he said.

Ward 6 Coun. John Pantazopoulos said this is a conversation requires a lot of context and you have to see the whole picture before making a decision. Including whether city council should cancel the potential tax shift.

He did say that recent residential property tax increases aren’t sustainable.

“We can’t continue. We can’t have that. So, I think it’s sort of like it has to be in the context of everything,” he said.

“We’re mindful of the fact that we have to have competitive… make sure businesses stay in Calgary and continue to grow and develop. So, it’s sort of the balance. I think I would say it’s almost too early in our deliberations, and we have to sort of look at the whole package and see what sort of it comes out.”

What that said, as someone from the business world coming into public service, his experience is that there’s always ways to improve, potentially in areas that impact the city budget.

“I think City Hall is no different. So I think there’s always room for improvement,” he told LWC.

“Any organization that says otherwise is wrong, we’re always looking at better approaches.”