Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas was happy with his first 50 days in office, a time he felt city council made significant strides on Calgarians’ priorities.

In his year-end interview with LWC, Mayor Farkas recounted the initial days after Calgary’s 2025 municipal election, his thoughts on the new city council, and some of the issues they’ve tackled since being sworn in.

(Note: This interview was conducted on Dec. 18, 2025, and does not include any references to the recent Bearspaw feeder main rupture.)

Even though he’d been a councillor previously, Farkas said that a lot had changed at Calgary city hall in that time. In fact, after being elected and in his first hours in the historic city hall space where his office is, he said he spent time just looking for the washroom.

“There’s a lot of things I knew as a city councillor that have certainly helped set me up for some level of success, but it’s also a steep learning curve,” he told LWC.

Mayor Farkas also wanted to thank former Mayor Jyoti Gondek for her leadership and contributions to building Calgary. He said after Gondek defeated him in the 2021 election, it was a time to “level set” the conversation about what was going right in Calgary and what was going wrong.

That set the stage for a course correction this time around, Farkas said.

“One of the amazing things for me running as an independent is I didn’t feel forced to always be the opposite of the previous mayor on every single issue,” he said.

“So, when I looked at the range of faces that earned their election around the table, I felt, and I still do, even more strongly, that this was a great blank slate, an opportunity to reset, to be able to move forward on all of these issues that Calgarians wanted us to.”

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The new face of Calgary city council

Farkas admitted that when he looked around the council horseshoe at first, there wasn’t a lot of political experience. Long-time Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot had more than 15 years of experience, but other council returnees – Ward 2’s Jennifer Wyness, Ward 5’s Raj Dhaliwal and Ward 13’s Dan McLean – only had one term each under their respective belts.

“I looked around the table, and I saw not a lot of council experience, but a big, deep bench strength of professional experience, volunteer experience, community experience, and it’s that experience that’s played out in, yes, quite long budget deliberation meetings, but in a really good result and collaborative team,” he said.

“Obviously, there’s a lot to learn still about just how city hall works, how we run meetings, and that sort of thing. But despite the fact that we didn’t have as much of the council experience as previous councils, we made up for it in spades, based on the other attributes we’re bringing.”

After several meetings over 50+ days, Mayor Farkas said that his opinion of the current council hasn’t changed too much since Day 1. He said they’ve shown through multiple difficult debates – the budget, rezoning and climate, to name a few – that it’s group that’s attacked “the problem instead of the people.”

“How we did it, I think, is the main story here. Even when we disagreed, we found a way to be able to find common cause,” he said.

As for the performative nature of some council members thus far, Mayor Farkas said it’s natural to see that at any level of politics after an election.

“The public is expecting their new elected team to really deliver quickly, and the newly elected politicians want to signal and showcase that they are getting to work,” he said.

First 50 days and the city budget

During Mayor Farkas’s campaign, he promised some movement on 189 priorities in the first 100 days in office.

He said that by virtue of the budget that was recently passed, which was largely built by the previous city council, they’ve made progress on big ticket items like mobility, housing, public safety, the arts and parks.

“This last budget process was a whirlwind for all of us,” he said.  

“We were given about two weeks in a very rushed process to inherit what was given to us by the last mayor and council, some of which we agreed with, some of which we didn’t, but a great amount of progress,

When asked if he was taking credit for progress driven by a budget from the last council, Farkas said there was one big difference.

“Calgarians had rightfully looked at the previous mayor and council and said, ‘We’re paying too much and we’re not getting enough,’” Farkas said.

Farkas noted that the previous council had approved a 5.8 per cent property tax increase on a typical single-family home, and up to 20 per cent for multi-family residential owners.

“We were able to slash those by about two thirds, and at the same time as we found new ways to be able to invest in greater quantity and quality for public safety measures, transit officer presence, as well as stepping up for some very significant initiatives, like the National access Arts Center, like the old Y(MCA),” he said.

“So, yes, the previous council had presented their budget, which was, frankly, too expensive for not enough, and our council did the work about essentially driving better value.”

They did so, however, by reducing the amount of future money that went into city reserves and dipping into existing reserves to cover the cost. City councils in the past have avoided taking that step when possible, to ensure emergency money was available when needed.

Calgary has a mandated minimum of five per cent reserves, with a target of 15 per cent. It’s current somewhere around the eight per cent mark.

Is there a danger that now that the current set of newb city councillors has the taste of reserves in its collective mouth that they’ll keep coming back to the well?  Mayor Farkas doesn’t think so.

He said much of the reserve money was spent to take advantage of provincial and federal dollars. Further, Calgary was in an “incredibly strong position” financially.

“We don’t have to get into the exact ratios and percentages, but on broad strokes, Calgary is nearing four and a half billion dollars in reserves. A comparable city, Edmonton, has fewer than a billion dollars,” he said.

(As of Dec. 31, 2023, the City of Edmonton had $1.041 billion in reserves, according to a City of Edmonton report.)

Rezoning: Tweak or repeal

Farkas had campaigned on a repeal and replace tactic for citywide rezoning.

Thus far, he and allied councillors have been successful in moving ahead with the proposed Land-Use Bylaw change to revert back to the prior multiple land-uses and the time-and-money-sucking land-use redesignation public hearings – ones that are approved 95 per cent of the time.

Though the process of removing RCG citywide rezoning is already underway, so is the potential replacement.

“Fundamentally, Calgarians want the greatest level of density to happen around activity corridors,” he said.

“They want to see it closer to LRT stations, around transit, education, employment, those major activity centers, and that’s going to have to be main focus for Calgary. It’s going to be through the local area planning process to be able to get that right.”

Much of what Mayor Farkas is talking about is already included, to a large degree, in Calgary’s Municipal Development Plan. Further, as Ward 11 Coun. Rob Ward put it, much of his ward is already within these different zones.

While the final result may look more like a tweak of the Land Use Bylaw, Farkas said council needs to be thoughtful and strategic. The starting point for that is trust, he said.

“What I heard from my colleagues, which I agree with, is that there’s a significant lack of trust in how the previous mayor and council ruled out these housing and zoning reforms,” he said.

“There was a perception that council wasn’t listening to Calgarians, and I think that full repeal was a significant step to being able to rebuild the trust.”

Farkas also said that council must pay closer attention to the other 88 recommendations in Calgary’s housing strategy, with a focus on working with non-profit partners on affordable housing.

What’s in store for 2026?

There are several big topics Calgary city council will tackle in 2026 – including the aforementioned citywide rezoning.

They will have a Green Line beginning to lay track and a functional study to review on a potential downtown segment. There will be expedited work on water infrastructure to secure the Bearspaw South feeder main replacement.

Of course, this council will set the next four-year budget path. One immediate thing they’ll have to grapple with is the additional spending they tacked on through the use of one-time cash.

“If you build something, you have to operate it, you have to maintain it, and arguably, you can’t afford to build something until you can afford to maintain it and replace it in 30 years,” he said.

“Obviously, some things are not with profit in mind, like we need fire coverage, and this is not something that we would look to ever earn us a profit. We also need to be looking at how we’re more equitable with industry in terms of suburban growth, we need to make sure that we’re not unnecessarily sprawling, that the business model makes sense from the taxpayer perspective. That’s a big piece.”

There are other big projects to keep an eye on, Mayor Farkas said. Scotia Place, the revamped Glenbow Museum, and the new Werklund Centre (formerly Arts Commons).

“This next year is very much about sticking the landing on those capital projects,” he said.

“We’ve still got to keep our foot on the gas as far as the fundamentals, housing, safety, affordability.”

Finally, he said it will be important for them to drive a culture of performance with city administration and reforming how city hall works for citizens.

“At the doors, many people would tell you the issues, but a common refrain is they felt like city hall wasn’t listening, the previous mayor and council weren’t open enough and that they weren’t using the ideas from the community,” he said.

“So, of course, there’s 15 of us working, driving all of these things that we ran on, but we have to continue, or in the next four years, to incorporate the wisdom of the community.”