City administration has come forward with one of the first of what’s expected to be many departmental financial boosts, in advance of the next four-year budget.

Admin is recommending that Calgary city council approve a bump of $14 million to the City of Calgary parks to improve maintenance levels to match the growth in actively maintained parkland. That report is coming to the March 11 Infrastructure and Planning (IPC) meeting.

According to the admin cover report, 311 requests related to park maintenance have quadrupled between 2014 and 2025, and funding has increased 12 per cent in that time. Meanwhile, there’s been a 36 per cent increase in area maintained and 28 per cent increase in inflationary costs.

“To manage the growing funding gap, Administration has implemented efficiencies and absorbed system growth within existing operating budgets,” read the city admin report.

“Despite these efforts, funding pressure has resulted in reduced service levels. Reduced service levels have further led to less usable park spaces, including longer grass, increased weed presence, declining shrub health, and more frequently overflowing garbage bins.”

The city cover report reads that 98 per cent of Calgarians who responded to the 2025 spring survey of Calgary listed parks and open spaces as very important or somewhat important, and 98 per cent thought the City of Calgary should invest more or the same amount in them.  

Ward 8 Coun. Nathan Schmidt said that all of these types of reports, particularly in infrastructure, come back to a question of value for money. He said most people are going to respond that these things are important or somewhat important.

“It’s our job, and the political job to determine what type of spending needs to happen now and what type of spending is more urgent,” he said.

“With this report, there’s certainly some items that will make the parks more usable. But then maybe there’s some other items that, when we start to prioritize things, are going to have to take a bit of a back burner.”

That could come down to a question of aesthetics of a park (grass length or shrubs) versus the ability for citizens to use it – like equipment, benches or safety issues.

Harbinger of budget requests to come

Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot said the parks report is just one of many competing interests they’ll have to hash out as part of the upcoming four-year budget.

“As you know, we’ve got a major issue with our water infrastructure. We have a pavement quality index that’s far below the average of municipalities. We’ve got police that feel that in order to increase the level of safety and security in our city, we have to make a major investment in our police force. Calgary Arts Development Authority, our civic partners are all looking for more money,” he said.

“I mean, I don’t know where the list is going to end, but I expect that we’re going to see a number of different business units coming forward with significant asks for this budget cycle that we’re going to have to weigh against one another and see how much we want to invest in each sector.”

It’s expected that for every $28 million in added operating costs, it would result in a roughly one per cent property tax increase. So, the parks request alone would add another 0.5 per cent to the property tax rate.

Chabot said that this council wants to focus on critical infrastructure and “looking after our own backyard.” Transit, policing, roadways, and water will be those areas.

“Everything else is going to start getting tiered down from there, I think, including increased investment into recreation and I guess things from an esthetic perspective that don’t necessarily lead to day-to-day operations,” he said.

Both he and Schmidt said there’s probably a way to coax more specific information out of Calgarians in the survey, so citizens are deciding between these competing priorities, and knowing specifically how much more it would add to property taxes in doing so.

Schmidt said if you ask people if they want better parks, they’ll say yes. Better roads, yes. Better water system, yes.

“If those questions were asked together, then we are actually requiring our citizens to think critically in a similar way that we have to think critically,” he said.

“We have to make that constant cost benefit, and I would personally like to see how Calgarians do that cost benefit analysis themselves.”

If approved, the item would move on to a full meeting of Calgary city council for final approval.