I cannot count the number of times I’ve been told the City should run more like a business.

It is so common a precedent that in every ward and in every mayor’s race, at least one candidate is running a campaign based on their business acumen, another candidate is running to make Calgary a business-friendly city, and another is running to cut red tape and excess spending to make the City more efficient, just like a business would.

For example, when looking at the City of Calgary budget surplus in 2022, future Mayoral Candidate Sonya Sharp had this to say: “Just because we provide essential services to constituents doesn’t mean you can’t budget like, and operate like, a business.”

“We have to be careful with our language about saying this can’t be run like a business. We can be smart about it,” Sharp continued.

The problem is, most politicians do not have the mettle to run a business at the scale of a city. More broadly, if you do want to run the city like a business, most elected officials do not have the political courage to treat Calgarians as what they would then have to be: customers and shareholders.

If you run a city like a business, then you have to be prepared that much like a business, cities can go bankrupt, cities can dissolve, cities can fail – unless you make the hard choices.

What does it mean to treat Calgarians like customers and shareholders?

 “The customer is always right… in matters of taste.”

This adaptation of the original motto was developed to acknowledge that everyone can have an aesthetic, a preference, an opinion, but that facts are facts, the costs are the costs, and a business can only serve the desires of a customer within reasonable limits.

Viewing Calgarians as customers means knowing that the customer is not always right if it means sacrificing the longevity of the business. However, when it comes to politics, most politicians look to appease their constituents to such a high degree that they’ll actually do fiscal damage to the longevity of the City.

In 2020, City Council used one-time funding to reduce the municipal tax increase to zero per cent during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide relief to citizens. This decision actually kickstarted years of the City trying to recover revenue without shocking residents with a dual tax increase to cover population and inflationary growth, and to recover the revenue sacrificed to the COVID-19 discount.  

This discount, combined with the provincial UCP government’s reduction of municipal funding, has resulted in the City of Calgary’s revenue becoming disconnected and misaligned with population growth and inflation. These decisions – often by business-friendly politicians – have put the City of Calgary behind by $1.4 Billion a year in revenue that would’ve been collected had we not started handing out government discounts in 2020.

At the very same time, Calgary is facing an unfunded infrastructure gap of $27 billion, according to the City of Calgary’s 2026-2040 long range fiscal plan.

Fast forward to 2025… and the current Calgary City Council did it again by giving a one-time discount to Calgarians on their taxes in 2026 by pulling from the City’s reserves and investments, while simultaneously raising the price of services like transit.

That discount, by the way: $4 a month for a home worth $700,000, but will cost the City millions in the future.

It was an easy choice for a new council looking to build some goodwill with Calgarians, but it made no business sense because now, in the upcoming budget cycle, Calgarians are going to be faced with a double-sized tax increase (known as a bow wave), or the City is going to have to reduce the quality of services to cover the discount. 

Rushing to provide a discount to make the customer happy is a sign of a salesman, not a business.

To put it in simple terms, imagine running a business where half of your store is on the brink of needing to be replaced or may even be crumbling (sorry, Bearspaw Water Main…), and you decide to slash prices permanently with no plan to make up that revenue elsewhere.

Elected officials just don’t have the heart for business

Running the city like a business requires some challenging conversations with constituents.

Imagine telling Calgarians in the middle of compounding crises that taxes need to go up because roads need to be replaced, affordable housing needs to be built, bridges need to be rehabbed, new buses purchased, police officers and firefighters need to be paid, and that while it is hard right now, a discount today is much greater pain for the City tomorrow.

Most people elected to office can’t look constituents in the eye and tell them, “I know you’re struggling, but the price is the price.”

That’s what most businesses do. If the cost of doing business goes up, so do prices. So, if we really want the City to run like a business, then you must accept that prices have to go up.

This is where looking at Calgarians as shareholders becomes important. To be accountable to shareholders means to take their investment, the price they’re paying, and make the city a business with a strong shareholder dividend.

The difference is that the dividend doesn’t come in the form of a $100 energy rebate or a year-end cheque, the dividend shareholders receive when investing in a city is a high quality of life.

Running the City like a business means our assets are taken care of, parks are robust and vibrant, streets are clean and safe, world-class infrastructure lines our communities, and as constituents, we have access to it all

Now I’m sure this critique will evoke some responses from the business community about all the ways the City could be run more efficiently – and there will be some good feedback about permitting processes, delays in service delivery, lack of clarity in business operations – but these are operating pains.

What I am talking about is governing the city like a business, and most elected officials just don’t have the heart to do it because no amount of operating efficiencies can overcome poor governing decisions.

The next time you hear someone say they want the City to run like a business, maybe ask what they mean. In my experience, what people really mean when they say “run the city like a business” is, run the City like a discount salesman – always on the hunt to close the deal at any cost.

This is why “cutting taxes” is the cheapest way of governing a City. It’s the sign of a salesman trying to close a deal, rather than a businessperson concerned with keeping the doors open.

The City of Calgary, our business, cannot afford a race to the bottom.

The price is the price.