Whether it is the City of Calgary budget debate, report cards for the aldermen, or the Plan It Calgary discussions, the $25 million pedestrian bridge has become the rallying cry for city property taxpayers who believe city council is picking their pockets.
 
               

               A Santiago Calatrava designed bridge in Italy  

First, it is important to know the difference between what property taxes are and what a grant is and what each respectively pay for. As I perused the comments responding to articles appearing in local media on the above-mentioned issues, it became clear that there is a misconception about where the funds for various services and structures come from and what some of the drivers of levy increases to the taxpayer are.

Property taxes are used to pay for the services provided by the municipality including police, fire, libraries, and infrastructure such as roads, utility services, waste removal and so on.

Grants are monies provided by a funder, such as the Province of Alberta. The province has provided $3.3 billion in infrastructure grants to the City, under which the construction of the pedestrian bridge would be funded. Grants are conditional and the projects utilizing the funds are approved by the granting body. Therefore, the construction of this bridge has no direct effect on property taxes; although one could argue that if the money was not used on the pedestrian bridge it could be diverted to other projects, freeing up property tax dollars. This argument is specious at best as there is no shortage of infrastructure programs in a city that is physically growing as fast as Calgary, so it is highly unlikely to show up as a tax reduction.

Now, a reader may ask what does that have to do with the aldermen report card?

According to the stories, the criteria used by the Coalition for Tax Fairness was whether or not the voting record of the alderman was taxpayer-friendly. One would expect business people to know that there is a whole lot more to responsible city management than whether or not something saves money, you know there are those pesky issues such as the quality of life and municipal vision. Therefore, Aldermen Ric McIver and Andre Chabot got high grades as did Diane Colley-Urquhart.

This journalist just shook her head, how disappointing. At a brief glance it seemed “Dr. No” (aka McIver) and his cohorts are our fiscal responsibility heroes.

But let’s take another look.

Property taxes pay for services to all areas of the city. As you build a city outward rather than increasing density, like that proposed in Plan It Calgary, that means more roads to build and maintain, farther distances to carry utilities, more vehicles for services from policing to waste management, and more gas to drive those vehicles. Hmmm…I’m guessing that’s going to cost.

 
  

Did Aldermen McIver and Colley-Urquhart mention the cost of building new subdivisions and its effects on property taxes in their comments to the media at any time? You bet they didn’t. Both represent wards with new communities and if they had pointed out that the cost of new infrastructure was a major factor in rising property taxes it would have been political suicide, quelling the political aspirations of both.

As well, Colley-Urquhart and McIver both expressed major reservations to higher density developments, like those proposed in Plan It Calgary. McIver is in favour of letting the market decide when it comes to choosing single family homes with large yards over higher density. Likewise, in an article on the Fast Forward blog, Colley-Urquhart stated she doesn’t feel people should be forced into high rises and the city should be creative in finding a way to finance the growth of suburbs. This is watching out for our tax dollars?

In my opinion, it is time for some of our aldermen to get back to the job managing the city responsibly, which sometimes means making unpopular decisions, rather than looking to favourable results at the next ballot.