Good thread (you'd have to click on it) on the problems you get with property taxes being the foundation of your revenue and how it pertains to the situation Calgary is in:
There is nothing particular about the situation that is unique to property tax.
Do the same thing, except stick Alberta as the center piece and the rest of the pieces as the other provinces.
Being primarily income and sales tax based, Ontario is the centrepiece. Alberta punches way above it's weight, but a third of the population is a big thing to overcome.
Income and especially sales taxes being more efficient don't have the same big fluctuations as property values can, and typically rise and population and the economy does. Calgary is still growing as a city but it won't see that correlate to increased tax revenue. Even if their income is well below the Alberta average, many of those new residents will contribute to income tax and sales tax to the federal government, but won't do anything to the city's revenue despite being people that will affect service goals, infrastructure requirements, etc. Not to mention that changes to income tax and property tax affect people in significantly different ways. Nobody likes their income tax rate increasing, but it's still tied to what you actually make. My tax rate could double, but I'm still being taxed to what I bring in, it can't exceed my income/revenue which a major property tax swing could do. It's the difference between seeing your income tax rate increase 20% from 10% to 12%, and having people assess your income 20% higher, taxing you as a $120K earner instead of a $100K earner (when you might only be earning $80K).
The federal government being able to borrow also means you can cushion these major swings a lot better to spread the effects/reaction out over many years, rather than bringing the uncertainty of major tax burden shifts on an annual basis. Being able to combat uncertainty is one of the things a government should be doing to ensure economic growth. Tough to do that when your main source of tax revenue is so volatile and reactive, and you can't do anything to mitigate it to level out the severity of that volatility.
I get people are wary of city's having more tax power and definitely wary of borrowing to run a deficit, but the reality is that being able to shift away from property tax as the primary revenue source would be in the best interest of everyone.
Well, I am curious what Farkas has come up with to solve the City’s problem, though I kind of assume it is another of those ideas that has a minimal affect besides making himself popular with Rick Bell and Save Calgary.
“Hey, I solved our problem - we are going to stop serving brand name pizza pops in city cafeterias. The no-name one are 20 cents cheaper and we can put the money into the city coffers”.
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If they were serious about reducing costs, they not only need to look at automation but tie senior mgmt compensation to it.
I am sure in a paper heavy bureaucracy like city hall there is a ton of work that can be done here.
I would be curious if any of the council understand this tech and what is possible, and have the back bone to ensure it gets implemented.
I have seen the old school zero budget approach. Basically make people take their own trash to the dumpster at end of day ideas, or no more color printing. That is super outdated as it saves little and angers you employees that remain.
Hopefully the smart people at the city use new ways to think to get these costs down.
If they were serious about reducing costs, they not only need to look at automation but tie senior mgmt compensation to it.
I am sure in a paper heavy bureaucracy like city hall there is a ton of work that can be done here.
I would be curious if any of the council understand this tech and what is possible, and have the back bone to ensure it gets implemented.
Certainly lots of potential, but also huge potential to be an expensive failure - Phoenix pay system, transit card implementations come to mind. Those two examples certainly aren't simple projects, but you could at least sum up the project objective in a single sentence.
Information management for city hall is a far broader topic, and probably even harder to find a one-size-fits-all solution. For every permit process that could be significantly improved, there will be another that completely falls apart because it is square peg for the round hole. Pros and cons to both a mega-system implementation and doing it ad-hoc - I often wonder how out-dated mega-systems are by the time they are fully operational and finally delivering more efficiency than pain.
There are often legitimate reasons for the glacial tedium of bureaucracy, though it's usually a balancing act of requiring hoop-jumping that should be unnecessary in 95% of cases to avoid the 5% that would otherwise end up in outrageous, outrage-inducing outcomes.
^ the transit card situation is just hilarious though. It’s not cutting edge at this point and lots of other cities have these. Why can’t they make it work here? In Hong Kong you can pay with the Octopus card for transit, but also at lots of shops and restaurants and it seems to work really well. I know we tried to get a system here in Calgary and they had some kind of mess, but I don’t know the details?
Location: Wondering when # became hashtag and not a number sign.
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Trouble in paradise?
Someone got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.....who's lying?
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What appeared to be a united chorus of city politicians demanding the province help the city deal with a property tax hike for businesses has struck a sour note.
However, Coun. Joe Magliocca, who along with fellow councillors George Chahal, Shane Keating and Gian-Carlo Carra were listed along with Nenshi as authors, suggested on Saturday he didn’t agree with the thrust of the opinion piece — particularly the suggestion the province was to blame.
“It came as a surprise to me when I read the article ‘We need to tackle the tax shift together’ by Mayor Nenshi that it also included my name. I want to be clear that I never agreed to be part of Mayor Nenshi’s article and I certainly disagree with its content,” he wrote in a Facebook post hours after the piece was published.
“I regret the comments made by Mayor Nenshi towards our provincial Minister of Municipal Affairs, who was correct in saying that ‘The City needs to look after its own house.’”
Magliocca, who didn’t immediately return a call for comment on Saturday, said he’s asked Nenshi to remove his name from the op-ed.
In a statement provided to Postmedia on Saturday, Nenshi said Magliocca had read the piece before publication and agreed to lend his name to it.
“Councillor Magliocca has every right to disagree or to change his mind. I’m happy to remove his name, but since I was standing right next to him when he read it and agreed to let his name stand, I’m a little bit confused by his statement.”
If the measuring tool in Google Maps is accurate it's more like 110m and 60m. That's just compared to the closest point of the South Tower. For the North Tower is more like 100m closer.
Using a sound attenuation calculator, and assuming the tent is at around 90dB, I get around a 5dB difference which makes the closer venue around 50% louder.
There was also a building (Cowboy's) blocking the sound when it was in the parking lot. That has to make a huge difference.
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I am trying to understand how Michelle Rempel figures into this? Does the guy not know who the area MP is?
I kind of somewhat agree though. If you moved to a condo near Stampede park. There's going to be noise during Stampede. The economic benefit should probably take priority over people who should have known what they were getting into.
we need to add Nenshi and the entire city council to the title of this thread.
I still can't believe I voted for that clown.
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The Delhi police have announced the formation of a crack team dedicated to nabbing the elusive 'Monkey Man' and offered a reward for his -- or its -- capture.
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I have a book ready to read called Mayors Gone Bad. Nenshi has a chapter.
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Quote:
But it’s not all bad news Philip Slayton writes about the “western triangle of mayoral goodness,” Nenshi of Calgary, Iveson of Edmonton, and Robertson of Vancouver.
I have a book ready to read called Mayors Gone Bad. Nenshi has a chapter.
Released in 2015. I'm guessing it paints him in a kind light, but when all is said and done, I wonder what his legacy will be outside of being the first muslim mayor of a major North american city.
This council clearly has a problem with communication, honesty, transparency, and spending. Worst, most dysfunctional council that I can remember.
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The Delhi police have announced the formation of a crack team dedicated to nabbing the elusive 'Monkey Man' and offered a reward for his -- or its -- capture.
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Released in 2015. I'm guessing it paints him in a kind light, but when all is said and done, I wonder what his legacy will be outside of being the first muslim mayor of a major North american city.
This council clearly has a problem with communication, honesty, transparency, and spending. Worst, most dysfunctional council that I can remember.
On the one hand this council has a lot of very loud, angry, and petty disagreements that verge on personal attacks.
On the other hand if you look at the voting records you have Farrell and Farkas routinely voting together. If a good functioning council is a council without voting blocks where people evaluate issue by issue then this council appears to be pretty good compared to the Bronconnier days where every vote went along "party" lines
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If the measuring tool in Google Maps is accurate it's more like 110m and 60m. That's just compared to the closest point of the South Tower. For the North Tower is more like 100m closer.
Using a sound attenuation calculator, and assuming the tent is at around 90dB, I get around a 5dB difference which makes the closer venue around 50% louder.
There was also a building (Cowboy's) blocking the sound when it was in the parking lot. That has to make a huge difference.
Sound intensity at 6dB would be 400% louder actually. It's a big difference.
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Who is in charge of this product and why haven't they been fired yet?
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