MF YYC Politics - there, I mega did it

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by GGG

Makes sense, 3.88 isn’t bad given that fuel cost for the city is fixed and up significantly more than CPI. It’s where the municipal price index instead of CPI is better.

What percentage of the city budget is fuel? Gasoline/nat gas is a bit over 3.5% of CPI (down significantly when they rebalanced the weightings)

[Patek23]

Originally Posted by GGG

Yeah so if taxes go up 3% in a 4.5% inflation environment that is a 1.5% tax cut.

Edit - or are you saying that last year we were deflationary therefore this years higher increase puts us back to say a 5 year average?

I'm not sure your math works here.

My wage and I'm sure the majority others isn't inflation adjusted every year. If I pay 3 percent extra tax. And inflation is causing the cost of all goods and services I rely on to go up 4.5 percent, I'm out money on both ends.

I have zero issue with this tax hike by the way. Seems reasonable. Just your justification stood out too me as weird unless there's something I'm missing.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Flaming Homer

I'm not sure your math works here.

My wage and I'm sure the majority others isn't inflation adjusted every year. If I pay 3 percent extra tax. And inflation is causing the cost of all goods and services I rely on to go up 4.5 percent, I'm out money on both ends.

I have zero issue with this tax hike by the way. Seems reasonable. Just your justification stood out too me as weird unless there's something I'm missing.

If you don’t receive a 4.5% raise you have actually received a pay cut.

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by GGG

If you don’t receive a 4.5% raise you have actually received a pay cut.

You are confusing purchasing power and actual pay.

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by GGG

If you don’t receive a 4.5% raise you have actually received a pay cut.

No. Your money may buy less depending on how your salary changed and the goods and services you buy but that’s not a pay cut.

[the_only_turek_fan]

Originally Posted by The Fisher Account

Thinking you can run this city on 0% tax increases every year is just asinine.

I'm glad we got some progressive candidates who are committed to the things they ran on and funding the things they feel will make Calgary a better place to live.

I think they could have done without the section 3, 4 and 5 increases at a minimum.

That would have taken 0.67% off and kept it at 3.25%.

The CPD and CFD increases seem reasonable but some of the other requests seem like fluff.

[sleepingmoose]

I think the CFD request is probably legit - but CPS almost always get more money after playing to peoples fears. While all other City departments are faced with cuts in the last few years, CPS makes people think you’ll get mugged putting out your garbage if you try to reduce $6 million from a $400 million budget. Gotta make sure TAC has a new armoured tank, and another bomb robot.

I get that some of these things are required, but they never have to actually justify replacing old equipment or hiring more people, they just want you to be so scared you don’t ask questions or dare argue.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

No. Your money may buy less depending on how your salary changed and the goods and services you buy but that’s not a pay cut.

It’s the functional equivalent

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

Would you consider calling a byelection a removal of an elected official?

I'm not normally a fan of slippery slope arguments, but I think it's applicable here. It could easily lead to 'mulligan' elections if the controlling party narrowly loses or has a bozo eruption.

[Envitro]

Originally Posted by sleepingmoose

I think the CFD request is probably legit - but CPS almost always get more money after playing to peoples fears. While all other City departments are faced with cuts in the last few years, CPS makes people think you’ll get mugged putting out your garbage if you try to reduce $6 million from a $400 million budget. Gotta make sure TAC has a new armoured tank, and another bomb robot.

I get that some of these things are required, but they never have to actually justify replacing old equipment or hiring more people, they just want you to be so scared you don’t ask questions or dare argue.

That's a bit extreme, and there's no evidence of that at all.

They want the extra money to hire more bodies, not buy armoured tanks, whatever those are in police terms

Crime is on the rise, people are concerned, those are pure stats.
More boots on the ground may make some people feel safer, and may reduce crime or catch the criminals after the fact.

Decreasing the budget, re-allocating, or defunding the police is guaranteed to have the opposite effect.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Envitro

That's a bit extreme, and there's no evidence of that at all.

They want the extra money to hire more bodies, not buy armoured tanks, whatever those are in police terms

Crime is on the rise, people are concerned, those are pure stats.
More boots on the ground may make some people feel safer, and may reduce crime or catch the criminals after the fact.

Decreasing the budget, re-allocating, or defunding the police is guaranteed to have the opposite effect.

It's an incredibly complex and multi-factorial thing to consider. I'm not sure there is actually much correlation between number of cops and volume of crime...

For instance, Edmonton has 190 cops per 100k population compared to Calgary with 170/100k...yet Edmonton's crime severity index is much higher (98 vs. 65.7 in YYC)

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/...0/t018-eng.htm

Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg are all higher in both metrics



Ottawa and Quebec City are lower in both.

I'm not arguing any causality in any of this, there are a ton of factors that make it difficult to compare different places.


I suppose we could ask the same questions about firefighters...do more firefighters = fewer fires? Perhaps a marginal difference based on their community outreach/education work, but that leads to a similar resourcing question - are fully trained firefighters the best bang for your buck in that regard? (of course firefighters do more than just fires).

[Slava]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

It's an incredibly complex and multi-factorial thing to consider. I'm not sure there is actually much correlation between number of cops and volume of crime...

For instance, Edmonton has 190 cops per 100k population compared to Calgary with 170/100k...yet Edmonton's crime severity index is much higher (98 vs. 65.7 in YYC)

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/...0/t018-eng.htm

Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg are all higher in both metrics



Ottawa and Quebec City are lower in both.

I'm not arguing any causality in any of this, there are a ton of factors that make it difficult to compare different places.


I suppose we could ask the same questions about firefighters...do more firefighters = fewer fires? Perhaps a marginal difference based on their community outreach/education work, but that leads to a similar resourcing question - are fully trained firefighters the best bang for your buck in that regard? (of course firefighters do more than just fires).

Honestly, CFD is where the funding should go. They get called out to every single thing (it seems), whether it's fire-related or otherwise.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Slava

Honestly, CFD is where the funding should go. They get called out to every single thing (it seems), whether it's fire-related or otherwise.

Because the number of fires these days are way lower than a few decades ago. So they need to be kept busy doing something.

… even as the number of home fires has fallen significantly over the past few decades, spending on municipal fire departments has skyrocketed. There are 55% more career firefighters in the U.S. than there were in 1986, according to the National Fire Protection Association. But the number of home structure fires fell 54% over the same time period, due mostly to updated building codes and advanced sprinklers, according to NFPA data.

… Just 1.3 million—around 3.5%— of the total fire department calls in 2019 were for fires, while 24.5 million—66%—were for medical aid, according to NFPA data. But there are now 370,000 career firefighters in the U.S., more than there were four decades ago when there were roughly double the number of fires reported.

https://time.com/6097414/wildfires-f...ters-spending/

[GGG]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Because the number of fires these days are way lower than a few decades ago. So they need to be kept busy doing something.

Number of fires is one metric to assess the need for fire fighters but the other is time to get to the fire. On a per capita basis since density is increasing firefighters per capita should be dropping but on an absolute basis since square km of fire protected areas is increasing the number of fire fighters required increases regardless of improvements in fire protection.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by GGG

Number of fires is one metric to assess the need for fire fighters but the other is time to get to the fire. On a per capita basis since density is increasing firefighters per capita should be dropping but on an absolute basis since square km of fire protected areas is increasing the number of fire fighters required increases regardless of improvements in fire protection.

Structure fires simply aren’t the threat they used to be. A firefighter today can go literally years without responding to one. And fully staffed fire stations are a very inefficient way to deal with health emergencies.

This is a mom and apple pie issue to much of the public. But in an era when many municipalities in North America are facing bankruptcy, we don’t have the luxury of expensive and outmoded resource allocation models. From the Time magazine article I linked to:

In late 2020, looking to prevent the city from falling into bankruptcy, Jellie controversially cut the number of firefighters to 20 from 27 and mandated that four, rather than five, be on duty at one time. It’s a move that he says countless cities across the country are going to have to do going forward.

“I spent my entire life in the fire business,” says Jellie, who has worked as a fire chief for almost two decades, including as a fire chief with the U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan. “But I took a look at what is required here, and the number of structure fires is going down, calls are going down, and the fire department doesn’t need to go on every medical call.”…

https://time.com/6097414/wildfires-f...ters-spending/

[chedder]

If Fire departments didn't go on medical calls people would die because AHS has botched the EMS system so badly. The public is only beginning to learn how stretched the system is and how bad wait times for an ambulance are at times.

They've essentially downloaded a lot of first response to the municipalities ie fire departments.

Of course more ambulances and paramedics would be the answer but that isn't happening.

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by Slava

Honestly, CFD is where the funding should go. They get called out to every single thing (it seems), whether it's fire-related or otherwise.

They get called out to lots of things that they really shouldn’t be. My wife had a medical emergency when our son was born (not in a hospital) and the first responders were six guys in big jackets and boots. They were able to take her blood pressure but what she needed was to get to the hospital ASAP. Hire more paramedics.

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by chedder

If Fire departments didn't go on medical calls people would die because AHS has botched the EMS system so badly. The public is only beginning to learn how stretched the system is and how bad wait times for an ambulance are at times.

They've essentially downloaded a lot of first response to the municipalities ie fire departments.

Of course more ambulances and paramedics would be the answer but that isn't happening.

If this basic provincial-municipal issue can’t be resolved then maybe the city should adapt and optimize their medical response. But some smaller trucks and send two people to those emergencies

[Fuzz]

One the one hand, I can see the call to have EMS respond to all calls. On the other, if you need to have fire depts plentiful and ready, utilizing those resources for other calls also makes sense. Better to have them being assistive than idle.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Structure fires simply aren’t the threat they used to be. A firefighter today can go literally years without responding to one. And fully staffed fire stations are a very inefficient way to deal with health emergencies.

This is a mom and apple pie issue to much of the public. But in an era when many municipalities in North America are facing bankruptcy, we don’t have the luxury of expensive and outmoded resource allocation models. From the Time magazine article I linked to:

Is the issue really a name change that we need though? Like any time there are hazardous materials involved, or water rescues or that sort of thing, flooding, and who knows what else the fire department is responsible. It's fine that they're not actually putting out fires a lot of time, but those are obviously needed services.