CUTSTO SERVICES OR TAX HIKES?

City council is once again asking Calgarians if they want to cut services or raise taxes. It’s a threat that council often raises during spending talks. Pay up or we’ll take away your beloved (fill in the blank), according to the council playbook.

This week, the city revealed it’s $4.5 billion short in capital expenditures alone, after the province cut back on its payments to municipalities. The annual tax increase of $49 to $64 a year that council approved in April is not going to be enough.

So now city hall says it needs annual tax increases of at least three per cent over the next four years, amounting to at least another $375 at the end of that time frame for the average taxpayer.

That’s on top of utility rate hikes recommended last week that would see typical bills jump another $200 a year.

OK, enough. Let’s call council’s bluff. Cut services. We dare you. We double dare you.

The city already has a blueprint. In a poll conducted for the city, there’s big support for investing in transit, street repairs, snow removal, police and firefighting. There’s less support for parking enforcement, bike lanes, taxi services, libraries, cemeteries and pet ownership.

Of course, the polled citizens probably did not consider that the city services they like the most are also the most expensive.

That’s where leadership from council comes in. Councillors should start with the premise of no property tax increases, then ask administrators

OK, enough. Let’s call council’s bluff. Cut services. We dare you.

to reveal where the cuts could be and wait for citizens to react to those suggestions. Then choose your cuts wisely and courageously.

As the fur flies, councillors should recall that Calgary lost thousands of jobs over the last few years. The tax burden should not fall on those with fixed incomes, two-income families that became one income and those whose salaries have been cut. And remember that property taxes are not based on ability to pay.

Now for the big complication.

Calgary is deep into pondering the possibility of bidding for the 2026 Winter Olympics, a project with a conservatively estimated price tag of about $5 billion. The federal and provincial governments, and even the International Olympic Committee, seem willing to ante up most of the money. (Let’s not forget that Calgarians are also provincial and federal taxpayers, too.)

But Calgary could still be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars on its own. That financing remains to be seen. What’s worrisome is that some on council believe the Olympics will bail out our funding shortfall.

“Some of the infrastructure that we need funding for might be funded through an Olympic envelope,” said Mayor Naheed Nenshi this week. “One could think of the Olympics as a way to manage the equalization payments problem that we have here in Alberta by actually bringing in investment from the province and from the feds to make up a little bit for the huge amount of surplus taxes we send to those other governments.”

What’s more disturbing: the belief that Calgary will get a blank cheque from the Olympics cash cow, or the mayor’s shameful misrepresentation of equalization?

In any case, the bottom line is, if the city can’t balance the books without the Olympics, can we really trust the Olympics to balance the books for us?