JEFF FIELDING: CITY MANAGER

The economic downturn plaguing Calgary the past couple of years hasn’t made life easy for anyone, including those charged with driving the city forward.

Jeff Fielding — city manager since June of 2014 — can readily attest to that.

“We’ve had a really interesting time here,” Fielding said. "When I first moved to the city, we were growing at twice the speed we thought that we were growing at. We had done our business plan around 19,000 to 25,000 people and we were actually growing at 40,000.

“Just as we were hitting our stride on that,” he said, “the bottom fell out and we’re in an economic downturn the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades. We’re having to do a fairly significant 180-degree turn, which means focusing on our costs, reducing our overhead, making sure we’re investing in the right type of projects.”

Thus, city management has become a bit of a shell game and, at times like this, a no-nonsense approach is necessary.

“I hope I have a reputation of being honest and straightforward,” said Fielding, known for his straight talk to the mayor and councillors. “I think it’s always served me well. Councils depend on a city manager to tell them the right answers, to provide professional advice when it’s necessary even when it’s not popular.”

And as we enter 2017, Fielding — originally from Kitchener, Ont., and a graduate of the University of Waterloo — is looking ahead and focusing on a number of areas, including funding of the Green Line LRT project and preparing for the October civic election.

“I think citizens of Calgary expect that our costs will be brought in line with the economic circumstances,” he said. "We’re fortunate that we have some money to invest in our capital budget and we’re changing the notion of tax-andspend to invest-and-value.

“The last (objective) is 50 to 55 per cent of the people that move to Calgary are new Canadians, and our organization needs to be representative of the population we serve.”