BUDGET GAP NEEDS FIXING

You have to give Calgary city manager Jeff Fielding credit. He didn’t mince words this week in his warning to city council about a $170-million hole in its 2018 preliminary budget forecast.

“The $170 million is a real gap,” he said. “We need to deal with that gap.”

If council wants to hold property taxes to a zero per cent increase next year — and we adamantly insist they do — then council must find $170 million in a $3-billion plus budget.

Some councillors tried to play down Fielding’s figure. “This isn’t Armageddon,” assured Coun. Ward Sutherland, who further indicated that just a little bit of budget tweaking and the problem is solved.

Trouble is this is an election year, and there’s no incentive to make hard decisions that would anger voters. And even if council pledges to find the money, there’s no guarantee the next council will have the fortitude to hold the line. But that’s exactly what we need.

For about a decade now, tax increases and fee hikes have exceeded the rate of inflation. They have also exceeded the ability of many Calgarians to pay.

Sure, council has expressed concern about the plight of taxpayers. But homeowners and businesses continue to be treated as bottomless ATMs. Unlike income taxes, property taxes are based on the assessed value of your property, not how much you earn. That might be fine for some in oilpatch boom years, but those good times are gone. Those on pensions, frozen salaries or on employment insurance can’t keep up.

As usual, we’re told council can eliminate the shortfall by spending some of the city’s savings, raising taxes, or — horrors! — reducing service.

With Calgary suffering its worst unemployment rate since the 1980s, 20 per cent downtown vacancy rates, empty homes in the suburbs and slowing population growth, raising taxes is out of the question, and let’s not spend our hard-earned reserves as a temporary fix.

That leaves cutting services. So be it. Spending has to match the times. We’ll leave the precise slashing to council. That’s why we pay our mayor and councillors among the highest municipal salaries in Canada.

It also means the city needs to take a harder line on civic employee salaries and contracts.

And there’s another reason council has to solve the budget gap problem. The city has a pricey wish list of projects and potential projects, among them the increasingly expensive Green Line, a possible multimillion-dollar arena and a potential Winter Olympic Games bid that’ll be into the billions. There’s no way the city can take on those plans without getting its financial house in order first.