CITY SET TO DROP BUDGET AXE
Transit, police, fire face deep cuts
With just five months remaining in the year, the city is preparing to slash $60 million in spending from this year’s municipal budget, with the largest cuts expected to come from public transit, fire and police.
The mid-year cuts will be felt across 48 different municipal services, with some of the largest cuts, by dollar value, coming from fire and emergency response at $7.6 million, and police at $7 million.
However, transit users will likely feel the greatest effects with $6.9 million in cuts proposed for public transit and a further $2.4 million in cuts to specialized transit services such as Calgary Transit Access, totalling $9.3 million.
City council will be asked to approve the cuts package at a meeting on Tuesday.
The $60-million budget cut was approved by council in June to help pay for $130.9 million in property tax relief for businesses.
In a report going to council Tuesday, the city said that it followed a “least harm” approach in identifying the potential cuts, though it’s expected that the plan will “include reductions to the city’s workforce.”
“Given the magnitude of the reductions and the short time frame for implementation, it was not possible to avoid impacts to front-line services,” the city said.
To find significant savings, the city said, it was necessary to target the city’s largest budgets:
The Calgary police operating budget currently exceeds $400 million annually;
The Calgary fire department started the year with a budget of approximately $217 million;
And public transit previously posted a net operating budget of $243 million.
The president of the firefighters’ union said Thursday that the cuts will have a significant effect on fire services since the department has already been reducing budgets for the past four years. Mike Henson estimated that the cut could affect between two and four vehicles, including apparatus for firefighting or emergency medical care.
“The chief has told me that he has cut all of the back-of-house support areas that he can to make up $20 million in cuts in the last four years, so there is no way that this $7.6 million does not affect front-line service to the citizens of Calgary,” Henson said. “It will result in delayed response times.”
The police commission said the proposed cut to police budgets will “likely include reductions to training, equipment and technology.”
“Cuts up to $7 million will not affect current employee positions and the valuable public safety programs important to Calgarians,” said commission chair Brian Thiessen.
One cut in particular has caught the attention of transit and accessibility advocates: $2.4 million from “specialized transit,” a move that will hurt the Calgary Transit Access service used by nearly 15,000 Calgarians who cannot use Calgary Transit due to a disability.
“It’s extremely disappointing,” said Darby Lee Young, an accessibility strategist with the consulting firm Universal Design. “I realize that we do have to do a $60-million budget cut, but to cut funds from a program that’s already struggling to help the clients and the customers get around, not only will this make it difficult on the clients and the customers, it’ll make it extremely difficult on the staff as well.”
It’s not clear what, if any, changes can be made to the cuts package at next week’s council meeting since the city has already spent more than $60 million on tax relief for businesses.
“We’ve already spent the money. The businesses have received their cheques so it’s pretty hard to turn back,” said Coun. Druh Farrell. “But I can’t support cuts to our most vulnerable citizens.”
Farrell said the city should have revised or reduced council’s previous approvals to ramp up suburban growth before cutting services. New and developing communities contributed to a 2.15 per cent increase in property taxes in 2019. “We’re growing and spreading and cutting at the same time — that means existing community has to take a deeper cut in service,” Farrell said.
In addition to this year’s $60-million cut, the city is also pursuing savings over the next three years through a review of six municipal services, including golf courses, community recycling depots and the popular low-income transit pass.
Coun. Jyoti Gondek said Thursday that it’s unfortunate that a detailed service line review wasn’t initiated sooner to allow systematic budget reductions instead of blunt, “across-the-board” cuts.
“We’ve got people in positions of vulnerability absolutely panicked now, that we’re going to cut their low-income transit passes, that we’re going to cut their services,” Gondek said. “We’ve thrown Calgarians into a fearful state by saying there is going to be cuts across the board.”