Can we talk about money?

I write a monthly column in the Calgary Sun. Here's an excerpt from my April story:

Can we talk about money?

When your city council was elected just six months ago, I promised to be clear, open, and transparent about the issues facing the city. Debates and discussions have to be in the open and involve you as fellow decision-makers and problem-solvers.

It’s been a tough transition for some — especially those in the media who prefer things to be black and white with heroes and villains and big, bold headlines.

But we live in a world of complex decisions and I trust the public enough to be in on those decisions.

Last week, I asked our administration to prepare a number of scenarios on how our city budget would look in the future, ranging from a three-year tax freeze to what our tax increases would look like if we changed nothing.

What we learned is we have to change.

If we freeze taxes for three years, we would need to find about $100 million per year starting next year.

If we increase our expenses only by inflation plus population growth, we would need property tax increases of 7% or 8% a year for the next three years (assuming other sources of less-controllable revenues stay the same).

Neither of these scenarios is very good and no one wants them. While we have some of the lowest property taxes of any city in Canada, the solution can’t be just to increase taxes and keep doing the same things we’ve always done.

So, what can we do?

First, we need to think about our expenses more thoughtfully.

We are currently engaged in a process to build a three-year budget and business plan, which fundamentally changes how we think about budgets.

This budget will be based on a number of principles, including balancing services provided with taxpayer affordability and building everything on a new stronger base of fiscal discipline and cost control. In other words, we will seek out waste wherever we find it and eliminate it.

The most important principle, though, is to focus what we do as a city government on the services you tell us you need.

That’s why we’re undertaking a massive public consultation and asking citizens to tell us what services you value, what we should be doing more of, and what we should be doing less of.

But we also need to be thoughtful about revenue. Cities have two main sources of income: Property tax and user fees of various kinds.

If you were to design the worst possible way of funding governments, you’d come up with something like the property tax. It’s not tied to people’s ability to pay or services they consume. Nor is it sensitive to changes in the economy...

Read the full article at the Calgary Sun.

- Mayor Nenshi