Our cities will benefit in this election

Here is my special provincial election column that appeared in the Calgary Herald in April.

A couple of weeks ago on this page, I highlighted the some of the important issues that Alberta's cities are talking about in this municipal election, and introduced you to citiesmatter.ca, the site where we surveyed all parties on their ideas on municipal issues.

The surveys are in, and I encourage you to visit citiesmatter.ca before you cast your vote. What follows here is some analysis of the pros and cons of some of the party platforms on a few key areas, but you should visit the site to learn more and make up your own mind.

I should stress, as I always do, that I'm not endorsing anyone. I fight for Calgary, and Calgary alone. But I think all Calgarians deserve the best information and analysis as they make up their minds.

On that note, there's some very good news here. All five parties recognize that the current system of governance, especially for Calgary and Edmonton, is broken. Four suggest that city charters are the right way to go, while the Wildrose is a bit vaguer on form.

It's worth noting that, while each party speaks of change, only the PCs commit to a timeline on this question. It will be important to start this work right away, or else it risks waiting until after the 2013 municipal elections, and we will continue to press whatever government is elected to make this a priority.

And, of course, we must talk about money. The current system, in which only eight cents of your tax dollar stay in the city, doesn't provide the two key things cities need to build infrastructure like roads and transit and provide services like police, fire, and parks maintenance: predictability and stability.

For us to build giant projects like the SE LRT under the current system, we need giant, one-time transfers, which are often at the whim of the provincial or federal government of the day.

On this, the parties have quite different ideas. The Alberta Party, the Liberals, and the NDP all suggest letting cities keep more of the education property tax, which meets my criteria of predictability and stability, but also makes cities even more reliant on the property tax, which is an awful form of taxation.

To be fair, each party also goes further on discussing other revenue sources, ranging from the NDP's higher royalty rates to the Liberal's Municipal Heritage Fund. This latter idea is very interesting, but suffers from being tied to market returns, which makes it somewhat unpredictable. It's also not clear how long it will take before there are meaningful flows from this fund, since cities would only be granted the interest on it.

But kudos to all of those parties for being creative.

Also creative was the Wildrose party, whose 10-10 plan means that cities would get 10 per cent of the province’s tax revenue and 10 per cent of all surpluses. In surplus years, this could certainly help fix our infrastructure deficit, and it gives cities access to something other than the property tax.

However, the devil is in the details. Getting the formula right is critical to make sure that Calgary taxpayers are not unduly subsidizing the rest of the province, as we do now. It’s also a bit troubling how much Wildrose candidates suggest will be paid for by the 10-10 fund — everything from social service funding to the arts. If this money only replaces existing provincial operating funding, it just becomes a complex shell game without actually building the stuff we need.

The PCs, on the other hand, are basically proposing an extension to the existing grant programs. This is important, and much needed, but it really doesn’t get to the structural issues. It still leaves us at the mercy of the provincial government’s whims and priorities. I would have preferred something bolder and a bit more clarity on their plans.

The website has much more information of all of these issues and more — from the southwest ring road (everyone likes the Tsuu T’ina alignment) to regional planning (nobody understands the issues, sadly) to campaign finance reform (my favourite topic, and some of them get how important it is). Take look, and please vote. Because cities matter. And our democracy matters.

- Mayor Naheed Nenshi