Moving the city to fresh heights

This column was originally published in the Calgary Herald on October 19, 2013--just prior to the 2013 municipal election.

Three years ago, you took a chance, and gave me the incredible opportunity to be your mayor. Thank you.

This year, the Economist ranked Calgary as one of the top five cities in the world in which to live.

Together, we’ve created a place where there is opportunity for all. We continue to attract business and people to live, work, invest, and raise families here.

Calgarians are proud to live here, excited about our potential, and happy about the services they receive from their city. And we do it all with the lowest property taxes of any major city in Canada.

Certainly, this summer, we proved to the world how blessed we are to live in a place where government works so well, where public servants keep us safe every day, and where citizens look after one another.

Three years ago, I presented 12 Better Ideas. I’m happy to report that we have accomplished or made significant progress on 10 of them, including building major road infrastructure, four new recreation centres, and three new libraries, and creating a long range plan for Calgary Transit - as well as making your city government work better.

I'm proud of what your City Council has done over the last three years, and I encourage you to learn more about our record by reading the report card at nenshi.ca/3yearsofprogress.

But it almost feels like we are having two different elections: one on the street and one in the newspaper. Reading this paper and others, you’d think people were really angry, that our growth was in jeopardy, and that we are suffering from ruinous taxes.

You’ve been given incomplete and misleading information from special interest groups, passed on without filters or fact-checking.

For example, in this space two weeks ago, Mark Milke of the Fraser Institute boldly stated “everyone is entitled to their own opinion; they're not entitled to their own facts.” He’s right. So why are his numbers so wrong?

In his example, a home that paid $2500 in tax in 2007 should be paying $2858 today given inflation, but is paying $3438.

Except it’s not.

Using the same house as his example, the actual tax in 2013 would have been $2893, tracking inflation almost exactly. This is based on actual tax rates, freely available on the City’s website.

Try as I might, I can’t figure out the source of Milke’s math error, just that it, and his entire thesis, are completely wrong.

And then there’s this question of a slate. In this space yesterday, home builder Jay Westman (someone who’s never met with me, or sent a note about his concerns) bemoaned the fact that I’m trying to “pick a fight” with him.

This is the guy who convened a group of 150 people last year specifically to tell them to support a slate of Council candidates to oppose all of my initiatives. Exactly who is picking a fight with whom here? And what, exactly, is he so mad about, given record home starts?

Westman and his small group of cohorts are spending more money than all councillors combined spent in 2010 to elect new councillors in Wards 2, 4, 7, 9, and 11 to get what they think is a working majority on Council. (They couldn’t find candidates in Ward 1 or Ward 8, I’m told). If you want to know the names of the candidates, just go to [http://tiny.cc/h9174w].

I’m certain that every one of these candidates loves this city deeply. And of course, if I am re-elected, I will happily work with whomever the voters send to Council.

But it would be great if they would clarify for voters the nature of their relationships with the builders and how that would or would not influence their votes on key issues. You can visit nenshi.ca/questions to learn more.

It’s also interesting that the incumbents the builders are challenging (Gael Macleod, Brian Pincott, Druh Farrell, and Gian-Carlo Carra) all represent inner-city wards where the suburban home builders do little to no business.

While funding third party Super PACs and sending memos to your employees telling them how to vote may seem distasteful, elections are supposed to be times for open debate and discussion of differing visions. Just don’t deny what you're doing.

We live in an amazing place that can be even better. Please visit Nenshi.ca to see my plans for building an even better Calgary, and on Monday, vote to elect a Mayor and Council that can make it real.

- Naheed K. Nenshi