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Calgary Municipal Politics

Which mayoral candidate do you intend to vote for in 2021?

  • Jeremy Farkas

    Votes: 4 6.6%

  • Jyoti Gondek

    Votes: 43 70.5%

  • Brad Field

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Jan Damery

    Votes: 10 16.4%

  • Jeff Davison

    Votes: 3 4.9%

  • Other

    Votes: 1 1.6%
  • Total voters
    61
trtcttc said:
Not sure if this is the right thread, but some good news on education.

livewirecalgary.com

Calgary Board of Education projects $3.5M surplus by the end of August - LiveWire Calgary

The Calgary Board of Education is forecasting a surplus of $3.5 million this fiscal year due to higher overall revenues and lower-than-expected enrolment numbers. According to a first-quarter budget variance report presented to trustees on Tuesday, this is around $6.1 million more than the $2.66...
livewirecalgary.com livewirecalgary.com

"There was also a “slight easing in the rate of enrolment growth” since the budget report was approved, which contributed to the surplus, Grundy said. According to the budget variance report, growth was initially expected to slightly exceed 9,000 students for the 2024-2025 school year. However, the student population grew by more than 4,100 students as of Sept. 30, 2025."

Forecasting almost double the growth than what materialized is a bit crazy to me. This is one area where there is a very precise count of population, definitely supports evidence international/inter-provincial migration are slowing signficantly.
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the cost for underestimating is much larger than the slap on the wrist from overestimating.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
$117000 isn't what it use to be.
Click to expand...
It isn't.

I think a big disconnect happens when people compare jobs that make similar levels of decisions in the private sector to the Councillor jobs. You quickly see that Councillors are perhaps vastly underpaid, especially when you need to account for the risks around applying for said job -- needing to take months off of work -- and the risks of winning -- stopping career progression for 4 years.

That someone relatively early in their career cannot justify it should be a blaring warning claxon to those who think it is a good job with good pay.
 
darwink said:
It isn't.

I think a big disconnect happens when people compare jobs that make similar levels of decisions in the private sector to the Councillor jobs. You quickly see that Councillors are perhaps vastly underpaid, especially when you need to account for the risks around applying for said job -- needing to take months off of work -- and the risks of winning -- stopping career progression for 4 years.

That someone relatively early in their career cannot justify it should be a blaring warning claxon to those who think it is a good job with good pay.
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I was saying that tongue is cheek. I fully support paying people in public office more. Too often they refuse pay raises because of the optics while if pay was better, better people would be attracted to run for public office.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
Damn, $117000 isn't what it use to be. That salary puts them in the top 10% in Alberta so I don't know about mid-level corporate job.
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For Calgary CMA, someone 45-49 years old, 75 percentile is 107,000, 90th percentile (top 10%) is 166,000. And most jobs do not require you to re-apply every 4 years. Also, councilors have limited exits to private sector, much less so than MPs and MLAs.

Income Explorer, 2021 Census

This interactive chart is comprised of two visualizations to show statistics of selected income sources by various characteristics and geographies.
www12.statcan.gc.ca www12.statcan.gc.ca
 
trtcttc said:
Also, councilors have limited exits to private sector, much less so than MPs and MLAs.
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Our MLAs and MPs don't do that well either. We collectively remember the few that do really well, and paint that on all of them.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
CHANGE, we'll see if it is for the better. It must be pretty hard to recruit for public office.
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It is pretty hard to dedicate the amount of time for what amounts to a pay cut for many. Had to really believe in yourself 20 years ago. Now you have to be far beyond that, believe that no one else is anywhere close to what you would bring, or others are actively bad.
 
Our contribution to education taxes in Alberta is almost double that of Edmonton on the backs of higher assessed value for homes. Issues with indexing to property aside, what is stopping Calgary from assessing their homes lower? I'm sure I'm not alone in the city's assessment this year being greater than what I could sell my home for. I've looked at sales in the last 30 days around my area, and every single one sold below assessed value. It is unusual for assessments to be higher than sales. I've lived in Vancouver and Toronto and assessed values are regularly lower than sale prices, and Toronto hasn't even been updating assessments since Covid. This doesn't matter for the city tax, since it's your increase relative to city wide, but for the provincial portion, why is the city not doing all it can to keep assessments low?

 
trtcttc said:
Our contribution to education taxes in Alberta is almost double that of Edmonton on the backs of higher assessed value for homes. Issues with indexing to property aside, what is stopping Calgary from assessing their homes lower? I'm sure I'm not alone in the city's assessment this year being greater than what I could sell my home for. I've looked at sales in the last 30 days around my area, and every single one sold below assessed value. It is unusual for assessments to be higher than sales. I've lived in Vancouver and Toronto and assessed values are regularly lower than sale prices, and Toronto hasn't even been updating assessments since Covid. This doesn't matter for the city tax, since it's your increase relative to city wide, but for the provincial portion, why is the city not doing all it can to keep assessments low?

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This reason alone is why they need to look at how they assess properties. Someone had the idea of frontage, I added in that it should also include postal code property value. That way you're assessing taxes based on actual city services used.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
This reason alone is why they need to look at how they assess properties. Someone had the idea of frontage, I added in that it should also include postal code property value. That way you're assessing taxes based on actual city services used.
Click to expand...
Calgary changing how Calgary taxes itself won't change how the provincial government taxes [properties in] Calgary. Assessments are audited for quality by the province, and if Calgary suppressed values, it would be forced to change practices.
 
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