Calgary councillors are spending hours behind closed doors as the next four-year budget cycle is prepared, but the mayor says property taxes will go up again. “There is going to be some level of increase to Calgarians on their tax bill in the coming years, but we want to make sure Calgarians see the value for money from that,” Mayor Jeromy Farkas said on Tuesday. Farkas said the next city budget will go heavy on boosting public safety and infrastructure spending. “What we know is that previous councils, for far too many years, low-balled the amount of spending on essential infrastructure and essential maintenance, and we need to play catch-up at this point,” he said. During what is the final regular meeting of council before summer break, hours were spent in a closed meeting. The budget won’t be finalized until closer to the end of the year, and the exact figure of any property tax hike won’t be public until then. Tuesday’s closed-door meeting included Calgary’s police chief, who is making a pitch to increase the service’s budget. Chief Katie McLellan has previously said the police budget ask will be “significant” as the service aims to hire an additional 660 officers over the next four years. “We’re seeing a lot of significant asks and a projected tax rate that, to me, is just unacceptable,” said Ward 13 Coun. Dan McLean. “So we have to look at line item by line item—go through them all.” A report from administration in March showed it would take upward of $49 billion over the next decade to repair, replace or build necessary infrastructure. According to the report, about $20 billion of the needed spending is for growth in order to provide for new and expanding communities, $17 billion is for maintenance or replacement of current infrastructure and nearly $9 billion of the total is categorized for improving service levels. The mayor said another big piece of that is the ongoing water-main repair work. “We need to address those issues so Calgary is no longer in the same situation we saw (after a water-main break) in 2024, even (another major water-main break) on Dec. 30 of last year was critical essential infrastructure failing,” Farkas said. “So we’re going to do everything we can to hold our city administration to account and we’re going to do what we can to keep life affordable for Calgarians.” A preview of the budget last year was released to the public in September, while it was finalized by council in early December.
