Across the city, Calgary families are opening their mailboxes to uncover a 7.5 per cent property tax hike.  Calgarians are also receiving a letter from Mayor Naheed Nenshi designed to explain why his council is moving forward with a tax hike while thousands of Calgary workers are losing their jobs. A massive tax hike is bad enough, but Nenshi’s letter, chock-full of misinformation, adds insult to injury.

The mayor’s letter tries to paint a picture of an efficient city hall focused on “essential services.” Nenshi even included a brochure to show taxpayers what their money is being spent on. It highlights services such as police, fire, transit, roads, the environment and parks that few object to the city providing so long as the money isn’t being completely wasted. But the problem isn’t what’s included in the list of services, it’s what has been strategically left out.

For example, there’s not a peep about city council’s $100 million corporate slush fund. There’s no mention of the fact that Calgary councillors receive higher salaries than their counterparts in other provinces and pensions that cost taxpayers more than pensions in Edmonton, Vancouver and Ottawa combined. There’s also no mention of the two pensions the mayor is receiving, the hundreds of city employees who are receiving two or three pensions and that labour costs have ballooned by hundreds of millions of dollars since 2014.

Nenshi’s letter is also misleading about taxes.

“City council has kept your taxes to below inflation and population growth since the beginning of this latest downturn in 2014,” reads Nenshi’s letter.

The city’s own data in its 2019 and 2018 annual reports disprove the mayor’s claim. Had residential taxes only grown by the rate of inflation and population growth since the end of 2014, the city would have collected $216 million less from homeowners during that time. No wonder the last two citizen satisfaction surveys conducted by the city showed that Calgarians preferred spending cuts over tax hikes.

Nenshi’s letter also boasts that council has “identified over $740 million in cuts and savings.”

While most Calgarians would assume savings means a spending cut, when the mayor says that council has saved $740 million, he means council continued to increase spending, but at a slower rate then originally planned.

There have been zero cuts to the city’s budget. Instead, Calgary council’s spending has increased every year since 2014 and is now $460 million more than it was when the downturn began.

Councillors regularly describe any reduction in the rate of increase in spending on a project as a cut.

But if you spent $5,000 on a shopping spree, would you get away with claiming you “saved” $3,000 simply because when you planned the shopping trip last week you were originally going to spend $8,000?

It’s bad enough that the mayor and councillors make these misleading statements during city hall meetings. But it’s inexcusable for the mayor to make deceptive claims in an official letter, on city of Calgary letterhead, and insert it into the very envelope that contains the massive tax hike that shows his claims are detached from reality.

The mayor’s letter does get one thing right though: we certainly are living in unprecedented times. This could be the toughest downturn this generation of Calgarians have ever experienced. But councillors have yet to show they are willing to tighten their own belts to make things a little easier for struggling families. Calgary residents just spent two months finding out what is essential, and what isn’t. It’s time city hall focused on the essentials too.

This column was originally published in the Calgary Sun on June 4, 2020.