Calgary city council will take part in a special meeting behind closed doors to seek legal advice, after a trove of confidential and preliminary budget documents were obtained by Global News.
As first reported by Global News on Wednesday, the confidential documents showed a significant property tax increase would be required to cover all the spending requests in front of city council in the upcoming four-year budget.
“I have reasonable grounds to believe that a serious privacy breach may have occurred, posing potential safety risks to City personnel and significant financial or legal exposure,” Calgary mayor Jeromy Farkas said in a statement posted online.
“The meeting will be held in order for council to hear immediate legal advice on the potential damage, our obligations, and what action is required to protect employees and taxpayers.”
The preliminary documents were presented to city council during a closed-door meeting July 28, in which city council directed administration to whittle down the requests and present an updated budget scenario later this month with a 15 per cent property tax increase in 2027.
Farkas said the figures are simply a “wishlist” and no decisions have been made regarding a property tax increase.
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The release of the documents resulted a clash on Thursday between Farkas and Ward 14 Coun. Landon Johnston, after Johnston took to social media and claimed he leaked the information.
The situation has prompted Farkas to call a special meeting of council.
It will take place after the long weekend on Tuesday morning, following the start of a busy Executive Committee meeting in which city councillors will need to endorse an option for the downtown leg of the Green Line LRT project.
A notice sent to city councillors said the meeting to is to receive “legal advice regarding unauthorized disclosure of 2027-2030 budget cycle information.”
Farkas’ office declined an interview with Global News on Friday morning.
When asked about the meeting and the situation following the reporting of the details within the preliminary budget documents, Ward 7 Coun. Myke Atkinson told Global News he feels it has become a distraction.
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“It’s pulling a lot of attention and oxygen away from the things we need to be doing as a council, and pulling them towards a bit of a circus,” he said Friday.
“It’s not what I want to be focused on. I want to be focused on the governance of the city.”
As work continued at city hall, the release of the budget documents loomed over city councillors during a committee meeting Friday afternoon.
The committee, which is tasked with recruiting the city’s next chief administrative officer, was told to keep the names of candidates being discussed confidential, with the bulk of the meeting behind closed doors.
“It is absolutely imperative that you do not reveal any names, ever, during the course of the search,” said Lisa Kershaw with Boyden Canada, the firm hired to help with the recruitment.
“If you’re known as a leaky ship, you’re not going to get candidates. Candidates will withdraw, not apply, change their mind.”
Other councillors aren’t convinced there will be repercussions, as the council code of conduct was eliminated by the provincial government last year and is set to be eventually replaced with a provincewide one.
“As far as I know, at this time, there’s nothing that city council can possibly do on this,” said Ward 4 Coun. DJ Kelly.
“I’ll go to that meeting on Tuesday, listen and learn — but at the end of the day, I’m pretty confident this is not a city hall issue, this is would be a minister of municipal affairs issue.”
Global News reached out to the office of Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams for comment, but did not receive a response.
Calgary city council will deliberate the next four-year budget on Nov. 23 after the proposed spending plan is released publicly in early November.
Bill Smith, a previous mayoral candidate for Calgary, (who is involved with the UCP in some capacity now) was very giddy with excitement over Calgary getting a new hockey arena. The thing is that he wasn’t up front as to how the thing was going to be paid for. When taxpayers got the drift that they would be the ones paying for the new hockey arena, he faced a crushing defeat. What’s with these pseudo Conservatives and Reformers and their love of corporate welfare?
Looks like a UCP budget of utter incompetence. Spend, spend, spend, on the most costliest boondoogles, that even squander billions of dollars. Why are property taxes so high in Calgary? Ask Danielle Smith. Not Jyoti Gondek. Not Naheed Nenshi. You heard it right. Danielle Smith. When Danielle Smith was employed in broadcasting, she specifically said that the hockey arena for Calgary wasn’t a good idea, because it would cause municipal property taxes in Calgary to go up. Next thing you know, Danielle Smith is the premier of Alberta and she is all supportive of the shiny new hockey arena for Calgary, and put money into it. Now municipal property taxes in Calgary have shot up. Other municipalities have the same fate. Maybe the UCP should have made the oil companies pay their property taxes? The UCP shouldn’t have scrapped photo radar. Here we are.
Landon Johnstone, I am happy you are not my Ward Councillor. Your job is to review and approve budgets. Not stress out your constituents on things that have not been decided. You should step down as it is clear you do not have sufficient skills or experience to do this important work. Sorry you were elected, perhaps people’s resumes should be produced prior to their running for election. Oh wait, how is your HVAC business going, perhaps we should have elected your bookkeeper.
It’s up to administration/operations to present all the things that they think should be done, and then council can prioritize between them. Hiding things from council is how we ended up with the water main emergency.
I wish Landon was my councilor so we could help votee him out. He doesn’t have a clue how budgeting works
At least Calgary has one councilor looking after their best interests. Edmonton certainly doesn’t.
So they start with a wish list and a 20% tax increase and then whittle it down to 5% so they can tell how much they trimmed the budget while giving the taxpayers a break on their taxes.
Would be nice to see them start at 5% wish list and then maybe get it down to 0% percent or even a negative to actually work on give something back to the TAXPAYERS!
Will never see that as today’s politician only see raising taxes as the answer!
Was the leak right or wrong? Do not care but it is nice to see how they work the numbers prior to telling the Calgarian taxpayer just how hard they work to lower the taxes before they keep asking for more every year.
1 term mayor
Shameful what Johnson did