CALGARY – A new report suggests Calgary has a lot of room for improvement when it comes to addressing the challenges that come with growth.
The Calgary Chamber of Commerce released their Great Cities report on Wednesday. It’s a year-long study examining municipalities from Singapore to St. Albert – and how Calgary measures up.
Some of the key findings in the report are:
- We need diverse revenue streams to avoid property tax hikes every year, and have long term growth.
- If we invest in housing, we will spend much less on social services in the long run.
- Key areas of our city could run more efficiently through technology.
- We could privatize some city services in a way that makes sense and would save money.
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“The report is intended to get people thinking about the possibilities,” says Director of Policy and Government Relations Justin Smith.
“Calgary is an economically robust, growing city that is facing some serious growth-related challenges that need to be addressed,” he adds. “By looking at the successes and sometimes failures of other municipalities, we have much richer sense of what we can achieve.”
The Great Cities report is also calling on Calgary to look to other centre for inspiration when it comes to collecting revenue, tackling homelessness and using smartphone apps to deliver services.
Some highlights from other world cities in the report include:
- Boston – uses smartphone apps to allow citizens to alert the city to potholes which has cut the response time to fill those potholes in half.
- London, England – is anticipating savings of 33 million pounds by working with neighboring municipalities to deliver services more efficiently.
- Denver – collects only one-third as much property tax as Calgary, but funds the city budget with about the same revenue ($1.6 B) in ways that are more responsive to economic conditions and ensure that those who use services pay for them.
- Salt Lake City – Utah has shown that by investing in housing they can greatly reduce the overall costs of long term homelessness by 74%, and is on track to eradicate homelessness by 2015.
“This report shows that Calgary could be delivering services more efficiently, saving large amounts money, and even better supporting our city’s least fortunate if we learned from some of the practices of world-leading cities,” says Smith. “It’s time that we look at these options.”
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