Less than 24 hours after being sworn in, Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas addressed the city’s business community and indicated city council will be looking for ways to lower this year’s property tax increase.
Farkas made the remarks at his first ever State of the City address to a sold-out crowd at a Calgary Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Telus Convention Centre.
“We also have to control costs corporately,” Farkas said during a fireside chat with Chamber CEO Deborah Yedlin.
According to Farkas, city administration will be “getting some strong direction from this new council in terms of containing costs and the overall burden.”
City council is set to deliberate over the final year of the four-year budget approved by the previous city council in a matter of weeks.
The budget, previewed in September, features a proposed overall property tax increase of 3.6 per cent, which would result in a 5.4 per cent increase for residential property owners and 1.3 per cent for commercial properties, on average.
Although Farkas didn’t indicate which areas of the budget he would like to find efficiencies, he said council is ready to “sharpen our pencils” to bring down the proposed tax increase.
“We need a significant reduction in the amount of increase,” Farkas told reporters. “We’re still working with city administration, with the financial department in terms of how we exactly get there, but I’m very keen to work with my council colleagues and hear their ideas for areas of operational efficiencies.”
However, Farkas said Calgarians do want council to “lean in” on investments in infrastructure maintenance, transit and public safety.
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The mayor’s priorities around public safety investments are welcome for Mark Garner, executive director of the Calgary Downtown Association.
He said public safety is “paramount” for downtown businesses, and increased investments “have to happen.”
“A lot of the burden of safety issues is put on the burden of business and there’s some that can address those issues, and have deep pockets that can spend on the issue, and there’s others that can’t,” Garner said.
Addressing crime and “the root causes of it,” was part of Farkas’ address to the business community, which lasted roughly 15 minutes and echoed similar comments he’s made around getting Calgary ready to welcome its two millionth citizen sometime in the next decade.
He said that will include safety, affordability, housing certainty, improved transportation and infrastructure, and a transparent city hall.
“The state of our city is that Calgary is rising, Calgary is growing and Calgary is competing,” Farkas told the crowd.
Following the address, Yedlin said Farkas’ approach is “down-to-earth” with a focus on “back to basics” form of city governance.
Heading into November’s budget deliberations, Yedlin said the Chamber of Commerce is focused on the tax share between residential and non-residential properties.
“That taxation rebalancing has continued to be very important to the Chamber,” she said. “We want to be the competitive jurisdiction for businesses in the country and that’s an element that we have to resolve.”
The previous city council agreed to shift the tax share from non-residential to residential properties by one per cent in 2024, 2025 and 2026.
The proposal in the 2026 budget would see non-residential properties bear 44.1 per cent of total property tax responsibility, and would pay roughly 4.48 times more per dollar of assessed value compared to residential properties.
Yedlin said the city is getting “perilously close” to the maximum ratio allowed by the province of five-to-one.
“That’s not a good number to be at,” she said. “Because that means the provincial government has licence to be involved in what the city does.”
According to the new mayor, “all options are on the table” when it comes to the upcoming budget deliberations on Nov. 24.
“I’m very excited to get to work with this new council,” Farkas said. “I think, all around the table, there’s that consensus that the tax increase that is being proposed is far too high.”
The 2026 budget proposal will be presented to the new city council on Nov. 10.
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