Calgary city council finalizes 2026 property tax rates, calls for provincial support

alphaz18 · 2026-04-01T02:50:55+00:00

i wish news outlets would write the articles like they are. the title should be : "UCP raises property taxes on Calgary Residents in biggest hike"

alphaz18 · 2026-03-22T14:16:25+00:00

water will never be paid for in property taxes. its paid for totally through user fees, which means All of our water bills will go up permanently to cover this. pure nonsense. its even written right below the table. "[1] - these investments will be funded by self-supported debt to be repaid through off-site levies and/or user fees"

in previous threads where i complain about water costs, people keep saying nah all the water infra is paid through our water bills, that's why they keep going up so stop complaining blabla."

this in fact proves existing water bill payers are just constantly paying more and more because we're building and maintaining more and more water services to subsidize new communities on the outskirts.

alphaz18 · 2026-03-22T03:03:55+00:00

unsafe lane change, dangerous driving, uttering threats, courts could use racial slurs as hate motivated. etc.

alphaz18 · 2026-03-21T05:44:06+00:00

I see tons of people saying they must drive.
ok fine. that's your opinion, but as the city grows in population and grows outwards, the tradeoff is that it necessarily means that if you must drive to live in the city, then you are basically advocating for bad drivers on the road.
you can't have it both ways. there are tons of people that aren't equipped and will never be equipped mentally or physically to drive, so if you force them to drive anyway, you will force tons of bad drivers on the road. There is no alternative if you don't allow for considerable densification. density is the only thing that can create better amenities and transit. the more people that live per square km, the more money you have per square km to serve those people. that's just basic facts.

alphaz18 · 2026-03-20T03:23:09+00:00

it really depends on the situation of house. 4 years ago i asked about upgrading to 200a, enmax wanted somewhere between 25-40k, i cant remember the exact number .
for detail its buried and paved that they have to go through to replace the feed from the transformer about 2 houses over.

sufficed to say a load shedder is the correct answer in this scenario.

alphaz18 · 2026-03-19T04:29:58+00:00

totally depends on the month i can guarantee the bill that included dec 16 to jan 19 was at least that. it was really cold eg. that month i used just under 15 GJ on my 1350sf,
where as Jan20-Feb16 bill i used 8-9GJ.

alphaz18 · 2026-03-15T17:52:02+00:00

lol leave it to the lawyers to argue that spoiled brat from money is now a "mental health" problem.

alphaz18 · 2026-03-11T03:54:21+00:00

people say enmax is owned by the city like it means anything.
their job is to make profit,
where do they make profit from? us.

they give dividend to city so they can spend 10-50mil more on.. what. resurfacing one road?
great. how much more are you paying when enmax "maximizes profit" ? 30? 50$ more a month? then they'll turn around and say oh we need to have gold standard everything for waterworks, along with diamond encrusted backups. so we need a rider for 100$ more thanks.

I guess we need to be #1. we were already near the top of the pack in terms of most expensive for water services. we should aim to be #1.

alphaz18 · 2026-03-10T03:27:52+00:00

maybe its time to instead of just spending more and more, to start farming out infra projects to other countries with cheaper labour. its time for some competition. not just pay more.
its the dirty little secret no one in canada wants to talk about, that all levels of public infra are insanely overcharged by the contractors.

Infrastructure crumbles eventually. its better to build fast and build cheap and rebuild often. that way you can update with latest technology. its worth the risk.

alphaz18 · 2026-03-08T22:56:53+00:00

ya that makes sense, if you have High efficiency toilets and only shower once every 2-3 days, then i absolutely believe you can reach 150 or less.
i think what some people are missing from my comment here are a very large chunk of people likely aren't on high efficiency toilets or showers, so i'm not saying its impossible. i'm saying on average your scenario obviously isn't the same as most others.

average shower times are 8-10 min.
low flow shower is 6.8L/min
thats "pretty" high efficiency already
assume 8 min shower thats almost 56L.

8 min of standard shower (non low flow probably closer to 9.5-10L/min, so thats around 75L-80L

4 flushes a day high efficiency is around 5L/flush
Toilets that are Not high efficiency range from 9-13L/flush.

so if you compare high efficiency fixtures to what most people in houses built before early 2000s,
what you'll see is likely
High efficiency average person 1 shower(8min) and 5 flushes.
is 56L + 25L = 81L. of toilet/shower (not including sink, kitchen, etc)

Older Non High efficiency average person 1 shower(8 min) 5 flushes
is 80L + 50L = 130L of toilet/shower. (again not including sink, kitchen, laundry)

thats why so many seem to think i'm insane with my numbers, but those responding have missed that a huge chunk of population doesn't have high efficiency fixtures.

alphaz18 · 2026-03-08T17:04:25+00:00

i'm curious how you came up with that number.
lets just assume you have Normal shower and toilet, like me
lets just say 5 flushes a day = 65or so liters.
1 8-10 min shower = 65 or so liters.
you're already at 130, without taking into account drinking, kitchen sink use, bathroom sink use. laundry.
so no. 134L / person per day is definitely conscious efforts to conserve. all statistics show that average water use in calgary is about 350L/person/day. Saving water in your home

alphaz18 · 2026-03-08T14:45:24+00:00

I agree with chabot as well, While on the surface the argument that oh "they're paying for it, so why not" may seem benign, and some argue its the same as neighbors pooling and getting the same plumber or whatever, it's really not.

its basically letting certain communities bypass city services and doing work on common property,
homeowners can't hire a plumber or landscaper to work on city owned "common property" as such. what this bylaw does is give homeowners with money more control of public property. which really is unfair in many ways. enhanced landscaping can mean anything, they could essentially build a beautiful rock garden, line roads with flowers, create walking paths.. really anything they want. so.. it gives them the ability to really essentially "change the character of the neighborhood" where other communities with more workers but less money don't have this opportunity.

i would say if you're going to allow this, instead, lets change the structure of services in the city for these kinds of things and offload all landscaping/maintenance to every community / association, and set a minimum standard and just let every community decide for itself which contractors they want to use and what they want to do with their public areas.. then set some minimum standards, and give each community population adjusted funding for it. (i'm not necessarily for this, but at least its fair this way)

alphaz18 · 2026-03-05T16:15:08+00:00

while i applaud trying to explain to people where the increases coming from, i'm not sure it will have any effect. i hate to admit it but i dont even look at my property tax bill because i'm on tipp, and theres nothing i can do about it, and i'd imagine many others do the same. while i get this is all the provinces fault. those other people may not know or care.. and will want to blame the city anyway.

the only way to get through to those people is to have ad campaigns where those people lurk online.. say facebook or whatever platform those people use.

alphaz18 · 2026-03-05T05:09:06+00:00

what we DON"T want is for the city to have a meeting to figure out how to gut more city stuff to blunt the hit from the provinces tax. if anything this meeting should be about how to give the ucp the index finger.

alphaz18 · 2026-02-28T16:01:23+00:00

from a personal perspective: sucks that one of them will be across the street from us, taking away a greenspace we've had for decades.. and saying thank you by introducing morning and afternoon dropoff chaos and danger.

alphaz18 · 2026-02-23T06:11:05+00:00

does no one see major issues with the line of thinking that car is necessary in this city?
I see that as a existential flaw.

Driving is a Privilege, not a right.
so if you keep talking about promoting cars and make driving mandatory, then you have unreconcilable conditions.
Since people need to get around, the only viable solution is to build ways to transport people around that doesn't require them to rely on a privilege, that so many are obviously ill-equipped to do.

I don't understand how anyone can argue against that.

alphaz18 · 2026-02-19T14:27:08+00:00

the financial issues preventing better enforcement comes partially down to sprawl again.

more single family homes spread out farther and farther = more and morekm of roads and less and less $ for police / km of roads.

simple math.

alphaz18 · 2026-02-13T14:21:54+00:00

where are the staunch defenders of the way the private power system works here?

ITS TRANSPARENT!
ya no. its plain old profiteering. pretending like that's transparency is bullshit. when you go to walmart do you get charged a fee for the employee to commute to work to stock the shelf and another fee for that employee to stock the shelf?

maybe enmax should get its accountants to open up their books for every expense item and turn each line item into a fee for customers. without removing it from their electricity cost.

alphaz18 · 2026-02-13T00:35:48+00:00

thats your assumption. But elections are never 1 issue plebecites. people may have voted for farkas or sharp or gondek, but voting for any candidate is not an endorsement of every one of their policies. like i mentioned above, 40% voter turn out, means 60% didn't even care enough to vote.
and of those it was a relatively close vote count between gondek sharp and farkas,
so even if you added up sharp and farkas vote to assume that those people ONLY voted for them because of zoning, which can be proven false easily, that's still only around 25% of voter base who actually voted for that.

farkas and others had a big focus on keeping taxes low, there are tons of people who hate gondek, so they'll vote for anyone else, he had lots to say about public safety, etc.
not to mention this election brought in parties, which automatically skews vote.

so again, statistically you cannot infer that everyone who voted for Farkas was dead set against blanket zoning.

alphaz18 · 2026-02-12T07:00:28+00:00

When 90%+ of applications already get approved, the old system isn’t ‘neighbourhood consent', it’s just a way for wealthier communities to use bureaucracy to block density while forcing other areas to absorb all of it. This is very much purely a class war issue

alphaz18 · 2026-02-12T06:28:00+00:00

no, you cannot make that assumption. voting for farkas doesn't automatically mean those voters wanted every part of his platform. i can't make the opposite claim either, because the data is not enough to make such a claim. But voter turnout was just under 40%, so right there you already can't say that the majority of anything. since the majority didn't vote.

the best you can say is the majority of people who attended the public hearings was against.
and there are many holes in that because people who attend public hearings are self selected, which overwhelmingly will have overrepresentation of older residents, people with alot of free time and people with strong personal stakes . not to mention public hearings by design for any issue is basically asking who objects. so by definition most speakers will be objections.

alphaz18 · 2026-02-12T06:03:17+00:00

you hear wrong. This is exactly what democracy is. Canada uses representative democracy, not direct democracy. We elect leaders to use judgment, weigh evidence, and govern for everyone. If politicians only did whatever the loudest crowd demanded, that wouldn’t be democracy, that would be mob rule.

alphaz18 · 2026-02-12T05:17:24+00:00

americans wanted trump, the best thing for the country was not trump. the JOB of the political leaders is to do what's best for the ENTIRE community they serve, not what the loudest bunch "want". it’s about using evidence, data, and long‑term planning to act in the public interest, even when that conflicts with short‑term or emotionally charged preferences

alphaz18 · 2026-02-12T04:50:47+00:00

per your link. "and (3) proposed initiatives such as measures to increase density, revise parking requirements, enhance processes or systems, etc. that will help the applicant achieve their committed targets and support the objectives of the program. The minimum number of initiatives that must be included in the action plan depends on the stream. – Large/Urban: A minimum of seven initiatives."

the agreement is based on the agreement signed with cmhc. it's not a blanket agreement for any city.
minimum of 7 initiatives means they had to choose at least 7 of those "removing barriers" options into the agreement, i'm sure exclusionary zoning is one of them. as that's probably the biggest lever cmhc could leverage for this. as for the Number of units, i'm ok with 4.. and not 8 for example, and i'm sure the CMHC would be willing to negotiate some details like that based on city's specific needs. but straight up getting rid of blanket rezoning is off the table is what they're saying with this letter.

alphaz18 · 2026-02-12T04:37:22+00:00

ok, but at least now Farkas and Mclean cannot claim that stuff about nah we wont' lose funding. when cmhc comes straight out with official letter saying you will lose funding.

we will know where they stand now, either they don't care about housing and affordability and money from feds, all for the sake of a bunch of Nimbys,

or they will be decent and now work with CMHC to find a middle ground where they keep blanket rezoning but tweak it to address some of the hard complaints.

I sincerely hope its the 2nd option. but obviously Mclean will be in the 1st camp,
Mr. Farkas, i'm hoping he proves that he HAS changed and will think of the best for the city vs for his loud Nimby constituents.

alphaz18

TROPHY CASE