Western Standard - Groups release spending cut recommendations to Calgary City Hall

00:00:00.000 I'm chatting with Franco Terrizano, the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:00:09.040 Franco was out doing a press conference on a very windy, cold, miserable day on City Hall

00:00:14.560 steps here in Calgary with a number of other groups with a number of proposals on how to get

00:00:20.560 spending under control and back in order in City Hall. So Franco, could you tell us a little bit

00:00:26.000 more about the other groups that joined you guys out there today?

00:00:29.040 Yeah, absolutely. Well, Corey, thanks so much for having me on. And I was joined by

00:00:32.880 our other co-producers of the report, including the fine folks from the Alberta Institute, Common

00:00:38.160 Sense Calgary. We had the Institute for Public Sector Accountability and Save Calgary. And the

00:00:43.360 report we put out today was a City of Calgary pre-budget report, which is coming ahead of their

00:00:49.760 November budget deliberations. And it was titled 21 Ways to Cut Council Spending in 2021. And the

00:00:55.200 whole point of the report is to show like, look, there is still a ton of fat that City

00:00:59.120 Councillors need to cut at City Hall so that they can lower property taxes. Because what we've seen

00:01:04.080 over the last five years is we've seen families and businesses tighten their belts, but we've seen

00:01:08.640 spending increase at City Hall every single year since the downturn began at the end of 2014.

00:01:14.000 Yeah, it was probably hard just to keep it down to 21 items, I imagine. Which ones stood out among

00:01:21.360 those on the top? I mean, you know, you can hope that they'd attack all 21. But if they were going

00:01:26.080 to take, say, even five of those recommendations, which ones really are big spending items that we

00:01:30.400 need to examine Calgary now? Well, I think one of the most important things that we need City Council

00:01:35.840 to do is we need them to start showing leadership and start acknowledging the real economic hardships

00:01:40.880 that are facing Calgarians and that are facing their taxpayers. So we need to see leadership from

00:01:44.880 the top. And that all starts with Mayor Nenshi. And that's why we're saying it's time finally for

00:01:49.680 Mayor Nenshi to scrap his second pension. Along with that second pension, we're also calling for a

00:01:54.960 scale back of the regular council platinum pension. We're talking about cutting councillors transition

00:02:00.640 allowances, which they get when they retire. And of course, along with councillors pay, we're also

00:02:06.640 looking at the golden perks that are just unfair that a lot of City of Calgary employees are getting.

00:02:11.440 And I'm talking about the second and third pensions that a lot of Calgary City employees are receiving.

00:02:16.480 And, you know, unfortunately, Calgary taxpayers were the only taxpayers in a major Canadian city that have

00:02:22.320 the dubious honour of paying for a second pension for our mayor and paying for three pensions for

00:02:27.920 some of our city employees. Yeah, it's kind of a bizarre layer on layer. I think not enough people

00:02:33.760 realize just how much some of that spending is going. So as you're speaking, I'm gathering though,

00:02:39.040 you're almost giving them some advice if you want to make those cuts, because the real big spending are

00:02:42.960 the city employees out there on a number of levels, but you want to lead by example. I mean,

00:02:47.200 we've got some very well compensated councillors and the mayor who could tighten their own belts

00:02:52.000 before telling others to. Have you have any councillors or anybody in City Hall responded yet

00:02:58.080 to your release? Well, I mean, our mayors and our councillors, they are making a significant

00:03:02.400 amount of money and they do need to show leadership at the top before they can go to the bigger ticket

00:03:06.400 item, which is the labour cost more broadly. Let's just look at Mayor Nenshi's salary. He's making

00:03:12.320 about $200,000 in salary. And guess what? That's more money than the Premier of Alberta,

00:03:18.080 Jason Kenney is bringing in. So clearly we need to see savings there on the salary and we need to

00:03:22.960 see leadership because then they have to go to our city employees, to the unions and say, look,

00:03:27.920 everyone is tightening their belts right now. We need government employees to start sharing in

00:03:32.000 the tough times. And, you know, we found research from Second Street who did this research and they

00:03:36.960 saw that it's been decades, at least decades with no pay cuts for our city unionized government

00:03:43.600 employees. So far, you know, we haven't got any feedback yet from the councillors and the mayors.

00:03:49.520 I'm sure we're going to be getting some feedback. But most importantly, we're putting out this

00:03:54.800 information so that taxpayers, so that Calgarians can see that, look, there is still a ton of fat

00:03:59.920 that our city councillors need to cut. And so that us taxpayers, us Calgarians can really hold their feet

00:04:05.040 to the fire. Yeah. So we're entering into an election year and that's when our city councillors and

00:04:10.960 mayor often suddenly discover fiscal responsibility, at least for six, seven months as they have to go

00:04:16.480 to the polls. But it seems once they get elected, quite often they go right back to the old ways.

00:04:21.600 Are there measures that could hopefully implement some spending restraint and responsibility that

00:04:26.640 would be long lasting rather than just once every four years? Yeah, there's two accountability measures

00:04:32.240 that we we've been pushing for. Now, they weren't in this report specifically because we're just

00:04:36.320 looking at places for them to cut spending. But here's the two here's the two measures that that

00:04:40.800 we would like to see on top of all the spending cuts. We'd like to see some actual spending limitations,

00:04:45.760 right, so that it would actually limit the amount that councillors and the mayor can spend every single

00:04:51.360 year. So that would be very key. And not only do you want to see that at the city of Calgary, but that

00:04:56.240 would be great also at the provincial level and also at the federal level, too. And then on top of that,

00:05:01.600 a great tool for accountability would be recall rules. And of course, that would that would come

00:05:06.000 down at the provincial level. We've already heard Premier Kenney and his UCP. They've promised recall

00:05:10.640 rules for their MLA's, but they've also promised to extend those recall rules to the local level.

00:05:16.240 And that would give taxpayers and give us citizens the power to hold our elected officials accountable

00:05:21.760 more than once every four years when the election rolls around. That would be a great way,

00:05:26.480 because as I said, it seems to be that four year pattern of irresponsibility. And I guess

00:05:32.320 some of it's up to voters to put the candidate's feet to the fire in this next 12 months to make

00:05:37.520 sure that they commit to responsibility, but the budget deliberations are coming up right away. So this

00:05:42.480 is a pretty prime time for yourself and those other groups to get that out there. So where could people

00:05:47.520 find more information about the entire plan and the 21 items that you've laid out and where they can go from

00:05:53.440 there? Yeah, well, you can you can find all of that information at taxpayer.com. Go to that website,

00:05:59.680 click on our newsroom and you'll see the release there, which includes the report. And Corey,

00:06:04.320 you know, one of the key recommendations was right off the top. We recommended City Council not only look

00:06:09.600 for those specifics that we've been talking about, but also look at bringing spending back to 2014 levels

00:06:16.080 of spending. That is that is the key, because since the downturn began in 2014, well, everyone's been

00:06:22.240 tightening our belts. Well, everyone's been trying to find efficiencies. We've saw that City Calgary

00:06:27.360 spending have increased by more than 400 million dollars. So we've seen large spending increases

00:06:34.080 and that followed years of higher spending. So that's one of the key recommendations that I wanted

00:06:38.800 to share with you. But please go on taxpayer.com, click on the newsroom and you'll be able to find the

00:06:43.520 report there. Great. Well, thank you, Franco. Thanks for the good work, keeping these items up there for our

00:06:50.160 aspiring councillors and mayors. And hopefully it has an impact on them in these budget deliberations.

00:06:56.800 I'm sure we'll talk again soon to see how that campaign's been going for you.

00:07:00.400 Well, perfect. Thank you so much for having me on, Corey.

Western Standard - October 21, 2020

Groups release spending cut recommendations to Calgary City Hall

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