One more cold-weather council meeting, then it’s gonna be actual spring then actual summer… ri-ight? Pleeeeease?
Here’s what the Herald will be following, and you may want to as well:
Property taxes
Will homeowner taxes for 2014 rise by 9.0% or a relatively mere 4.8%? Will businesses get a break, or will the city decline to immunize them against a big provincial tax thwack? Will the public understand the decision in a year they already get a one-time $100 rebate on their bills? Will the councillors understand the decision?
For politician and casual observer alike, I’ve prepared an explainer that tries, but likely fails, to make sense of all this.
Flood mitigation update
Wolf Keller, the head of Calgary’s expert panel on flood mitigation, gives a quarterly briefing to council on big-ticket projects to help soften the next big wet blow Calgary gets. There’s no news on the Glenmore Reservoir diversion tunnel, which is still being studied; and this isn’t about the city’s $900-million mitigation wish list, either.
But stay tuned. Last time Keller briefed council, he drew the public’s attention for the first time to potential relief efforts on the Bow at Transalta’s Ghost dam.
E-Cigarettes
Vape ‘em if you got ‘em. I’ve seen people puff on these tobacco-free inhalers on trains, in restaurants, and I’m not sure where else they’ve gone. E-cigarettes aren’t believed to pose a second-hand smoke hazard to people, and don’t have the hazards of tar-tobacco sticks. You’d have to ingest a lot of liquid nicotine, too, to get poisoned. Regulators aren’t sure how to respond.
Nonetheless, Coun. Diane Colley-Urquhart — a nurse by trade — wants council to study the health risks of e-cigarettes. Though public health isn’t technically a civic matter, council could enact a ban on e-cigarette use on transit or in restaurants, as councillors did with fire-and-paper cigarettes in the past, before the province enacted such restrictions.
Campaign finance
On the subject of matters outside council’s ability to act, there’s election contribution rules. The province has set its own woefully flawed rules, so council cannot enact its own.
Druh Farrell, whose Ward 7 rival spent $276,000 in efforts to beat her, wants to set council on a path toward tougher rules, whether that’s through the long-sought civic charter or through some other means. Her motion only asks council to support a direction or goal for those rules, including a $50,000 campaign cap and a ban on corporate donations. (That means you, suburban homebuilders who funded her rivals, but also you, architects and condo developers who funded Farrell’s re-election bid.)
Does council want to approve these principles now, before even knowing what sort of powers a charter might give it to translate ideals into actual rules?
School bus lights
Two councillors, Joe Magliocca and Peter Demong, have a modest and potentially life-saving idea for council to ponder: should school buses be freer to use their flashing lights to stop traffic more streets?
It comes in wake of a child’s injury in a collision in the northwest community of Kincora, in Magliocca’s ward. Currently the city’s traffic bylaw doesn’t allow flashing lights in much of Calgary. This motion would ask administrators to prepare a bylaw amendment to let buses put up their stop sign throughout the city.
Chu gets sanctioned?
This is the first meeting since rookie Coun. Sean Chu took to Twitter to ask “What was she on?” about a city cycling planner, before deleting it and apologizing in a news release.
Coun. Brian Pincott and Nenshi have both suggested this expletive-laced rant against a civil servant warrants sanctions under council’s code of conduct. This may happen behind closed doors, or perhaps we’ll hear a further spoken apology to head off such a rebuke.
Or not; maybe colleagues don’t care. They didn’t seem to be as concerned, at least not publicly, when the mayor called a Twitter critic “off your meds” during a heated back-and-forth.
