Naheed Nenshi says Alberta budget manageable for city
Calgary mayor pleased with infrastructure funding but disappointed by social services 'downloading'
Calgary's mayor says he is pleased the province is not cutting infrastructure funding to municipalities in a provincial budget that offers the city some good news and some challenges.
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“For the capital-C City of Calgary, we should be able to manage the impact of this budget,” Naheed Nenshi said.
“We believe this allotment will allow us to continue and slightly accelerate major projects like the Macleod and 162nd [Avenue] interchange,” he said.
Nenshi said he is happy to see an increase to funding for the Calgary Public Library in the budget.
But the four cent hike in the province's gasoline tax will cost the city about $2 million per year, Nenshi says.
'Downloading' social services
The mayor says he’s disappointed the province continues to freeze funding for family and community support services.
“This is a downloading of social services on municipalities,” he said.
“The province has been falling far short for years on this and we continue to bear the brunt of providing services to the most vulnerable people that are not our responsibility.”
Nenshi says he is also very concerned about the impending closure of the young offenders’ centre in Calgary.
“And I will be discussing the impact of that particular cut and others with the government of Alberta,” he said.
The province plans to spend $2.9 billion on the Calgary and Edmonton ring roads over the next five years, but a breakdown has not been made available for how much is to be spent in each city.
The plan is to delay the west portion of the Calgary route for several years while the southwest portion — through what is now part of the Tsuu T'ina Nation — proceeds first.
“The cost of the ring road seems to be coming down, which is great, and we will continue to work with the province to get that ring road built,” said Nenshi.
Cancer centre timeline unclear
The budget allocates $926 million for renovations of hospitals in urban centres including two hospitals in Edmonton and the cancer centre in Calgary.
However, no money has been set aside to build to build new hospitals, and the timeline remains unclear for the cancer centre in Calgary.
Nenshi described the budgeting process used by the province as strange.
“For the City of Calgary to wait until a speech is made, and then quickly process all these budget documents, is a little bit bizarre.
“The city’s process, in which we release a draft budget to the public and then discuss and debate and amend for weeks, just seems to be a smarter, more transparent way of doing public budgeting.”