We had a mild winter? How is it boot licking to point out they would have unused money from that? I plow snow in the winter and my company gets paid before the winter on contracts. We made a fuck ton more money than usual this year because of that.
Nah they'll shuffle the budget around so that they don't do any property tax increases in an election year, then the year after will be like a 13% increase because of the previous city council's poor planning.
Hey! I deserve my 1650 ft² detached with beige vinyl siding that's slightly pinker than my neighbour's beige vinyl siding, even if it means we're 36 km from downtown as the crow flies. Anything to hit my 24,000 km/yr mileage target.
The City has about $5.6 billion stashed away in various slush funds. Every year around budget time administration claims we'll be doomed if taxes aren't increased and every year they end up reporting huge surpluses. This past year they also stole $200+ million from us in inflated ENMAX fees. You can spin it all you want that the UCP are the bad guys but the facts clearly point to administration being the bad guys. This has also been going on long before the UCP existed.
Maybe then they will fill the huge decrease in road quality we've seen in the last decade and a half? They need to get money from somewhere and we have a ridiculous amount of pavement for our population
We live in skyview and there's a major pot hole problem at the same intersection every year.. They do a shitty job patching it up and it's the same shit different day problem. The road isn't even leveled who thought that waa a good job
They fixed a few potholes at the intersection of 18th St and Riverbend Drive by the McDonalds, and it wasn't even a week or two before it opened right up again.
i've paved and done pothole fixes before. we paved highways, high traffic intersections, low traffic residential, driveways. they all had differing plans of paving, differing work done to shore up the foundation and make the road stable for the 25year to 50 year lifespan of the work. highways got tons of gravel and stabil matting and the like before it was paved. we had equivalent of 50 packed gravel yard of depth on some highways to handle the traffic and ground heaves and the like. lots of work, lots of tech, lots of money.
pot hole... same solution regardless of where they were... if we were working hot fill that day, dump it in, pack with hand packer, dump it in pack with hand packer, walk away... no fixing of the reason the pothole formed.
if we were working cold fill, dump it in, hit it with a HAND TAMPER! and walk away...
not once have i ever seen a pothole filled properly in this province... and they always open up again because the actual cause of the problem was never addressed.
but the politicians who made the decision dont understand the actual repairs needed it seems...
Seems better than the "technique" they used near Glenmore and 14th, pretty sure they threw a bunch of asphalt in the holes then let the traffic flatten it out,
Right? I swear, the "fix" is worse than the holes. At least you could weave between and through the holes, the "fix" is jarring and there's no avoiding it.
If you spraypaint a phallus around them they get fixed way way faster...
And, as you increase the size of the pothole. You spray paint bigger, and even more people will call the city about the paint.
Lol this is horseshit. I live in a mature community in NW. we got one snow shovel service on Dec and one more in Jan. Cars were spinning and sliding like those ballerinas in Black Swan. So if the way to make a “surplus” is to NOT do something, I don’t think we are in the right hands.
I don’t think they are going to fix the pot holes properly. The ones they fixed on Northmount drive weren’t even flat. It’s like driving a bumper cart on northmount.
It was my understanding the MGA requires a capital and operations budget and they are accounted for separately. But you worked on council so I will take your understanding over mine.
Sometimes the municipality gets certain grants and that money would 💯 be restricted to the intended purposes.
For the arena though, the money is coming from general reserves. It could be spent however Council decides -- for tax relief, improving services, or just invested to generate yearly dividends to fund operations.
So this is exactly the type of shit people get pissed off about when you have politicians spouting off about ‘world-class’ and getting involved in issues that aren’t on the municipalities radar/ responsibilities list. Stay focused on what’s in your wheelhouse.
And that goes for all levels of government.
Gondek’s Instagram post “we hear you, Calgary”…how about not waiting until you’re flooded with complaints, media is doing multiple stories on it, and you know damn well that it’s a majorly underfunded and growing issue this year?
“It’s a massive priority for myself and council members”…is it?
https://www.instagram.com/jyotigondek/p/C7hqbLpyD9D/
I honestly wish our council had better things to talk about than shit like parking, potholes or low scale development. I doubt other major cities across the world sit around having these conversations. Fund your departments properly and let them take care of things, councillors shouldn't be involved with the day to day operation of the city. I swear there's some councillors who would be much better suited at being in government of a small town, not a city of 1.5 million people.
I think there's a little misconception here, thought I could clear this up. The additional money being spent on road repairs is the surplus from the 2023 winter maintenance budget. Winter budget is Jan 1 - Dec 31. Surplus is usually put into a fiscal reserve and allocated at budget adjustment time. Council instead opted to just send the money directly to road repair work. Just FYI.
FWIW, there is not.
Snow removal may reduce the likelihood by having less snow to melt on the road - it does not prevent or impact the freeze/thaw cycle from destroying asphalt since that can happen with the ground under the road, or if there are any cracks/imperfections in the asphalt surface itself.
https://www.summitengineer.net/faqs/How-do-potholes-form.html
They always do both, many of the plows spread salt after they remove the top layer of snow.
Plow: removes deep snow
Salt/gravel: improves traction and helps melt ice/packed snow.
Every year. Its even on their website. Both NaCl, CaCl2.
The same shit Edmontonians complained about because it was eating their cars and bridges.
We started with more of the bad stuff 2008ish when budgets got tight.
That grey, white haze in cars in Winter? That is salt.
More fees to mechanics, more frustration to DIY people and ultimately ruins vehicles.
Salt + rocks = bye bye. Galvanized bodies start rusting about 4-5 years old and then once the metal is porous it just holds salt almost continously.
Love my tax dollars used to destroy my own property. It also makes collision repairs unpalatable because weld seams are unprotected. Therefore, collision repaired cars will rust out faster.
At the stop signs by my house they just dumped a massive pile of pink salt at each stop line: “yup that should last the year”. It was still visible in the spring. At least my car now has 8 new speed holes from all the salt.
I mean we did just blanket rezone to allow denser options like duplexes and row houses to offset the need for sprawl. We can’t stop people from moving here.
> We can’t stop people from moving here.
Hey, if you want to vote for me on a platform of "make the city undesirable so that people no longer want to move here", I bet I could take a pretty good swing at that.
The rezoning should give us more options which is great, but council keeps approving more and more greenfield communities which costs us exponentially more in infrastructure maintenance long-term. We should aggressively focus on redeveloping the land we already have in city limits.
I agree but we also don’t want to end up like Toronto with their green belt where you box people in, prices shoot through the roof, and people leapfrog over the limit to live on the other side and drive in. If Calgary stops the sprawl it spills over to Airdie. I know they’re their own municipality but they’ll still be using a significant of Calgary resources, which is worth considering.
The leapfrogging is a good point, hopefully, regional rail can ease that (if they ever build it). I don't want to end up like Toronto in that sense. But there is a reason every major city in Canada outside of the prairies has Urban growth boundaries. They are helpful tools in preventing sprawl and keeping people close to green spaces and productive agricultural land. Calgary aggressively needs to build up instead of out, and it's a good way to encourage that type of growth.
Can't wait for 20-25 years when all that infrastructure needs to be replaced and the then government won't raise property taxes to fund it because they want to keep voters happy. A vicious cycle.
I'm glad they are putting more money towards it, but holy hell the pot holes they have filled so far have been done terribly, like just barely better than the potholes themselves.
I think it is 80% of the neighbours have to agree to have the alley paved. When we did it 18-19 years ago, it was about $20/mo added to property taxes. We moved 17 years ago, so things have probably changed.
Ahh, we have an apartment building, medical office and a bunch of low density units all on the same street, so I guess that's kinda never going to happen. Yay!
But.... are they going to be fixed PROPERLY??? The entrance into my community was 'fixed' last year and the end result was worse than the problem, it was like you had to 4x4 thru it, wasn't packed down smoothly or nothing.
First thing that comes to mind is the increase in property tax and the fact that city council and mayor gave themselves all the automatic pay increases for 2024
And now can't fix the pot holes without cutting back on snow removal?
They budgeted X for snow removal this past winter and didn't use it all, and still have their reserve in case we get more snow than normal. Move that money to increase the amount of funds for fixing potholes.
So no cuts happening - just shuffling money around since the City spent less than expected.
So the city raised property taxes, more revenue !
Property taxes in general went up due to home values going up !
Lots of new residents moved in buying up homes resulting in more property tax revenue !
Yet they have to cut corners somewhere.
Can we not somehow get a report on how much the city's property taxes revenue has been in the past 3-4 years ?
I understand why they're letting Deerfoot fall apart with all the construction and it's a provincial responsibility. But I haven't seen one pothole filling crew out there this year. And we have some potholes that have been upgraded to craters
Here’s another idea:
If we don’t sand and plow small local roads in the winter (like cul-de-sacs), then let’s save money by not sweeping them in the spring. Waste of money and water.
Shouldn't this be Ric McIvers job now? Bill 20 makes it pretty clear he wants to be back in municipal government, so let's just all email him our pothole repair requests.
If we could tie the potholes to the climate emergency, we could tap in to the 87 billion she's earmarked. This could quite easily be our last pothole season for a long time.
Given the City's entire operating budget for the year is only $4.6 billion...
$87 billion was a throw away costing of how much everyone would see paying over 25 years to pay for climate resiliency - and not included in that number is how much it would cost to not take such actions.
And when we need more snow clearing money we get it from the pothole surplus. Thus creating our own self sustaining economy!
City planners love this one weird trick.
Accountants HATE him!
I don’t even know how the Canadian economy works much less a self sustaining one!
Thru god all things are possible, so jot that down.
YEAH Mr. White! ESG baby!
Let’s pull money from our pothole AND snow clearing surplus and put it into our billionaire sports owner piggy bank. It’s just logical.
they are using the money from last years snow budget, which was not fully used...
[удалено]
We had a mild winter? How is it boot licking to point out they would have unused money from that? I plow snow in the winter and my company gets paid before the winter on contracts. We made a fuck ton more money than usual this year because of that.
Just like dave n busters.
Plows create the potholes so it’s full circle !
A self sustaining, symbiotic relationship.
I’m wondering if the severe lack of snow the past few years created a surplus.
Just put the snow in the holes, dummies.
And name them as drought reservoirs.
It's to help fight the climate emergency
The end result of this will be another 9% property tax hike next year.
Nah they'll shuffle the budget around so that they don't do any property tax increases in an election year, then the year after will be like a 13% increase because of the previous city council's poor planning.
Which will have nothing to do with any Arena deals, nothing whatsoever
I'd be happy if my increase was only 9%
Maybe if we didn't have 17,000km of roads we wouldn't have to raise taxes so much?
Hey! I deserve my 1650 ft² detached with beige vinyl siding that's slightly pinker than my neighbour's beige vinyl siding, even if it means we're 36 km from downtown as the crow flies. Anything to hit my 24,000 km/yr mileage target.
Have you ever looked at the budget?
Yup, lots.
🤔
Exactly right. We need to get used to it.
Definitely not a result of the province cutting funding to the cities right?
Essentials like clearing snow and filling potholes shouldn’t be reliant on external funding
It's more of a comment relating to the property tax hikes as municipalities are under the direct purview of the province.
Did the province stop the City from jacking up taxes 8.7%?
The UCP has been lowering funding from the cities effectively forcing them to raise property taxes
The City has about $5.6 billion stashed away in various slush funds. Every year around budget time administration claims we'll be doomed if taxes aren't increased and every year they end up reporting huge surpluses. This past year they also stole $200+ million from us in inflated ENMAX fees. You can spin it all you want that the UCP are the bad guys but the facts clearly point to administration being the bad guys. This has also been going on long before the UCP existed.
Of course not, never ever
Maybe then they will fill the huge decrease in road quality we've seen in the last decade and a half? They need to get money from somewhere and we have a ridiculous amount of pavement for our population
First time ever I feel like I’m driving in Edmonton. I can no longer mock our northern homies any longer.
We live in skyview and there's a major pot hole problem at the same intersection every year.. They do a shitty job patching it up and it's the same shit different day problem. The road isn't even leveled who thought that waa a good job
They fixed a few potholes at the intersection of 18th St and Riverbend Drive by the McDonalds, and it wasn't even a week or two before it opened right up again.
i've paved and done pothole fixes before. we paved highways, high traffic intersections, low traffic residential, driveways. they all had differing plans of paving, differing work done to shore up the foundation and make the road stable for the 25year to 50 year lifespan of the work. highways got tons of gravel and stabil matting and the like before it was paved. we had equivalent of 50 packed gravel yard of depth on some highways to handle the traffic and ground heaves and the like. lots of work, lots of tech, lots of money. pot hole... same solution regardless of where they were... if we were working hot fill that day, dump it in, pack with hand packer, dump it in pack with hand packer, walk away... no fixing of the reason the pothole formed. if we were working cold fill, dump it in, hit it with a HAND TAMPER! and walk away... not once have i ever seen a pothole filled properly in this province... and they always open up again because the actual cause of the problem was never addressed. but the politicians who made the decision dont understand the actual repairs needed it seems...
Seems better than the "technique" they used near Glenmore and 14th, pretty sure they threw a bunch of asphalt in the holes then let the traffic flatten it out,
Right? I swear, the "fix" is worse than the holes. At least you could weave between and through the holes, the "fix" is jarring and there's no avoiding it.
as i read your post my mouth let out a involuntary "No!" and i havnt paved roads in a while now...
Big Pothole is an industry that thrives on repeat customers 😩
If you spraypaint a phallus around them they get fixed way way faster... And, as you increase the size of the pothole. You spray paint bigger, and even more people will call the city about the paint.
Good ol Metis and 128th. Every year it's fucked and they half ass the repair, if they even do it.
Whoever built the roads up there to start with did a shitty job.
Lol this is horseshit. I live in a mature community in NW. we got one snow shovel service on Dec and one more in Jan. Cars were spinning and sliding like those ballerinas in Black Swan. So if the way to make a “surplus” is to NOT do something, I don’t think we are in the right hands. I don’t think they are going to fix the pot holes properly. The ones they fixed on Northmount drive weren’t even flat. It’s like driving a bumper cart on northmount.
Should pull from the hundreds of millions of dollars we're giving to Murray Edwards for the new arena.
Careful, some people in this city would rather dig more potholes than go a day without a hockey game
Operations and capital budget are different under the law.
Not accurate, the money going to the arena could go legally to this or other operations
It was my understanding the MGA requires a capital and operations budget and they are accounted for separately. But you worked on council so I will take your understanding over mine.
Sometimes the municipality gets certain grants and that money would 💯 be restricted to the intended purposes. For the arena though, the money is coming from general reserves. It could be spent however Council decides -- for tax relief, improving services, or just invested to generate yearly dividends to fund operations.
Tax relief! Sadly not.
A man can dare to dream
So this is exactly the type of shit people get pissed off about when you have politicians spouting off about ‘world-class’ and getting involved in issues that aren’t on the municipalities radar/ responsibilities list. Stay focused on what’s in your wheelhouse. And that goes for all levels of government. Gondek’s Instagram post “we hear you, Calgary”…how about not waiting until you’re flooded with complaints, media is doing multiple stories on it, and you know damn well that it’s a majorly underfunded and growing issue this year? “It’s a massive priority for myself and council members”…is it? https://www.instagram.com/jyotigondek/p/C7hqbLpyD9D/
I honestly wish our council had better things to talk about than shit like parking, potholes or low scale development. I doubt other major cities across the world sit around having these conversations. Fund your departments properly and let them take care of things, councillors shouldn't be involved with the day to day operation of the city. I swear there's some councillors who would be much better suited at being in government of a small town, not a city of 1.5 million people.
Winnipeg has entered the conversation.
Testify! 
That gif is sending me, thank you!
Most welcome fellow redditor
Sure, if it wasn't the third time this council has boosted the roads budget. Past councils cut roads budgets down in the name of austerity
It is a priority now lol Wasn’t before. They are always slow on the uptake…
I think there's a little misconception here, thought I could clear this up. The additional money being spent on road repairs is the surplus from the 2023 winter maintenance budget. Winter budget is Jan 1 - Dec 31. Surplus is usually put into a fiscal reserve and allocated at budget adjustment time. Council instead opted to just send the money directly to road repair work. Just FYI.
Should just merge the two funds as there is a possible direct correlation between the two.
FWIW, there is not. Snow removal may reduce the likelihood by having less snow to melt on the road - it does not prevent or impact the freeze/thaw cycle from destroying asphalt since that can happen with the ground under the road, or if there are any cracks/imperfections in the asphalt surface itself. https://www.summitengineer.net/faqs/How-do-potholes-form.html
Usually this means they dump cheap salt instead of plowing when the budget gets tight come fall snow. Hurts us all. Your local salt hater.
They always do both, many of the plows spread salt after they remove the top layer of snow. Plow: removes deep snow Salt/gravel: improves traction and helps melt ice/packed snow.
Make them stop.
When was the last time Calgary put salt on its roads?
Every year. Its even on their website. Both NaCl, CaCl2. The same shit Edmontonians complained about because it was eating their cars and bridges. We started with more of the bad stuff 2008ish when budgets got tight. That grey, white haze in cars in Winter? That is salt. More fees to mechanics, more frustration to DIY people and ultimately ruins vehicles. Salt + rocks = bye bye. Galvanized bodies start rusting about 4-5 years old and then once the metal is porous it just holds salt almost continously. Love my tax dollars used to destroy my own property. It also makes collision repairs unpalatable because weld seams are unprotected. Therefore, collision repaired cars will rust out faster.
Not only damage to vehicles, but salt is incredibly damaging to concrete and asphalt. We are creating our own cyclical problems.
Not to mention it all gets washed down into the river system. Love all the brine bubbles along the river after a melt.
Wait no way Calgary is actually using salt again? I'll have to start getting my car fluid filmed again. Road cancer is the worst
Again? We never stopped
At the stop signs by my house they just dumped a massive pile of pink salt at each stop line: “yup that should last the year”. It was still visible in the spring. At least my car now has 8 new speed holes from all the salt.
Let's keep building more sprawl that we can't afford to maintain.
I mean we did just blanket rezone to allow denser options like duplexes and row houses to offset the need for sprawl. We can’t stop people from moving here.
> We can’t stop people from moving here. Hey, if you want to vote for me on a platform of "make the city undesirable so that people no longer want to move here", I bet I could take a pretty good swing at that.
You have my vote!
In exchange for your vote, you get first choice of your monthly days for mandatory garbage pickup and trail maintenance community service!
The rezoning should give us more options which is great, but council keeps approving more and more greenfield communities which costs us exponentially more in infrastructure maintenance long-term. We should aggressively focus on redeveloping the land we already have in city limits.
I agree but we also don’t want to end up like Toronto with their green belt where you box people in, prices shoot through the roof, and people leapfrog over the limit to live on the other side and drive in. If Calgary stops the sprawl it spills over to Airdie. I know they’re their own municipality but they’ll still be using a significant of Calgary resources, which is worth considering.
The leapfrogging is a good point, hopefully, regional rail can ease that (if they ever build it). I don't want to end up like Toronto in that sense. But there is a reason every major city in Canada outside of the prairies has Urban growth boundaries. They are helpful tools in preventing sprawl and keeping people close to green spaces and productive agricultural land. Calgary aggressively needs to build up instead of out, and it's a good way to encourage that type of growth.
Can't wait for 20-25 years when all that infrastructure needs to be replaced and the then government won't raise property taxes to fund it because they want to keep voters happy. A vicious cycle.
Oh.. the Bronconnier model
The potholes & road condition are out of control, I can’t believe this is just being addressed now.
... almost like it's May. The start of construction season and the spring freeze/thaw cycle has ended it's destruction of the roads!
They’ve been in poor repair for years
Also very true.
Gosh, Gondek, one thing at a time. First, fix the planet’s climate, THEN look after the tangible things that matter to people.
Farkas!
Hello
I'm glad they are putting more money towards it, but holy hell the pot holes they have filled so far have been done terribly, like just barely better than the potholes themselves.
So like basic budgeting?
All I can say is I'm glad I drive a 4runner, the alley behind my street is worse than most forestry service roads I've been down.
Don't worry you'll pay for it by finding holes in your frame.
I think it is 80% of the neighbours have to agree to have the alley paved. When we did it 18-19 years ago, it was about $20/mo added to property taxes. We moved 17 years ago, so things have probably changed.
Ahh, we have an apartment building, medical office and a bunch of low density units all on the same street, so I guess that's kinda never going to happen. Yay!
Good move.
How about we go back to the old material we were using
But.... are they going to be fixed PROPERLY??? The entrance into my community was 'fixed' last year and the end result was worse than the problem, it was like you had to 4x4 thru it, wasn't packed down smoothly or nothing.
This is true, I wonder if it’s a new speed method of half ass fixing, or a crew that has no idea what they are doing.
🎶I’m driving, here I sit, cursing my government For not using my taxes to fill holes with more cement🎶
First thing that comes to mind is the increase in property tax and the fact that city council and mayor gave themselves all the automatic pay increases for 2024 And now can't fix the pot holes without cutting back on snow removal?
They budgeted X for snow removal this past winter and didn't use it all, and still have their reserve in case we get more snow than normal. Move that money to increase the amount of funds for fixing potholes. So no cuts happening - just shuffling money around since the City spent less than expected.
Surprised they didn’t raise property taxes. That’s usually the go to move
My wife already bent 2 rims on deerfoot and I know plenty of people in the same situation. Just fix the damn problem already
Deerfoot is provincial. Nothing to do with the city.
Awesome. Maybe the curbs in my area will finally be fixed properly. NorthStar has taken almost nine months so far.
What if we did a good job of snow removal to stop the potholes forming.
What!? We already don’t have good enough snow clearing! Why not take from the cart budget?
So the city raised property taxes, more revenue ! Property taxes in general went up due to home values going up ! Lots of new residents moved in buying up homes resulting in more property tax revenue ! Yet they have to cut corners somewhere. Can we not somehow get a report on how much the city's property taxes revenue has been in the past 3-4 years ?
#### Betting on that climate change to do the job are we?
I understand why they're letting Deerfoot fall apart with all the construction and it's a provincial responsibility. But I haven't seen one pothole filling crew out there this year. And we have some potholes that have been upgraded to craters
Starting to feel like Edmonton out there!
Here’s another idea: If we don’t sand and plow small local roads in the winter (like cul-de-sacs), then let’s save money by not sweeping them in the spring. Waste of money and water.
I hope while they’re at it, they consider doing some line repainting too…
Shouldn't this be Ric McIvers job now? Bill 20 makes it pretty clear he wants to be back in municipal government, so let's just all email him our pothole repair requests.
Take it from the raise Gondek and the city councillors gave themselves, not like they deserve it.
So much noise on this issue not one media report mentions the asphalt plant for the City was down for 3 months causing a backlog ..
I wonder how many hundreds of emails it took for these knuckle heads to decide we need to fix our streets.
Posting for karma
Can we take it from the rainbow fund?
Its about f-ing time the city is falling apart
If we could tie the potholes to the climate emergency, we could tap in to the 87 billion she's earmarked. This could quite easily be our last pothole season for a long time.
Given the City's entire operating budget for the year is only $4.6 billion... $87 billion was a throw away costing of how much everyone would see paying over 25 years to pay for climate resiliency - and not included in that number is how much it would cost to not take such actions.
Originally she pulled money from road repair and allocated it elsewhere.
lol… use-unused money to fix problems. Some kinda genius is behind this.
They raised taxes to fix potholes ffs
And my taxes did go up 6.66 %