City of Calgary 2024 Mid-Year Progress Update

On Wednesday, Sept. 4, the Executive Committee of Council received an update on The City of Calgary’s progress during the first half of 2024. The 2024 Mid-Year Progress Update offers an overview of the progress made and the challenges faced in the first half of 2024 while implementing the 2023-2026 Service Plans and Budgets

The report shows that Calgary is a leader in property tax affordability. In 2024, the median single residential household paid $2,564 in municipal property tax, which is approximately 2.2 per cent of the average household income in Calgary. In comparison, Toronto was 5.9 per cent, Vancouver 5.6 per cent, Ottawa 4.2 per cent, Edmonton 2.9 per cent and Winnipeg 2.6 per cent.

The City is facing pressures that are affecting service delivery and citizen satisfaction. Some of these pressures include population growth, inflation, financial constraints, aging infrastructure, capacity constraints, increase in service demand and service complexity and more. Of these, population growth and inflation beyond what was originally forecasted are putting the most pressure on City services. They are outstripping spending making it increasingly difficult to maintain service levels and citizen satisfaction. Satisfaction with City services is at the lowest since 2015, falling from 80 per cent to 63 per cent.

As of April 1, 2024, Calgary’s population is estimated at 1,491,900, representing a population growth rate of 4.9 per cent since April 2023. This estimated addition of 69,000 residents to Calgary’s population represented one of the most significant annual increases in Calgary’s history. This increase represents approximately the entire population of the City of Medicine Hat relocating to Calgary.

Like Calgarians, The City is feeling the impacts of inflation. Inflation increases the cost of supplies and materials, which impacts our ability to deliver capital projects on time and on budget and drives up service delivery costs.

These strains are impacting some of the services that are most important to Calgarians. For example, the Fire department saw a five per cent decline in first-in unit response time compared to the same period as last year. A 23 per cent increase in building permit applications meant that only 49 per cent were processed within target timelines, a 15 per cent drop since last year. And the percentage of pavement in good or very good condition dropped three per cent to 38 per cent.

“We continue to do our best to meet the needs of Calgarians with the resources we have.” said Carla Male, Chief Financial Officer at The City of Calgary. “However, as our costs and our population grow beyond what we planned for, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain service levels without adjusting the budget.”

Despite these challenges, The City worked hard to deliver results to make Calgary a great place to live and make a life. We continued to make progress on delivering our service plans including actions in council priority areas: housing, public safety, transit, social equity, climate, downtown revitalization and land use and local area planning.

Some key accomplishments include:

A total of 8,954 houses were started in Calgary compared to 6,832 in the same period of 2023.
The Public Transit Safety Strategy has resulted in positive outcomes which include a 26 per cent decline in social disorder call volumes at downtown CTrain platforms compared to 2023.
We have steadily achieved the 24-hour snow and ice clearing timeframe, and the average time to complete clearing continues to trend favourably at 25 hours.
Our crews repaired 18,055 potholes during the first six months of 2024, a 58 per cent increase from the same period in 2023.
The BMO Centre Expansion opened its doors and officially became Western Canada’s largest convention centre with an estimated economic impact of $100 million a year.
To help address the housing crisis, Council approved citywide rezoning with amendments. Engagement with Calgarians on the Zoning Bylaw will continue throughout 2024 and an update will be presented to Council in Q4 2024.

We continued to manage our finances responsibly and in accordance with best practices and Council policies. Annual operating variances are common for Canadian municipalities, which budget and manage finances to ensure they don’t run a deficit.

As of June 30, The City had a favourable year-to-date operating variance of $117.1 million. More than 50 per cent of the variance was driven by higher-than-expected franchise fee revenues and investment income. With the coming changes to franchise fees on January 1, 2025, The City does not expect this favourable variance to reoccur. The balance of the variance was a result of lower expenditures, combined with the operational service variances. These positive variances support future city shaping projects, such as the Green Line, with 75 per cent of operational savings contributing to the Green Line funding strategy.

The first six months of 2024 saw 39.6 per cent of the $2 billion capital budget spent, reflective that most of the capital spending is aligned with the construction season that is more pronounced in the second half of the year. This is a significant increase from 15 per cent of the budget spent at this point last year. By year end, several key infrastructure services including Stormwater Management, Public Transit and Facilities Management are expecting a 100 per cent spend rate on major projects.

“Calgary is Canada’s fastest growing major city and one of the top five liveable cities in the world.” said Male. “Amidst growing city challenges, The City is committed to finding the right balance of maintaining what we have and building for the future in a way that ensures long-term financial sustainability.”

To make our updates easier to navigate we have enhanced the functionality of the progress update dashboard for the mid-year service updates, accessible at calgary.ca/ProgressUpdate.

We invite all Calgarians to review the 2024 Mid-Year Progress Update. Together, we will continue to navigate challenges and celebrate successes as we strive towards a thriving future for our city.

Reporting on our performance is an important way for Administration to supply regular updates to Council and Calgarians on how we are tracking against our service plans and budgets. The information presented in this report is an important input for Council to consider as part of the 2025 and 2026 adjustments to the approved 2023-2026 Service Plans and Budgets.

Learn more about how our results in the first half of 2024 on our dashboard or download the report at calgary.ca/ProgressUpdate.