Getting antsy for saving plan

As another glorious summer nears, the proverbial insect dispute begins again.

 

The grasshoppers will dance and sing the days away while the ants lay up food stores for the winter.

 

Predictably, next winter the hungry grasshoppers will beg the ants for food.

 

They will be scolded for their efforts.

 

“If you were foolish enough to sing all the summer, then you must dance hungry in the winter.”

 

Or, as Aesop (620 — 560 BC) would moralize: “Prepare today for what may be needed tomorrow.”

 

Last fall, the provincial government convened the Alberta Government Financial Investment Planning and Advisory Commission led by Dr. Jack Mintz , Calgary’s internationally recognized economist.

 

Their task was to study the province’s savings and investment framework, including the Heritage Savings Trust fund, and bring back principles and recommendations for the province’s financial investment decisions.

 

The report was submitted before Christmas but has not yet been publicly released.

 

Last month, Finance Minister Iris Evans delivered her first budget.

 

It contained no significant savings commitment.

 

Recently, the Calgary Chamber of Commerce polled its membership on the issue of government spending and fiscal management.

 

Results show nearly 60% of Calgary’s business community believe Alberta’s current spending is unsustainable, despite the current high commodity prices (oil at $130/barrel and natural gas at $11/million cubic feet).

 

Since 2001, Alberta’s non-renewable resource revenues have contributed 30% to 40% of the province’s budget.

 

Without these additional dollars, the government would have had to deal with deficits for the past three years.

 

The Chamber’s membership understands the ability to save money is the cornerstone of building wealth.

 

Nearly 92% believe the government should save at least one-third of all non-renewable revenues.

 

As smart business people, they know:

·         Savings depend on spending less than earnings.

• The top priority is to build a rainy day fund.
• One of the best ways to save money is to create an automatic savings plan.
• The savings plan must generate interest.
• Extra savings come from trimming expenses.

 

Based on these sensible principles, the Chamber appeared before Dr. Mintz ’s panel and made the following recommendations:

• Build up the Heritage Savings Trust Fund and use extra interest to reduce personal and corporate taxes.
• Create a $5-billion endowment called the Research in Energy Futures Innovation and Technology fund to solve environmental challenges inherent in Alberta’s carbon-based resources, invent the next wave of energy patents to improve cooking, cooling and heating, and fuel planes, trains, and autos with renewables and create technologies to dominate the global economy.

 

These funds would help position Alberta as a leader in global competitiveness and act as an insurance policy against anticipated shifts in energy consumption patterns, market changes and emerging environmental regulatory trends that threaten our economic base.

 

Not only do these recommendations meet the Chamber member’s savings principles, they also ensure that industrious ants, their kids and grandkids will sing and dance during the next commodity downturn.

 

 

Homeless crisis met head-on

“We cannot have homeless people in our society,” stated former governor general Adrienne Clarkson to a group of prominent Calgarians during one of her tours in Western Canada.

 

“How can the richest city in Canada have people slipping through the cracks?”

 

That challenge was issued in 2000.

 

Seven years later, as the homeless population grew from single adults to families with children, the business community quietly appointed a group of leaders to end this city’s most visible manifestation of urban poverty. These unsung heroes met for a year and drafted a plan to end homelessness within 10 years.

 

Today, Steve Snyder, past chair of the Committee to End Homelessness and president and CEO of TransAlta Corp., delivers the committee’s blueprint to the Chamber of Commerce membership.

 

“The Calgary Committee is a community-based initiative,” states Snyder, “launched to respond to our city’s growing homelessness crisis. The goal,” he adds, “was not to find new ways to manage or cope with homelessness, but end it.

 

“The plan contains practical, results-oriented solutions that cut through the underlying systemic barriers. It rewards personal accountability and initiative; it helps people move to self-sufficiency and independence; it ensures people will receive the care and support they need when they need it; and it will result in a net cost savings to taxpayers.”

 

Homelessness came to Calgary in the 1970s, during the last oil boom. The city’s unprecedented wealth had created an appetite to clear out the run-down areas.

 

Most of the low-rental, low-cost housing was demolished. Then, as interest rates skyrocketed, rent controls were imposed. Rents were no longer affordable and the poorest of the poor were forced out on the streets.

 

Calgarians were horrified.

 

The recession of the 1980s and cutbacks of the 1990s created this decade’s disaster. “Today, we estimate as many as 1,200 Calgarians have been homeless for more than a year,” the committee reports. “Nearly 400 of those have been homeless more than five years.”

 

Several key milestones have been set for 2008-2018:

 

• Retire 50% of Calgary’s emergency shelter capacity within five years.

• Decrease the chronic homeless population 85% from current levels, within five years, with a complete elimination of chronic homelessness in seven.

• Eliminate family homelessness by 2010.

• Stop the growth of homelessness and stabilize the overall homeless count at 2006 levels by May 1, 2010.

• Deliver a 12.5% annual decrease in total homeless population starting in 2010.

• Reduce the economic cost of homelessness.

• Reduce the maximum average stay in emergency shelter to less than seven days by 2018.

The plan calls for 11,250 affordable and specialized housing units to be built with the necessary social services in-place to support people in their homes. It also requests special facilities for alcohol and drug abusers and those suffering from mental illness to ensure they get the care and treatment they need.

 

The Chamber continues to recommend the city permit secondary suites in all Calgary communities — as long as parking, infrastructure and safety considerations are met.

 

The Chamber salutes the unsung heroes of the business fraternity who refused to accept the premise that governments must house the homeless.

 

Instead, they devised a strategy to ensure these citizens are able to re-engage in our city and share in the Alberta Advantage.

 

After all, the citizens of great cities look after themselves, then care for their neighbours.

Great cities are affordable and original

Imagine for a moment a clan of ancient humans camped at the intersection of the Bow and Elbow rivers, warming their bodies around a fire and debating the future. One wit suggests their descendants would develop a macabre society, cookie-cutter in its identity and blandness.

Perhaps, a wise sage speculates, humans would reproduce themselves in identical patterns. Maybe, proposes another, most work would be done on machines running on the same operating systems. After much laughter a cheeky youngster suggests his descendants would dine at places where people pass food out a window into the arms of the buying public.

Imagine the hilarity when a perceptive teenager proposed a great settlement where everyone lives in duplicated houses and shops in similar commercial corridors. The wise tells everyone to settle down because they are getting silly. “No one in his or her right mind will do anything that bizarre,” he says emphatically. Everyone sleeps easily. 

Or do they? Today we have human embryonic cloning, fast-food restaurants, identical subdivisions, indistinguishable suburbs, distressingly similar malls, and everything is fed through transportation utility corridors bringing in cars, electricity, water, sewage, and satellite connections. Welcome to the 21st century.

In the Calgary Chamber of Commerce’s quest to help transform Calgary into one of the great global cities, our membership is keen to help City Hall and the development industry build communities, office towers, arts and cultural centres, and sports facilities that will attract and retain the world’s brightest and most talented.

We’re selfish, we admit. The Chamber’s membership needs these workers to contribute to the city’s economic growth and prosperity. Many potential employees are young and just launching their careers. They want affordable housing in interesting (non-cloned) neighbourhoods. With average house prices at $385,000 these recruits need yearly salaries of $83,000 to become proud homeowners. The average Calgarian earns $67,000.

This week, the Calgary Chamber of Commerce released its first major policy research study on Calgary’s broad affordable housing market affordability challenges.

“The transformation to high-density, mixed-use, walkable and transit-oriented forms of development,” the study states, “involves significant time and risk to both the city and developers.”

Developers have piloted two innovative communities — Garrison Woods and Mackenzie Towne — and buyers flocked to those areas to live. They were successful because the city and the developers were committed to making them succeed. We applaud them for their efforts.

To foster this spirit of co-operation, the Chamber makes several recommendations:

• The mayor and council gives their planners clear policy directions to work with developers and ensure each project is sustainable, reasonably priced, and distinctive so Calgarians live and work in communities they are proud of.
• The city streamlines the land use policy into an omnibus document, we suggest the city’s overarching Municipal Development Plan, so no one has to search through 40 to 50 policy documents to understand the approval process and requirements.
• The city incorporates a variety of alternative design standards, similar to Europe (and like those developed for Garrison Woods and Mackenzie Towne) into its standard specification books to provide more diversity and options for prospective buyers.
• The city ensures there is sufficient and accessible transit infrastructure to encourage people to leave their cars at home.
• The developers and the city include city-wide community consultation in their timelines to engage all citizens, listen to their concerns and make design changes, where appropriate. Many excellent applications are bogged down because of a vocal minority.
• The council continues to treat each zoning approval application with a balanced, “what is best for the entire city” approach. We will always commend the alderman on making decisions based on defensible, principled, effective and consistent frameworks.

Calgary is such a young, vibrant city. We don’t have to settle for a bland, cookie-cutter look to our skyline. We have the ability to bring design, creativity, and fun into our suburban neighbourhoods, workplaces, and green spaces. Surely we can attract the best and brightest when we are committed to building housing that is affordable.

As the campfire burned from embers to ashes, our ancestors did sleep easily. They knew their descendants had the ability to transform the flood plain, at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers, into a truly great city.

Heather Douglas is president & CEO of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber’s Affordable Housing paper can be downloaded at www.calgarychamber.com