We’re on right Plan It

For the past millenia, city planners have reverentially whispered about a mysterious solid gold amulet rumoured to transform poverty-stricken neighbourhoods into the handsomest of districts.

It was not until 1907 or 1908 that a senior official with the Austrian Chamber of Commerce finally exposed this magic talisman as an urban myth.

According to the Chamber’s Ludwig von Mises, neither central planners nor civic officials were able to calculate “how many shoes and cars, schoolbooks and office buildings, doctors and carpenters, people will need and then to produce that number at the right time and put them in the right places.”

The Austrian Chamber rejected the notion of establishing rigid setback regulations for sidewalks and supported the rights of individual property owners to adapt their houses to the changing needs of their families. There was no such thing as a perfect piece of zoning legislation or ideal method to conjure up semi-wooded, multi-family residential neighbourhoods.

“All these economic activities the central planners purported to organize,” stated von Mises emphatically, “involved making choices about where to put scarce manpower, natural resources, capital, and other elements of production to satisfy human needs.”

Aware of the lack of enchanted amulets in our post-modern civilization, Calgary’s city planners recently drafted a 60-year blueprint, called Plan It Calgary, highlighting their vision for how and where the city will grow. It includes new transit lines and stations, high-rise apartments and office towers, commons and playgrounds, all graced by public art.

With due respect to the Austrian Chamber, the Calgary Chamber of Commerce has applauded the initiative and key tenets of the central planners’ drawings and strategy. We support its ideas addressing traffic congestion, commuting times, housing affordability, environmental challenges and the high cost of living.

The Chamber also recommends that Plan It adopt the following principles:

• Institute lifecycle cost measurement to determine the true cost of growth associated with various types of development — infrastructure and maintenance costs per unit or single-family houses versus multi-family.
• Improve transit infrastructure and service levels outside the downtown core to facilitate movement of people and goods to business hubs in other communities.
• Publish objective criteria to identify communities intended for intensification and develop a process to support these communities to prepare for and respond to growth.
• Apply Plan It Calgary growth principles consistently in all communities to ensure elected officials, developers and residents adhere to the same high standards and principles in developing our city.
• Ensure there continues to be a 30-year supply of all-purpose developable land within the city to encourage housing affordability.
• Work with industry to implement the plan with sufficient transition time to allow landowners, developers and communities to adapt.
• Co-ordinate Plan It with the Calgary Regional Partnership’s metropolitan plan to avoid fringe development and corresponding issues of free-ridership.

The Calgary Chamber of Commerce is committed to helping Calgary transform itself into a renaissance city of the 21st century. We rely on smart planners, not gold amulets, to build communities to attract the best and brightest.

Chamber led fight for reform

Hercules is revered as Greece’s greatest mythological hero.

His story is a classic tale of redemption. One day, suffering from a fit of insanity, Hercules committed murder most foul. As punishment, he agreed to perform 12 exploits so tough they were deemed impossible.

Among other things, he fought a man-eating lion, killed a nine-headed hydra, hunted sacred animals, found golden apples and finally went to the depths of Hades, unearthed the horrible watchdog Cerberus and brought him to the Eurystheus, the Mycenaean king.

Hercules turned struggle and suffering into a virtue, made the world a better place and became the quintessential icon of pathos.

While the Calgary Chamber of Commerce claims to be no one’s mythological hero, we toil daily to make this city a better place for business. Occasionally, we turn our struggle into victory. Our latest success was a particularly gratifying one to celebrate.

In 2007, the Chamber launched a concerted advocacy effort to impose serious campaign finance reform on those running for municipal office in this city. At the time, there were neither guidelines on fundraising, nor requirements for what to do with campaign surpluses.

It was suspected the most generous donors were from the construction, development and real estate sectors. No one knew for sure.

Sadly, almost 90% of the Chamber’s membership believed city hall’s transparency and accountability had deteriorated since the 2004 vote. They also suspected Calgary’s campaign finance rules were among the most lax in Canada.

As part of its advocacy efforts, the Chamber made some astute recommendations to the province in the hope it would bring openness, transparency and equal access to city hall:

• Align municipal campaign financing rules with the federal and provincial governments by imposing a ban on contributions by corporations, unions, and all special interest groups.
• Limit contributions to $1,000/donor/candidate.
• Establish an electronic filing system enabling candidates to electronically track and file campaign donations and thus make it easier for the public to know who contributed to which campaign and how much.
• Establish a candidate conflict of interest registry with published lists of family members’ interests in corporations or organizations, land holdings and contracts.
• Require surplus campaign funds be donated to the city or a registered charity after each election.
• Make donations from individuals to municipal political campaigns tax deductible.

Last week, the Alberta government saw fit to close the loopholes on donations and elections spending. Bill 203 limits individuals from giving more than $5,000 to any candidate and requires nominees to publicly disclose all donors who gave $100 or more. It also requires surplus election campaign funds to be held in trust by the respective municipalities, then donated to charity if the candidate decides not to run in the next election.

The Chamber’s victory celebration has been tempered with the knowledge there are still more virtuous recommendations to implement to end Calgary’s Wild West finance rules.

Just as King Eurystheus gave Hercules a dozen impossible tasks to complete, members of the Chamber expect our advocacy efforts to change federal, provincial and municipal policies. We have fought our share of policy lions, hunted the odd sacred cow or two and harvested a small vineyard of golden apples.

Chamber membership does have its advantages. It makes Calgary the best city for business success.