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“I would like to see a city and a council that’s actually business-friendly like they say they are,” said Doody. “They need to start walking the walk instead of gutting us.”

“To know that the city of Calgary is the obstacle about to deal us the biggest blow is a hard pill to swallow.”

Photo by Jim Wells / Postmedia

Last week, city council drafted a proposal for a $190-million tax relief package for non-residential taxpayers.

Despite the proposed tax relief, Coun. Gian-Carlo Carra said business owners’ reactions to the tax increase are understandable.

“They opened up their tax bill and they’re seeing massive increases . . . Obviously, they’re feeling gut-punched and let down and it’s all rational,” said Carra.

The city failed to find a solution to the property tax “nightmare” before tax bills went out, which is why they intend to move forward with plans to send out cheques to non-residential taxpayers to offset the increase, according to Carra.

“We are going to look at doing a number of other things to drive costs down and to get more savings flowing into the businesses that are suffering ridiculously given the structural situation we are in.”

Carra said Inglewood is a neighbourhood that was hit fairly hard because the desirable qualities of the area pushed up property values. He wants the city to address Calgary’s “new normal” and accept the devaluation of the city’s core.

“It would have been better if we had avoided this,” Carra said of the tax hikes. “It’s important that we commit to the solution we’ve identified for this year and pull together to find the structural changes that we need to make, because this can’t keep on keeping on.”