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Calgary city council has a hot potato in its hands and needs to come up with a plan that doesn’t leave local businesses getting burned.

But part of the solution could mean tossing higher property taxes on to anxious homeowners across Calgary.

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As the city goes through its annual budget planning, council is again confronting a two-year-old concern that isn’t fading away: the shrinking value of downtown office buildings.

“It’s as least as bad as it’s been in the last two years,” Mayor Naheed Nenshi said in an interview Monday.

“The problem is bigger than we had anticipated,” added Coun. Druh Farrell, whose Ward 7 represents part of the downtown core.

The downturn in oil prices in 2015 and ’16 led to thousands of oilpatch layoffs and a dramatic increase in vacant office space in the core.

Under the city’s annual revenue-neutral reassessment process, empty offices and buildings with falling property values pay lower municipal taxes if their assessments decline.