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How will the city handle Calgary's tax shift problem? There are a few options, incl. doing nothing. There's danger to that though. One alarming projection: business-to-residential property tax ratio could climb ABOVE 4:1, if #yyccc doesn't intervene. https://t.co/KQ842EVGTb #yyc pic.twitter.com/PHHc1Yixok — Meghan Potkins (@mpotkins) November 24, 2018

While the chamber is in favour of narrowing that ratio, Cooper said the first thing the city should do to curb the tax problem is squeeze their own operating budgets.

That view was echoed by some of city council’s tax hawks Friday, who said they’ll be looking for the city to freeze or even cut spending before hiking rates for homeowners.

“I think our focus should be on reining in our own expenditures before we go back to either cash-strapped businesses or homeowners to have to pay more,” said Coun. Jeromy Farkas. “I don’t feel that city council has held up its end of the bargain to make sure that the increases, if we have to do them, are reasonable.”

Coun. Sean Chu said he’ll be combing through budget documents this weekend looking for places to cut.

“I never hear anybody talking about, ‘let’s tighten our belts,’ ” Chu said. “You look at the budget and there’s going to be a (more than 600 full-time equivalent staff) increase over the next four years — why?”

Other city council members have suggested the budget is reasonable, that it largely holds the line on spending over the next four years, with increases reflecting inflation and the cost of new community growth.

Nenshi said while he’s concerned about the tax shift problem — particularly the projected widening of the business-to-property tax ratio — he said council doesn’t have to make structural changes immediately.

The city also outlined scenarios for continuing a program of one-time payments to keep a lid on tax increases for businesses, according to the memo.

The city could also employ a combination of approaches, including a gradual increase on residential property taxes coupled with a cap on increases to non-residential taxes.

“Council really has to talk about what they’re trying to achieve here and who ought to pay the risk,” Nenshi said. “I’ve said from the very beginning that one lever is not going to solve this problem for everyone. We need to look at multiple levers over the next year or two and then get a sense of what the economic situation is and what we need to do more long term.”

mpotkins@postmedia.com

Twitter: @mpotkins