While nearly $100,000 to clean up Olympic Plaza following the Occupy Calgary may seem like a lot, Mayor Naheed Nenshi says it could have been much worse.
A preliminary audit set the amount of police overtime and other expenses incurred as a result of the Occupy movement and protest camp itself at double the original estimate.
However, Nenshi says that the protest was not violent and no real damage was done. "Not one window was broken, not one act of vandalism. No private property was damaged and no public member had their access impeded to any public facility. So at the end of the day, if there had been vandalism or broken windows, the bill would have been much higher."
Larger cities like Toronto and New York had much higher costs, with $700,000 and $3.4M respectively.
