Calgarians are invited to a public hearing to learn more about how the city plans to deal with its growing tax problem.

The city must make up $250 million in lost property taxes from downtown office towers and councillor Evan Woolley plans to put forward a notice of motion that hopes to alleviate some of the tax burden on businesses.

In 2017 and 2018, the city limited business property tax increases to no more than five percent and made up the difference by taking money from reserves.

This year, the proposal was to take another $44 million from savings to limit tax hikes to no more than 10 percent but the move would be a temporary fix.

Woolley’s plan calls for a cut of $100 million from the city budget with the hopes of transferring some of the tax burden off of non-residential properties, which would mean service cuts.

He is suggesting transferring some of that burden to residential property owners and then offering them a one-time rebate over four years to soften the increase.

Some councillors are proposing higher tax increases for homeowners but Woolley says he’d like to see a more balanced approach.

“I will not and cannot support something like that. I think all Calgarians are struggling and I think it’s really incumbent upon us as a city to see those reductions across our corporations to show some leadership and show some Calgarians that we are working hard to make our companies as efficient as we can,” he said.

“If we do the adjustments we think we need to and there will be an increase to residential tax payers, we want to make sure we can offer a rebate to offset that pain in the first couple of years. We believe we’ve found a solution that for 2019 and 2020, your average home owner would not be paying anything over what we’ve already approved in the budget. We’ve been really diligent about that,” said Councillor Jyoti Gondek.

Council will open the floor for a public hearing this week to look at several other options to deal with the tax burden. A decision is expected to be made by April 1st.

For more on the Notice of Motion: Alleviating the Tax Burden on Businesses and Creating Tax Equity Through Budget Reductions, click HERE.

(With files from Mark Villani)