Video: Mayor Nenshi's 2012 State of the City address
On Tuesday, January 17, Mayor Naheed Nenshi gave his annual State of the City address at a Rotary Club luncheon. Couldn't make it? Here's the full 30-minute speech.
In a nutshell, Mayor Nenshi's speech touches on the following topics:
- How 2012 will be Calgary's year
- Highlights from 2011
- The growth pressures facing our city and Mayor Nenshi's plans to manage and take advantage of these opportunities
- The latest on the Calgary Poverty Reduction Initiative
- The start of a 30-year plan for Calgary Transit
- How Calgary can better plan and build the communities and infrastructure we all need and want
- An update on building new rec centres in Calgary
- Mayor Nenshi's priorities for 2012 that will set the stage for a strong future for Calgary
- A challenge to all Calgarians to do 3 Things for Calgary
- Daorcey from Mayor Nenshi's team
Media statement: Mayor Nenshi on Council compensation and donating 10% of his salary
Today, your City Council decided to accept the recommendations of the Council Compensation Review Committee. This means that Council compensation adjustments will continue to be tied to the Alberta Average Weekly Earnings (AWE) as calculated by Statistics Canada.
First of all, I want to thank the volunteer citizen committee that prepared an excellent report on City Council compensation. Their work did much to inform the debate and decisions today.
It is best to keep compensation out of the hands of politicians because that approach is predictable and transparent. While there are a number of ways to calculate compensation increases, I believe that the Consumer Price Index appears to be the most easily understood and transparent way to do this. That's why I voted in favour of this change, which was ultimately defeated by Council. That said, there is very little difference between CPI and AWE. Over the last 20 years, the average increase has been within one percentage point of one another.
I was surprised to learn the value of the mayor's compensation compared to mayors in other cities. For that reason, I will donate 10% of my 2012 salary to either the City of Calgary or a charity that does work in Calgary, which is consistent with what I did last year, though at a higher percentage. This donation will be in addition to my regular charitable giving in a normal year.
The reason I am structuring this as a donation rather than a pay cut is because it does not appear to be possible to change the remuneration for only one member of Council rather than for everyone.
I strongly feel that aldermen in Calgary are appropriately compensated for all the work they do. There are, for example, twice as many MLAs in Calgary as there are aldermen. A report tabled in December showed that the poores