‘We need to push back’: Councillors seek ways to make up revenue lost to photo radar purge​on February 11, 2025 at 9:53 pm

Wyness, who is one of council’s two representatives on the police commission, alongside Wong, said that without considering options to fund the shortfall, the police service might be forced to reduce overtime hours or cut hiring and critical operations, which would put public safety at risk.

In a scrum with reporters, the Ward 2 councillor argued if the province doesn’t rescind its purge of photo radar, council may need to increase property taxes next year. She noted that $28 million would equate to a 1.1 per cent tax hike.

“We’re aiming for advocacy,” she said. “We continue to talk about a tool the police use to make our roads safer and (the province is) calling it a cash cow.

“It’s not a cash cow — it’s the swear jar of bad drivers.”

In a statement Tuesday, the Calgary Police Commission said it believes fine revenue should be removed from future police budgets to ensure public safety remains the only focus of traffic enforcement.

Calgary’s annual police budget includes an estimate of how much fine revenue is likely each year, based on previous years. CPS received $15 million less from fine revenue than it budgeted for in 2024.

“We knew the province’s photo radar changes would significantly increase that shortfall in 2025,” the commission stated.

The province shares 40 per cent of the revenue received from traffic fines with municipalities, the commission said, adding that Calgary’s city council has traditionally approved using this funding to reduce the tax dollars needed to pay for policing.

“For us, the revenue impact of the photo radar changes is not nearly as important as the community safety implications of losing such an important tool that has proved effective at reducing the number and severity of collisions where it has been properly deployed,” the commission said.

As for how the $28-million shortfall could be filled without CPS tweaking its budget internally or by council raising taxes, Wyness noted another option is to dip into the Fiscal Stability Reserve (FSR). That was the tactic used during budget deliberations last November, when council approved withdrawing $9.5 million from the FSR — colloquially known as the city’s rainy day fund — to help CPS pay for a new training facility and shooting range without needing to further raise taxes.

But Wyness argued resorting to the city’s piggy bank to backfill a revenue shortfall brought on by another order of government is a short-term solution that “doesn’t solve our problem in the long term.”

“There’s still hope the province can reverse their decision,” she said.

“I think if they looked at the news and saw the number of fatalities we are seeing in the city of Calgary, that should be enough data.”

Mayor Jyoti Gondek accused the province of defunding Calgary’s police, adding that fine revenue accounted for six per cent of the CPS budget.

“We know that a chunk of that revenue stream from photo radar goes towards keeping our police service intact,” she told reporters. “And at a time when public safety is a top priority for this government, to take that funding away is mind-boggling.

“And quite frankly, it is going to put us in a very difficult position.”