{"id":69553,"date":"2016-01-26T20:35:26","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T01:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=69553"},"modified":"2016-01-26T20:35:26","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T01:35:26","slug":"big-city-mayors-meet-with-alberta-ndp-talk-co-operation-taxes-not-on-table","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2016\/01\/26\/big-city-mayors-meet-with-alberta-ndp-talk-co-operation-taxes-not-on-table\/","title":{"rendered":"Big city mayors meet with Alberta NDP, talk co operation, taxes not on table"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Naheed<\/a>
Naheed Nenshi and Don Iveson meet with the NDP cabinet Tuesday in Edmonton
(Twitter <\/a>photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

EDMONTON\u2014The mayors of Calgary and Edmonton say they are working more closely with the province in the hope of improving services without spending lots of new money.<\/p>\n

Naheed Nenshi and Don Iveson met with the NDP cabinet Tuesday in Edmonton.<\/p>\n

Nenshi says they talked about collaborating on ways to bolster transit, policing and housing, as well as on ways to reduce poverty.<\/p>\n

Iveson says improvements in housing for the poor could save the province money by reducing health care and justice system costs.<\/p>\n

He says one idea is to allow cities to finance projects with the province.<\/p>\n

Giving the cities more taxation powers was not on the table.<\/p>\n

Nenshi says some of these ideas could come to fruition over the next year to 18 months.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are saying investments in affordable housing can save you money in health care, can save you money in policing,\u201d Nenshi said Tuesday. \u201cIt costs about $100,000 per year to keep someone in the shelter system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Municipal Affairs Minister Danielle Larivee said the sluggish economy will have a bearing on how quickly the province can move on these ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the current fiscal concerns with the province we are definitely talking more about non-monetary partnerships at this point,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Larivee said the province will work with the cities on infrastructure projects that make the most sense.<\/p>\n

The Alberta government has been talking for years about creating charters for its two largest cities to give them more power to deal with growth pressures.<\/p>\n

Discussions have focused on ways to give cities more autonomy and authority to deal with problems within their boundaries.<\/p>\n

The city charter idea was launched in 2012 by former premier Alison Redford.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EDMONTON\u2014The mayors of Calgary and Edmonton say they are working more closely with the province in the hope of improving …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":69556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-69553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","tag-original","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}