Bylaw Education & Compliance plan and budget
Bylaw Education & Compliance develops and maintains community standards in Calgary to promote healthy and safe communities and to help Calgarians live in harmony with their neighbours. Community peace officers provide bylaw education to achieve compliance and enforce municipal bylaws and provincial statutes in the interest of community safety.
Our customers
- Calgarians reporting a concern or benefitting from desirable and welcoming neighbourhoods.
- Businesses seeking compliance.
Our partners
- Calgary Alpha House Society
- Safe Communities Opportunity and Resource Centre
- Calgary Drop-In Centre
- Calgary Food Bank
- Business Improvement Areas
- Other internal business units
Value to Calgarians
- timely resolutions when encountering issues or concerns with neighbours, communities and weather events
- proactively address emerging concerns and prioritizes bylaw education to encourage compliance
- community peace officers actively enforce bylaws
- seek to create resolutions to build safer communities
What we deliver
- Education and enforcement for 24 municipal bylaws and 11 provincial statutes (ie. snow and ice removal, untidy problem properties, weed control, noise violations and exemption permits, Grafitti prevention and abatement)
Budget breakdown
Operating and capital budgets explained
The City develops two budgets to create impact aligned with Council’s Strategic Direction:
- The four-year (2023-2026) operating plans and budgets
- The five-year (2023-2027+) capital plans and budgets
The operating budget includes revenues, recoveries and spending related to ongoing operations. These include:
- Salaries, wages and benefits.
- Day to day programs, maintenance and services.
- Administration costs (e.g., insurance).
- Fuel
- Utilities
- Capital financing costs.
The City's total net operating budget is zero. This means we budget to collect the revenue needed to deliver services to Calgarians — no more, no less. We collect this revenue through property taxes and other sources.
The capital budget pays for long-lived assets. These provide the foundation for the services Calgarians rely on. They include:
- Maintenance of current infrastructure (e.g., bridges, buildings and playgrounds).
- Upgrades to existing community infrastructure.
- New infrastructure to provide services in areas that are underserved (e.g., Green Line).
- New infrastructure for growing areas of the city.
Learn more about our 2023-2026 Service Plans and Budgets.
See how the budget has been adjusted since November 2022
Measuring performance
We are measuring our performance in five areas. Each value is the goal we expect to reach by 2026.
What we've heard
Calgarians indicated that Bylaw Education & Compliance continues to meet expectations for service delivery, identifying safety as a key value, followed by fairness and responsiveness. The 2021 Fall Quality of Life and Citizen Satisfaction Survey report indicated that:
- 84 per cent of Calgarians would like to see more or the same investment in service.
- 85 per cent of Calgarians are satisfied with Bylaw Education & Compliance services.
- 98 per cent of Calgarians feel snow removal is important to them.
- 78 per cent of Calgarians feel that bylaw services addressing noise complaints, firepits and weeds are important to them.
What we're watching
- Bylaw Education & Compliance continues to promote equitable access to service and will evolve with Calgary’s increasingly diverse population.
- Community peace officers will continue to adapt to meet additional responsibilities presented by emerging needs in Calgary, including enforcement for public transit, encampments, street harassment and problem properties.
- We will continue to leverage technology to modernize response services and to improve access for Calgarians.
- The One City Record Management System will promote data sharing across the organization and improve internal coordination.
- The Office of the Solicitor General mandated new training requirements for the Peace Officer Program which are being implemented.
- We expect future legislative changes to influence how we deliver services and structure our workforce.
Our initiatives
What we plan to do
We will support vulnerable and marginalized populations to improve public safety by implementing service improvements and collaborating with communities and our partners. This will help achieve positive outcomes for emerging community trends and to address safety in the downtown core.
How we're going to get there
- Link populations experiencing vulnerabilities with partnering agencies and support services by evolving the front-line officer outreach model.
- Address localized social disorder and improve safety in the downtown core by increasing community peace officer capacity.
- Strengthen employee resiliency by delivering training and resources designed to improve officer safety and support mental and physical wellness.
- Improve responsiveness to emerging local issues and citizen needs by leveraging new technology to modernize service delivery.
- Address problem properties in Calgary by increasing capacity to develop and maintain an established coordinated response and monitoring program.