Mayor Gondek chats with CityNews660 on blanket rezoning

Last Updated Apr 19, 2024 6:52 pm.

It's going to take as long as it's going to take — that, from Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek, who spoke about the city's upcoming hearing on blanket rezoning live on CityNews660 Friday morning.

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek chats blanket rezoning live on CityNews660

The mayor says 675 people are signed up to speak at the public hearing, which starts on Monday, April 22.

Staff are also making preparations to take the hearings into the weekend, or even the week after.

So far, the agenda includes 54 PDF files of submissions to the city, and each of those files is hundreds of pages long.

Gondek says she is getting eyes on as many submissions as she can.

"I'm very interested in hearing what Calgarians have to say. I'm very interested in hearing what my colleagues have in terms of amendments and I want to make sure that we do the right thing for the city," she said. "We know that our biggest competitive advantage was that we were more affordable than any other metropolitan centre in the country and that has changed very quickly. We didn't keep pace with housing, that's one of the biggest things that we left Calgarians down on.

Gondek says she believes it's important to act now, and this is only one part of the housing strategy.

Proceedings officially get underway Monday and are expected to be met with protests outside city hall.