Nenshi asks Rempel for ideas instead of insults, while she says drop the ego

Mayor Naheed Nenshi says he'd welcome any ideas Michelle Rempelhas to solve the property-tax problem facing many businesses in the city but so far all he's heard from the Calgary MP is a string of insults.

"She spent hours tweeting and re-tweeting the most vicious personal attacks and insults against me," the mayor said Thursday, after several days of sparring with Rempel through social and traditional media.

"I've never seen a politician in Canada do anything like that before you know, calling me an a-hole, calling me pathetic for hours...It's odd behaviour, so clearly she's not interested in actually talking about the issue with me."

• 'Math is challenging': Nenshi and Rempel spar over property taxes, and sexism

Rempel, for her part, saidit's time to putpersonal feelingsaside and focus on helping Calgarians who are struggling financially.

"At this point in time we all need to just drop everything, drop assumptions, drop egos especially egos and say look, people can't make ends meet right now," she said Thursday.

"This should really be about acknowledging issues like the property taxes, and coming up with solutions to get people back to work or keep their stores in business."

Nenshi said that's precisely what he and other members of city council have been trying to do.

Limited powers

He noted council has effectively frozen property taxes for homeowners this year with a one-time draw from reserve funds, in addition to another $15 million set aside for businesses whose property assessments have increased dramatically.

The challenge isfinding a legal way to disperse those funds to businesses, the mayor said, because the municipal government has little power to change the way property taxes work.

"By provincial law, we have to do an assessment every year and we have to assess based on the current market value," he said.

"A couple of very thoughtful people said well, 'Why don't you just freeze the assessments?' Well, we can't. 'Why don't you offer differential tax rates?' Well, we can't."

Origin of the dispute

The spat began Sunday evening when Rempel said on Twitter that city council "needs to have a rethink" about its property tax policy.

Things came to a head Tuesday when Nenshisaid "apparently math is challenging" for Rempel a choice of words strikingly similar to those that proved to bepolitically disastrousfor the late premier Jim Prentice when he said them to RachelNotley.

Rempelimmediately blasted Nenshi's words as condescending and sexist.

The mayor apologized, saying on Twitterhe's"truly sorry that came off as sexist," adding, "I would and have said the same thing to men in political discourse."

Rempel replied with a single word: "Lol" an acronym for "laugh out loud" followed by a series of tweets and retweetslambasting the mayor.

What's next?

Rempel, who held a public meeting with constituentsThursday to talk about the employment situation in Alberta,said she's "always" open to meeting with Nenshiandshe sent him a request for a meeting more than a month ago, but received no reply.

"Maybe he can go meet with some small businesses who are screaming and yelling about how high their taxes are. And I'm not being glib here. It's really bad. It's really, really bad and we need to fix it," she said.

Nenshisaid he's willing to meet with Rempeltoo, but in the meantime, he's continuing to work with city staff and lawyers to figure out a way to disperse the $15 million to small businesses in a way that would limit their actual property tax increases to five per cent.

He said about 1,000 businesses are facing tax increases of more than 30 per cent, due to their property assessments' growth relative to the average, calling that a "completely untenable" situation.

"We just have to figure out within our very restricted powers how we can actually get that money to the people that need it," the mayor said.

"But ... we'll do it before your tax bills are due in June."

Move to municipal politics?

Asked if her recent wade into municipal waters meant she was considering a run in the fall election for city council, Rempel didn't say yes or no.

"Right now I'm thinking about the people in this room," she replied, pointing to the gathering of her constituents.

"I don't want more people in my riding out of work and I want people to get back to work," Rempel added.

"If that means talking about the fact that property taxes are really, really high and people can't pay them right now, then I don't think that should be a taboo topic."