GUNTER: Edmonton needs to vote this council out

Vote them all out. Every one of them.

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The mayor and every member of council voted not only to raise your property taxes this year by the 8.7 per cent requested by administration two weeks ago. They decided to double down and add more spending not requested by the bureaucracy. So in the end, council ended up approving an 8.9 per cent increase.

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Woohoo! Let 'em party like it's 2099! After all, they're playing with other people's money.

Your money.

All 13 members of council voted late Tuesday for the increase and all claimed the city had no room to cut expenses. Many blamed the province.

If they cannot be more imaginative than that with expenditures, and if they have no more concern for their voters' money than to jack up taxes even more than the bureaucrats had asked, then not one of them deserves to be re-elected in the fall of 2025.

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When next year's campaign comes around, I will not be endorsing a single member of the current council.

Ward sipiwiyiniwak Coun. Sarah Hamilton offered a good example of what I mean about lack of budgetary imagination.

She told reporters there has been a sharp increase in the cost of transit security. Do we really want to leave transit riders at the mercy of drug addicts, panhandlers and gropers?

Of course not.

But since no more than 11 or 12 per cent of Edmontonians use transit regularly, why should the full cost of increased security be borne by taxpayers. Shouldn't some of it be paid by those who use the system in the form of higher fares?

Currently, less than half of the cost of a trip on a bus or LRT is covered by the fare paid by the rider. More than half of the cost is footed by taxpayers. Shouldn't at least some of the added cost of making the system safer be paid for by the people who use the system?

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Taxpayers being forced to pay the entire cost of transit security is yet more proof that ETS is a subsidized social service, not a transportation system.

Fare revenue on transit is down. So increase fares, rather than sticking a shiv in taxpayers backs while rifling through their pockets for more cash.

If a small business in our city has lower than expected sales, it cuts expenses, even if that sadly means laying off staff and postponing renos.

If families find their costs rising faster than their income, they cut back on luxuries, like holidays and meals eaten out. And maybe they even put off some necessities.

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But the city can just squeeze residents harder for more taxes. And that is exactly what the uncreative, timid minds on council did on Tuesday evening.

Do we "need" expanded transit service? No. But we're getting it, even when the dropping ridership indicates perhaps the city should be reducing existing service levels.

But because council lacks imagination, courage and concern for taxpayers, they keep clinging to their dream that if they just expand service, more people will ride transit. Just as if they build more bike lanes, more people will pedal. In January.

They are delusional, but they can afford to be delusional because they have the power to extract more money from ordinary Edmontonians who are already struggling to make ends meet.

The city keeps insisting it has made nearly $2 billion in operating cuts since 2015. That's hard to believe, but let's for a second pretend that's true.

So what? If they're still running deficits and forcing taxes way up, they obviously still haven't made enough cuts.

If city council lacks the foresight and courage to lay off city staff and reduce services, then voters should lay off councillors.

lgunter@postmedia.com

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