Council needs to set priorities to build better bridges
By Lethbridge Herald on March 18, 2022.
When Lethbridge residents went to the polls last October, a majority of the Council that they elected campaigned on fiscal responsibility. This is perhaps no wonder, given Lethbridge already has one of the highest property tax rates in Alberta, and it had become crystal clear to almost everyone that constantly hiking taxes was no longer sustainable.
Yet, a clear majority of more than 60 per cent of voters also supported a referendum question to make constructing a third bridge a municipal priority. City staff calculate that the $200 – $300 million cost of the new bridge would result in a tax increase of up to 22.1 per cent for Lethbridgians – an extra $880 per year for the average household!
At first glance, these two election results might seem contradictory. How could voters finally vote to get spending under control, but also endorse a massive new capital project that clearly most families can’t afford in today’s economic environment?
Council – especially those who were elected on promises of fiscal responsibility – would appear to have a difficult decision to make.
On the one hand, they could build a bridge, hike taxes, and break their promise to be fiscally responsible. On the other hand, they could keep taxes under control and cancel or delay the project, breaking their promise to build the bridge.
It turns out, however, when building a third bridge there is a third way.
The message sent by voters last year isn’t actually mixed or confused, it’s quite simple – it’s about priorities.
Yes, citizens want a new bridge, but they also want spending kept in check overall, and it’s this type of thinking that highlights the difference between City Hall and citizens.
You have to remember that City Hall doesn’t pay for anything themselves – they use citizens’ taxes to pay for the projects they promote.
Citizens, meanwhile, are acutely aware that everything their representatives do for them is being paid for with their own money.
Voters, therefore, are perfectly willing to spend their taxes on meaningful projects, but not on wasteful pet projects pushed by ideologues.
This presents a unique opportunity for the City of Lethbridge to find a way to thread the needle and build a bridge – literally and figuratively.
Instead of raising taxes to pay for the bridge, how about cutting wasteful spending?
Just take a quick look through the City’s latest budget and you’ll find $100 million for a performing arts centre, $43.8 million being spent on cycle paths, $11 million for a new waste and recycling curbside organics collection program, and $12 million for upgrades to the SAAG facility and Henderson Ice Centre.
I could go on, but even those four projects alone represent nearly $170 million, which is more than three quarters of the entire cost of a third bridge at the low end of estimates, and more than half at the high end.
No-one is arguing that each of these projects wouldn’t be nice to have if they magically appeared for free, or if we had billions of dollars lying around doing nothing – we’re not saying they’re bad ideas.
But council doesn’t have unlimited money to spend, and council’s job isn’t to decide whether a project is nice; council’s job is to decide whether a project is the absolute best possible usage of the taxpayers’ money.
When we launched Common Sense Lethbridge last year, we said that Lethbridge can be the best place in the world to live, work, play, raise a family, and start a business.
We also noted, however, that one of the main barriers to this goal was a lack of focus on core priorities at City Hall.
Council was spending too much time and too much money on things that were not the proper responsibility of municipal government and that all the time and money spent on those distractions had also jeopardized the quality and effectiveness of the services the City is actually responsible for delivering.
The new council has an opportunity to correct course by focusing on what really matters to the citizens of Lethbridge and what better way to start than by prioritizing a project that voters explicitly said should be a priority.
Ronnie DeGagne is the Executive Director of Common Sense Lethbridge (www.commonsenselethbridge.com), an independent non-profit municipal advocacy group.
23-22
Ah, I see. If Ronnie likes it, it is ‘common sense’. If Ronnie doesn’t like it, it is ‘ideological’.
Good old Sophie. Common sense to her is slagging the writer or is that ideological? Much there for discussion but you won’t engage.
Fitting: Complaining about something without providing a solution is called whining – Teddy Roosevelt.
Good ol’ bucky: The fount of wisdom.
It is a bad habit of the curmudgeon right to ignore long-term decision-making processes – the development of the MDP or the CIP – and then drop in at the end and stomp their feet when they don’t like the results. I support planning processes and expertise in the municipal administration to lead Lethbridge. Over Boomer clubs of self-satisfied grumps, that is, who want to shave 15 minutes off their trip to Costco.
Cancelling projects already approved and in process (many supported by external grants, which the letter writer seems oblivious to) to build a $300 to $500 million dollar bridge is absurd. Put the project in the cue, lobby for funding, convince Lethbridgians it is worth the 20% hike in property taxes, and build it. Follow the process, don’t just sit there and honk your horns.
Yes MrDEGagne the citizens should take a good look at the two councilors in waiting to push their agenda on the over$t125m performing arts center since they sat on the committee it increased from $65m to over $125m requires borrowing do not see any arts group fundraising.Should be a conflict of interest charged on the PAC committee member affiliation. new west theatre’
The Residential Curbside organics program is over $17m someGovt funding for organic facility and 3 trucks $400,000.. each, mysterious organic equipment 3 pieces$1.8 million, debt servicing required but citizens must take a good look at the proposed new Organic facility who should be paying for residential or the ICI group. Industrial, commercial, institutional.
The residential has less than 4000 tonnes of organics the ICI has 20,000 tonnes for the past five years which by council agreement has been depositing in a specially built landfill cell #7. Every for the past five years over 100,000 tonnes of waste22000 tonnes residential, 70,000 tonnes the ICI there is more but what group is the landfill waste problem. Why did City Council give the ICI group a 5year transition period no targets like imposed on residential which deposit 22,000 and 4000 tonnes of Organics,
Ken Ikle
So, is the ‘Transparency’ Council for the $500 million capital expense 3rd bridge – the tax hike for residents), the annual maintenance costs, the road upgrades to accommodate the traffic, etc.? Y’all should be more transparent.
But you are against a $5 charge to divert organic waste from the dump and reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Don’t care much about the future, do ya?
Though it is touching to see to two self-appointed ‘advocacy groups’ and critics of all things progressive at work here.
So is this an amalgamation with the upstarts from the “Lethbridge Transparency Council?” You guys are a bunch off insurrectionists-in-waiting that are so anxious to overthrow the group of willing people DULY ELECTED in a democratic fashion, you know, which is what they ARE, that you feel the need to have a countdown CLOCK on your website ticking away the time, in SECONDS, until the next Lethbridge municipal election in 2025?! What the hell is wrong with you people? Apparently a mandatory civics class is desperately needed for all adult residents of Lethbridge. If we have to sit here and endure the embarrassing UCP that you all voted for, for another YEAR, watching the overt destruction of our universities, our education and the not so creeping privatization of our health care, for STARTERS, all you anti-art, anti-culture, anti-intellectual conservatives who are ONLY concerned with money need to back off. Like the “LTC,” you fancy yourselves the “commonsense” people when it comes to spending money who don’t get the fact that money is about VALUES, and values DIFFER. And if yours are conservative you must have ALSO missed the fact that your particular “brand,” fiscal and otherwise, has pretty much been completely trashed.
I wish I said that! Hammer on nail head.
a 3rd bridge would serve a small portion of the city’s population. mostly, it would be used to shorten the commute to walmart south and the hub of lethbridge’s consumerism, costco. it seems an exorbitant price for all of lethbridge to absorb for a relative few, and for hardly a necessity. if a bridge does get built, it had better be a toll bridge, and/or, had better only affect the taxes of the westside building owners.
as for a performing arts ctr, we had best reconfigure the waste that is casa, such that it becomes our new performing arts ctr. sick is the fact that we just spent a fortune to “upgrade” the yates…what the f is wrong with this city?
Make the new bridge a toll bridge. Let those who want it, and use it, pay for it. The rest of us don’t want it, especially at taxpayer expense.
This city taxpayers and utility users must take a good look at the proceedings of the city organic project and what it going to cost you the cost of service document on this project was $17.9 million changed to $10,9 million, for an organic facility, govt funding of $5.8 million. Seems Waste management is building two organic facilities for residential one for ICI $5.8million for 20,000 tonnes of organic and food waste presently dumped in a landfill cell #7 half price tipping fee. The residential facility $10.9 million for 4,000 tonnes of organic capable of handling 20,000 tonnes of organic and food waste. the ICI facility has no project number or is approved in the Capital Improvement program by City Council. We will request at the Civic committee on April 7 to stop the residential organic program and investigate the ICI landfill cell #7 and proceedings on the organic program.
$5 per month to divert organics from the dump and avoid tens of thousands tonnes of methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas.
A no brainer.