City administration and council are failing Lethbridge taxpayers
By Lethbridge Herald on December 7, 2024.
Editor:
It appears City administration and city councillors are failing taxpayers. Their job, and only job, is to ensure responsible oversight when investing in projects and services for the benefit of citizens.
The population is growing slowly, however management positions have doubled in the last few years. Now you want four more managers in Fire/EMS.
You have created and expanded social services departments that have endless meetings, committees and debates with little measurable improvement.
Less than one per cent of the population consumes disproportionate amounts of time, our taxes and other resources.
Your development planning staff have engaged the community in area redevelopment plans and you ignore the plan and the feedback. Ditto with other departments.
Waste management has become an empire.
The 2022 report dazzled with charts and graphs but failed to show income generated by selling on bales of materials. If there is no market for it they need to be burned or buried. You plan to build bigger buildings to store more of them.
You wanted the Exhibition Agri-Hub and now it is a huge tax burden. You wanted to take on the airport and it is also a huge burden with very poor service. You want to build a performing arts centre and that will become another tax burden we are not ready for. All this to serve a few.
My tiny home in an old neighbourhood costs more in taxes than a million dollar home in Calgary. A 17 per cent compounded increase in taxes in three years smacks of poor management in this writer’s opinion.
We need you to responsibly protect and work for the taxpayers. Run the city like the business it is.
P. Kenny
Lethbridge
14-13
And, in all of this, in the big picture, is the UCP/TBA provincial government’s underfunding of, and cutbacks to, all municipalities, both urban and rural….another reason the UCP/TBA does not get my vote.
I always chuckle a little bit when it comes to the “UCP cutbacks”. The muni’s are never responsible for managing the money given to them. Always the fault of the provincial government. They do the same in Calgary, Edmonton and all over, it is like a cult. We can’t manage the money so we blame someone else. I wonder if you had the same grievance when 185,000 jobs were toasted in the resource industry and the debt ballooned to 75 billion?? And in keeping with a campaign promise, conducted a royalty review, stunting investment, and then after nine months changed nothing. How’s that for whataboutism?? lol
On a more cordial note, in the discussions I have had with members of city council as to spending, I have been advised that departments are given budgets, they spend the budget on the necessities, move on to the wants and do so with council being unaware. In other words the bureaucrats have control of your money and if they have any left over get creative in spending. If there is any money left over they spend it anyway.
As to the LDE this is a complete mess. Council will determine their fate at some point. Note Mr. Matthews recommends a 2.44% increase to the current budgeted tax increase. That’s great if you’re Matthews, he just got a raise. Council needs step up and end this charade if they want to remain on council.
Those of us from the world of finance certainly agree with you. Blaming our mayors and councillors while these fools support these Reformers who are creating this mess doesn’t make them look very smart does it.
Lawyers are warning us about what they think these Reformers hidden agenda is. Elect Poilievre so he will help Smith steal our Canada Pension Plan, kick out the RCMP at a huge cost to taxpayers, and help her get Equalization Payments from the rest of Canada to help them replace the billion’s she is helping the rich steal in the form of oil royalties and corporate taxes. It certainly explains why she is wasting $7 million on getting him elected doesn’t it?
If she gets control of our pension fund there is nothing stopping her from using the excuse that we have received far more than we ever paid into it and she could cancel our monthly payments and these fools who have been supporting her will be included. If Poilievre destroys our Public Healthcare System like he tried to help Harper do we are all going to be in a horrific financial mess including the idiots who are supporting them.
Oh please, stop your fearmongering! If you read the pension protection act and the act for the referendum, it clearly states that the only way the government would move on bringing the Alberta Pension Plan is IF there is a majority of Albertas who vote YES for it in a referendum.
Lies, lies and more NDP lies! A desparate act to sway people with lies!
So explain to us conservatives why she has promised not to honour the referendum or what the survey outcome was , why do you think she has been hiding it, when some 90,000 were involved and why she is now being investigated about it. Are so naive that you don’t think with Poilievre helping her she can’t accomplish what she wants to? Have you forgotten about the ignorant seniors in Red Deer who told her to go ahead and do whatever she wants to us.
In the BIG picture, LPS-Fire-EMS budgets all increased dramatically due to the impact of the drug crisis and the SCS opening, increasing crime around almost 6000%, that is correct, 6000%. Businesses died or are still trying to recover from it, and over $15 million each year of our property taxes are paid for impacts of the drug crisis. That is from the NDP! The UCP closed that abmonination that killed so many young people.
The NDP has destroyed BC and billions are spent every year on failed radical policies that cost taxpayers while continuing to kill too many people!
The UCP is on track and has also lowered the fatal overdoses and reduced the number of issues on our streets, something that an NDP government would reverse and put in place programs that increase costs and loss of lives!
You sound like Rachel Thomas. Low-fact hysteria.
The chart is for Alberta. Big leap in deaths since the UCP gained power.
no no no! it must be that all the very many failings of the ucp have to be blamed on the ndp. sorry, sophie, but you must get with the program.
While I agree with the general direction of this message, its statements are questionable.
If you have been following,I mean really following council meetings and history ,there is nothing questionable about or with P. Kenny’s statements ,to me.
P. Kenny Why are you ignoring the fact that our mayors and councillors are doing the best they can while these Reformers are cheating us out of hundreds of billions of dollars by helping the rich steal our oil and corporate tax wealth? Have you noticed that it’s not happening in Alaska and Norway , and it wasn’t happening when Lougheed was looking after us, was it? We estimated that Albertan have lost $1Trillion and a retired oil executive thinks it’s $1.2 Trillion. Can you prove we haven’t?
Great letter.
Watching council meetings for many years I’ve concluded that they are great rubber stampers. They are flummoxed by any and all problems and quickly turn to administration for direction. Admin usually recommends going ahead with grandiose schemes that result in oodles of dollars for construction companies. A monument of a building is hatched which sucks up tax money like a vacuum cleaner.
We don’t hear much about the YMCA extravaganza. Is it in the black?
Being an excellent councillor is a tough job. I couldn’t do it. They begin with the best of intentions but soon get wrapped up in the minutiae of endless revisions and opinion. Maybe we need a simpler form of governance.
In the real world if these Reformers where collecting property and corporate taxes like Alaska and Norway are doing we wouldn’t have anything to worry about. We didn’t under Lougheed, did we?
if the primary objective of the city is to line pockets – rather than focus on what are our needs first, and then whatever wants we can afford after that – then council and the primary movers in admin all deserve a standing ovation.
while we are standing, keep it going for the exhibition, the downtown bud depot/parkade, casa and the city well over paying for that property and for the city actually paying the realtor fee on that debacle to boot.
so much more, but all those gifts can only be unwrapped by audits.
Hey biff, you nailed it. The Casa property was bought for 4.4 million with an empty asbestos lined old IGA on the site. I had the appraisal at one time and the appraiser, who was from Calgary, appraised the property as a going concern. This empty building was compared to Toy’s r Us, and the former IGA (while operating) in South Lethbridge near Murrays Chev. Having the owner do the appraisal serves a couple of things. One: the City regime could pay this without repercussion from the taxpayer as “that is the appraised value”. Second there was no second appraisal done to confirm the original one. Now Carlson is reinventing the wheel with a ‘pay as you go plan” originally instituted in 1994. The whole key to the plan was identify a project the City needs, place a .5% increase on each tax levy, explain that to the ratepayer, bank the money until the project can be paid for or with minimal borrowing. Of course yearly accounting of the balance in the Pay as you Go program would be required He will be claimed a visionary for his forward thinking. 30 years ago this plan was provided to Carpenter and his council, was instituted, may be he and Dodic, Tarleck and others can enlighten us on just how effective this program has been .
wow, an insightful sharing on this, buck. thanks. i guess we have more insight as to why there is never an audit for city hall.