Once again, the city is increasing our taxes. Big surprise. They say that the public outcry for more snow removal is one of the reasons.
I think the public outcry is because everywhere you look, you see city crews wasting our precious tax dollars.
If they were good stewards of our money, I’m sure the public would be a little more lenient. Here are just three of the many examples I see all the time. I’m sure there are a hundred more.
On 67th Street east of 59th Avenue (by the fire hall/police station), the graders have done a very nice job of clearing the snow off of an eight-foot wide swath of the grass. I don’t know the reason for this, maybe somebody does.
Once you get west of 59th Avenue, they have not cleared the entire right hand lane. There is snow piled up on a quarter of it. If it’s all right for one block, why not do it on the next block?
Why are they taking away all of the snow cleared off the bus routes? The expense for all of the third party trucks must be staggering. Just push it to the side and move on.
If it is going to cause a traffic flow issue (like on a narrow road), it would make sense to take it away. On Daines Avenue and Dunlop Street, for example, it makes no sense to take it away. Put it in the middle of the road and call it good, those roads are wide enough for it.
The bobcats that clear out the bus stops: why do they have a support truck plus a driver sitting there watching the bobcat work?
There is no trailer to haul the bobcats around. People who own bobcats put them on trailers to get them where they need to go, then they take them off the trailer, do their work, and put them back on. One person, one pickup and one trailer.
The city apparently drives the bobcats to where they need to go with a little dump truck following it. How many miles to the gallon does a bobcat get? How hard is it on the equipment?
I’d be willing to bet that your average small bobcat business wouldn’t even consider driving their bobcat two miles. And is it even legal?
Why did I see a city bobcat driving down 67th Street alone if they always need a truck with them?
Rather than doing another survey on the feasibility of whatever new project they’d like to do, I would like to see the city hire someone from industry whose job would be to reduce wasted tax dollars.
Pay a modest salary and a bonus of say a penny or a dime for every dollar proved saved with no net reduction in service. Negotiate something fair. The right person would easily be the highest paid public employee in the city.
That would be couple hundred grand I’d love to see the city spend. Who knows, maybe we could even end up with a tax reduction in 2012.
Dan Edey
Red Deer