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Snow removal a matter of safety

In response to the article Services better in Red Deer than in Fort McMurray, I believe that this letter is a response to the City should be ashamed of its removal letter and I feel that this writer is misunderstanding what the point that was being made.

In response to the article Services better in Red Deer than in Fort McMurray, I believe that this letter is a response to the City should be ashamed of its removal letter and I feel that this writer is misunderstanding what the point that was being made.

Louis Talbot was not saying that the city is not worse than other cities nor that the City of Red Deer does not take care of the city. I feel the point is that our taxes are being raised, our snow removal budget is over spent, meaningless spending on tearing down old buildings for an empty lot, a new parkade downtown for what, and an elderly man on his way to get groceries falls and gets hurt due to too much snow and ice on public walkways and streets, I believe there is a problem with this picture.

The city is responsible for public walkways and streets and should keep them clear and safe for commuting from point A to point B.

The city should be held accountable for that elderly man’s ambulance and medical bills because they did not keep the sidewalks clear and safe and obviously the button to change the light was not kept accessible as well.

What about our emergency services, how are they expected to respond to calls in a timely manner when the city streets are sheets of ice covered in a foot or more of snow? Who will get blamed if an ambulance can not get to a car crash in time to save someone’s life or a RCMP can not get to a domestic in time and someone is killed or hurt badly. They have enough other obstacles on their way to a call let alone unsafe roads that slow them down and put them and the public at risk when attending those calls.

This is not a matter of Red Deer being an ugly city or not having good services, this is a matter of safety and priorities of budgeting money. Albertans take pride in their cars and that they last longer than eastern cars because we don’t use near as much salt on our roads and our vehicles don’t rust. At least in Eastern Canada where they use salt on roads and sidewalks you will find commuting a lot easier and safer and their response to these conditions are a lot faster than here.

Vehicles are just a depreciating consumable, a life is not. What is more important?

I like Red Deer, it has a lot to offer, but I feel we have a poorly run city by officials with their own agenda.

In the Jan. 5 paper, it says “spending slashed” and that our already understaffed RCMP are being cut back and put on a hiring freeze, but we can spend money on looking into replacing them. We all know from past attempts at this that having a local police force will cost a lot more to the city and taxpayers.

The city must make a killing of photo radar, where is that money going.

Taxes are probably going up another 4.06 per cent. Wow, how is this going to be used? As I said, priorities!

Jay White

Red Deer