A recent headline in the Advocate “What a sign says about a community” presented comments from our mayor Tara Veer.
The column goes on to attempt to, as the saying goes, put lipstick on a pig. The pig in this instance is the spending of over one million tax dollars, on a welcome to Red Deer sign on Highway 2.
More often these days I find myself wondering what has happened to “common sense.” So I looked it up in the dictionary and found the following: “common sense, having or showing good sense in everyday affairs; practical intelligence, sensible.”
Well, in this instance our elected officials, decided to take the tax revenue from city families, and erect a sign because the government was already working on the highway interchange.
Mayor Veer seems to believe the work done by the highways department was paid from the money tree called the NDP instead it comes from borrowed money that we taxpayers will, eventually have to pay back with interest.
Total budgeted cost of the signs (east and west side entrance into the city) was $1.06 million, which includes landscaping and other associated costs.
How in the world can a pair of signs cost this kind of money? Does this mean we will have to cough up more money for signs for the three other entrances to Red Deer in the future?
My question to the council is what happened to common sense?
George Croome,
Red Deer