I would like to respond to Joe McLaughlin’s column about why Red Deer is the fourth most dangerous city in Canada.
He suggests the problem has to do with the RCMP and the oil workers.
I think the problem has more to do with the mayor and City Hall. When the mayor said he was going to stamp out homelessness in Red Deer, he put out the welcome mat for all the undesirables.
I am not talking about the working poor and the handicapped.
I am talking about the black hoodie types with a cellphone glued to their ears that have infested the downtown core. I doubt they are doing job interviews on their phones.
These able bodied mutts will be at the welfare trough their whole life and supplement their incomes with the gangs.
There were lots of oil workers in Red Deer when Gail Surkan was mayor and you could walk downtown at night.
It’s time City Hall gets dreams of trains, museums, art galleries and canals out of its head. Very few people want them and the taxpayers can’t afford them.
We will need that money to hire more RCMP to fix the downtown problem and it is only going to get worse now that Hobbema has voted to take out the trash.
Maybe when Red Deer does the same I and many others will start doing business downtown again.
PS: We already have a museum that people actually visit, it’s called Sunnybrook Farm.
R.L. Larsen,
Red Deer