Editor:
Re: Council’s credit card mentality.
“If you don’t keep Government’s feet to the fire you will get bad Government” – Jesse Ventura, past governor of Minnesota.
From memory, the town is $30+ million dollars in debt and that debt is supposed to rise to “only” some $38 million within a few years. I mean, does council know the difference between debt and assets? It is my understanding that debt is to be paid down and only assets to be increased.
Three borrowing bylaws have just passed first reading unanimously and without any discussion:
1. Proposed Borrowing Bylaw 2014-01 – Traffic Signals at Main Street and Seventh Avenue, $275,000 plus cost overrun, plus interest, plus maintenance, i.e. closer to $350,000.
2. Proposed Borrowing Bylaw 2014-02 – Pump House 1 – New Raw Water Well, $505,000.
3. Proposed Borrowing Bylaw 2014-03 – Art Centre – Interior Renovation, $775,000 plus cost overrun and interest. Would this make it closer to one million dollars?
The raw water well may be necessary. The reason the Town has to borrow money is the poor financial management of previous councils who have blown funds into the wind badly needed now.
Comments regarding the arts centre I leave to more informed individuals, which I understand are numerous.
Traffic lights at Main Street and Seventh Avenue: Firstly, it is considered low priority. So why borrow in the neighbourhood of one-third of a million dollars for something of low priority, considering the financial state the town is in?
Secondly, and much worse, may this not be building traffic lights “into the sand?” I have not seen a single analysis which would support that traffic lights will improve traffic flow, just speculation.
May it be that the traffic lights at Marra’s corner creates this problem in the first place, “damming” traffic and then releasing it as a swell onto Main Street/Seventh Avenue? May it be that the proposed traffic lights will only transfer the problem to Eighth Avenue and Main? Would we be faced with more traffic lights at that intersection costing another several hundred of thousands of dollars? The overall result? Disabling traffic flow altogether. All of this would make the Town’s “no idling” policy an absolute joke.
How about removing all four-way stops along Main Street along with the traffic lights in place, impose a speed limit of 30 km/h (you will seldom be able to exceed that anyway) and have yield signs on the avenues connecting to Main? There are other next to no cost measures which cannot be covered in a letter to the editor to alleviate the problem.
In my humble opinion, we do not need new traffic lights. What we need is a new engineering department.
I understand there are rumours in the air about starting a petition to stop some of this nonsense. The citizens of this town have to send a clear message to council to abandon its credit card mentality - “if you don’t have the money, charge it.”
It is my sincere hope that there is enough yeast in the flatbread dough of the citizenry to rise to the challenge of keeping our representatives’ feet to the fire by way of a plebiscite.
I would love to be part of that yeast.
Dieter Remppel,
Canmore
