Quote:
Originally Posted by 19Yzerman19
I don't know that I buy this as a win for Wenzel. I mean, Nenshi essentially made the developers, and sprawl vs. community development, the central issue of this whole election process. He did so pretty emphatically, really; there wasn't a lot of equivocation as to what he's for and who he's against on that point. Yet he was elected with about 75% of the vote. That seems to me to be a mandate in favour of his policy views on this particular issue.
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There's no doubt the Mayor spent some of his political capital in doing so. As did the decision to keep tax room the last three years that led to the rather misleading indictments of wild spending increases of 30+%. The fact is that about half that increase in revenue went to build capital projects (central library, rec centres, library branches, transportation infrastructure and now flood recovery) that simply would not have happened without that tax room - not operating. Spending increases for operating were almost exactly in line with population increases + inflation. We don't have new grants from other levels of government and existing grants got clawed back. The federal government screwed us on the P3 deal. The choice was go back to building nothing like the 90s or take things a bit into our own hands and build. If the Province did not leave that tax room, the tax burden would have been
exactly the same, it's just the City would not have that revenue, the Province would.