[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by curves2000

I think we may be in need of significant change across the board with council and I think a lot of posters are really discounting some of the needed change. Calgary is in very very rough shape and we really need to get our hands around certain things or we are headed for even bigger trouble. We can sit here and blame NDP, PC, UCP, Harper, Trudeau, Farkas, Ferrell or whomever. We need to have a collective re-think because as a city of our size in Canada, we won't be able to last a whole lot longer with the way things. Can Calgary sustain another 10-15 years with the way things are going?

The sad thing is that there is enough support and common sense approaches that the overwhelming majority of people will accept.

Calgary's debt problem: Simply put into a household finance terms, we got a big credit card balance, not quite near the limit but we have several big purchases that are going to push us VERY close to the limit. We need to decide quickly if we can ALWAYS afford a larger TV and dessert when going out for dinner.

Property Taxes: Yes they are a bad way of collecting revenue for cities, yes a huge portion does go to the province. How much property tax should we all pay? What's the fair amount? How far can they continue to go?

We hear stories all the time of these small businesses paying MASSIVE Sums of taxes. A small book store paying $20k in taxes, a friend of mine's got a small building on 17th. Tenants are a small bar, a quick service restaurant, a hair salon and a vacant space. Little parking. Nearly $200k a year in taxes .

We can't have a combination in Calgary of sky high property taxes, business taxes, for lease signs littered all over the place, sky high parking rates, a winter city, bike lanes taking traditional parking , a lack of bike lanes for people who enjoy it etc.

We always hear about efficiencies at city hall, about how low our property taxes are in Calgary, about how this magazine and that publication ranked us top 5 or 10 globally in terms of cities to live in. Is anybody getting the impression that the world is clamoring to come here?

Sometimes the harsh truth is that we aren't the cats *** Business of all kinds are rushing to come here. We haven't had the energy boom we have been promised, we haven't had the flood of clean energy and technology everybody is talking about. Businesses and people aren't moving here in mass amounts to take advantage of these low property taxes or this world class city efficiency.

A lot of political players are all making bank and have their retirements secured meanwhile enough people are dealing with the day to day destruction of their city slowly. We aren't in the ICU yet but we can't pretend things are all rosy for the future of the city unless we have some changes that start to have meaningful results across a whole host of issues.

So this would be solved by City Hall being staffed with Manning Centre cronies, how?