Well, the city has rolled out our glorious mayor’s foolish idea of changing out bi-monthly utility bills to monthly. Or was it foolish or a calculated tactic to suck more money out of the citizens of the city by increasing every line item within the utility bill? I believe this was forthrightly calculated as everyone would see reduced bills and not pick up on the increases of each line item. Some of the line items were increased dramatically, and I’m not talking about consumption use but flat rate prices.
I knew there was a degree of undermining going on purely how narrow minded the mayor was by pushing forward with her agenda. I have asked the council as to why paper recycle gets picked up every week yet brown box still remains every two weeks year around. For those who have small children in diapers the garbage tends to get a little rancid over two weeks. I asked why brown could not be put on the same schedule as the green box. But no one has had the desire or will to try and justify providing a suitable response other than to ignore a very simple question put forth. Yet the city has the audacity to restrict further what goes into the blue bag recycle and increases the cost of the pick-up. This simply does not make any sense, or help the city in their claim how good they are at reducing landfill volume. On the contrary the city's recent initiative has proven that more volume is hitting the landfill.
I believe this city has regressed in its initiative to be a leader in waste disposal, but certainly progressed in taxing through multiple angles the citizens of this city. This council and city manager should be ashamed of themselves. For the record my basic flat rate charge increase for a month was $11.13. Don’t we pay enough taxes here in the city? Why are the supplemental capital contributions?
Unfortunately, the city has had the opportunity to cover the truth through the Gazette article recently published. As there is no rational reason for any increase of utilities merely by going to monthly versus bi-monthly. The twist put in the article to try and justify a temporary increase for the duration until the 2020 fees kick in is unconstitutional to say the least. By allowing the city employee and councillor to put their swing on the story, the damage has been done.
Gordon Cochrane, St. Albert
