Dear Council; Reinstate the Arterial Road connection from 22 St. & 40 Ave. to Molly Banister

Garfield Marks

Published

2 years ago

4 minute read

Dear City Council;

Wherever you look in politics you see politicians enriching the few at cost to the masses.

Ontario Premier Ford said that the Greenbelt was safe, the people spoke loud and clear. Then he opened-up the Greenbelt for development.

Premier Smith is going ahead with a Alberta Provincial Police Force even though the people have spoken against it. Coal mining, health care privatization, and a school curriculum are being pushed on us even though the public spoke out against it. They removed the right for school boards to bring in mask mandates and to go to on-line learning during epidemics, outbreaks and emergencies though the public opposed these measures.

In Red Deer the people spoke, in polls and in a 9 hour public meeting and fearful home owners thought they had made their voices heard. But they weren’t heard, were they?

You never consulted with or invited the East Hill residents to speak before you eroded the east-west transportation link at 22 St., when you down graded the connector road from an arterial road to a collector road.

You could have said no to this latest request, respecting the people you serve who poured their hearts out during the pandemic. Now you unanimously supported the first reading, subjecting more than a thousand plus people to uncertainty.

The thing is, regardless of rationale, you have put yourself in the same class of mistrust as the other politicians, I mentioned earlier. You also instilled fear into the people that even if you vote to keep the bridge and vote to upgrade the road back to an arterial road, you ensured they knew, that this would only be a 6 month reprieve, the developer can reapply every 6 months.

Most people do not want to go to a public meeting in January, and then every 6 months to protect their quality of life so a developer can make a few extra bucks over the next 3 years.

For you it is politics but for us it is our lives, our home our future. I think you should have nipped this now, but you did not.

I think it would be prudent for city council after this next public hearing, reinstate the arterial road and the bridge over the creek. The city should disclose the cost of doing so compared to the cost of widening 32 Street to 6 lanes and the cost of the traffic circle at 19 Street and 40 Avenue and the cost of widening 19 street to 6 lanes.

When 32 Street is extended to 20 Ave and then 10 Avenue the traffic increase will be a given.

When the approximate 1000 homes are built in the next few years in the new subdivision west of 40 Avenue and north of 22 Street, the traffic will only have the exit onto 40 Avenue if the bridge is not built.

The developer will probably want to tie into Sunnybrook at the corner Springfield Avenue and Selkirk Boulevard so the traffic there will be increased through a school zone.

So reinstate the arterial road and bridge and tie onto Molly Banister for greater east-west transportation.

Just saying.

Garfield Marks

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The city is growing? The population isn’t, so is it growing?

Garfield Marks / 2 years ago

Dear Council; Reinstate the Arterial Road connection from 22 St. & 40 Ave. to Molly Banister

Opinion / 2 years ago

Molly Banister extension is before council again on Monday for the umpteenth time. Exhausting.

Alberta

Alberta government can deliver tax cut by ending corporate welfare

Published on January 10, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Tegan Hill

In a recent CBC interview, Premier Danielle Smith said she would “love to be able to accelerate our tax cut,” referring to her campaign promise to create a new 8 per cent tax bracket for personal income below $60,000, before adding that her government might not be able to maintain a balanced budget and introduce the cut. Fortunately, there’s a way Smith could achieve both: eliminate corporate welfare.

First, some background on Alberta’s recent tax changes.

In 2015, the provincial NDP government replaced Alberta’s single personal income tax rate of 10 per cent with a five-bracket system including a bottom rate of 10 per cent and a top rate of 15 per cent. Due to this change (and tax changes at the federal level, which increased the top federal income tax rate from 29 per cent to 33 per cent), Albertans faced significantly higher personal income tax rates.

Smith’s proposed tax cut would reduce Alberta’s bottom rate from 10 per cent to 8 per cent and is expected to save Albertans earning $60,000 or more $760 annually. While this change would fail to restore Alberta’s previous tax advantage, it would be a step in the right direction.

But due to fear of incurring a budget deficit, Smith has delayed fully implementing the $1.4 billion tax cut until 2027, contingent on the government being able to maintain a balanced budget.

Which takes us back to corporate welfare.

In 2019, after adjusting for inflation, the Alberta government spent $2.4 billion on subsidies to select businesses and industries. (In 2021, the latest year of available data, it spent $3.3 billion, however the pandemic may have contributed to this number.) And that’s not counting other forms of government handouts such as loan guarantees, direct investment and regulatory privileges for particular firms or industries. Put simply, eliminating corporate welfare would be more than enough to offset Smith’s proposed tax cut, which she promised Albertans in 2023.

Moreover, a significant body of research shows that corporate welfare fails to generate widespread economic benefits. Think of it this way; if businesses that receive subsidies were viable without subsidies, they wouldn’t need government handouts. Moreover, the government must impose higher tax rates on everyone else to pay for these subsidies. Higher taxes discourage productive activity, including business investment, which fuels economic growth. And the higher the rates, the more economic activity they discourage. Put simply, subsidies depress economic activity in some parts of an economy to encourage it in others.

For the same reason, corporate welfare also typically fails to generate new jobs on net. Indeed, while subsidies may create jobs in one specific industry, they pull those jobs away from other sectors that are likely more productive because they don’t need the subsidy.

The Smith government is hesitant to introduce Alberta’s tax cut if it can’t maintain a balanced budget, but if the government eliminates corporate welfare, it can avoid red ink while also fulfilling a promise it made to Alberta workers.