Reader Response Forum
26/02/2010 06:20
Do We Know The Real Facts On Habitat Project?
The numbers of issues government can resolve are few; as a result politicians invent or exaggerate issues to achieve personal or political objectives. The result is always the same needless spending, ego driven mega projects and numerous additional problems created for the electorate. St. Albert used to be governed by good public policy with small incremental solutions to improve the community. Increasingly we are being driven towards large high risk mega projects that fail to address the concerns of residents.
We were all hoodwinked by the rosy profit projections concerning Servus Place and many people voted accordingly. We are now all stuck with a costly white elephant that cost $50 million to construct and suffers perpetual operating losses, no matter how badly city accountants try to blur the red ink into various other departments. Ray Gibbons Drive, more aptly described “The road to nowhere”, was plagued with poor initial estimates and millions in cost overruns. Thank goodness the $95 million in offsite levy fees that was to be offloaded onto taxpayers was discovered by the St. Albert Taxpayers Association! If not for them, we would be on the hook for another costly misadventure. All of these items could have been easily averted with some due diligence and careful analysis by city council.
Now we are being told that St. Albert ranks 3rd in Alberta as being a community most in need of affordable housing. These numbers suggest that 15% of St. Albert’s population, or roughly 8000 people, are in need of affordable housing. These figures were calculated by compiling the income tax returns for residents of St. Albert and using these returns to see if the individual residents would be able to afford an “average mortgage payment” and that this “mortgage payment” would not exceed 32% of their income. So is the affordable housing problem really this large?
If St. Albert is a city that is unaffordable for 8,000 residents to live in, then we are left with the paradoxical question: How are they affording to live here now? Obviously they have found some housing solution that is logically affordable. Further investigation suggests that a large portion of the 15% figure is seniors residing in their own home that has a clear title, and that these seniors live with a reduced pension income. Other populations represented in this 15% figure are people aged 18 – 29 living in their parent’s home, and who are saving for a down payment or who are going to post secondary schools. The 15% figure would also include children under 18 who filed a tax return. All three of these groups would thus not be burdened with a mortgage payment reducing their low income.
In reality, the need for affordable housing is much less than 15% of St. Albert’s population. Recently the Chamber of Commerce came out in support of affordable housing as they saw this as a way of attracting low income workers to St. Albert; providing accommodations for current residents in need was not their primary motivation. In St. Albert, there are currently 33 homes listed for sale whose asking prices are under $250,000. These prices are less than the proposed price for the Habitat for Humanity (H4H) project proposed for Akinsdale. Why have the 8,000 local residents supposedly requiring affordable housing not purchased these listings?
When creating solutions to solve a problem that is exaggerated, how many people do we hurt in the process? The H4H/Apollo Developments proposed project would result in reduced home equity for current residents in Akinsdale. The city’s assessed property taxes create situations whereby seniors have to move away due to unaffordable taxes and young families choose to live elsewhere when they realize that they can purchase a larger home outside of St. Albert as our hefty property taxes reduce the size of mortgage they can service. The end result is that we will not create a more affordable community but a community comprised of the very wealthy and the very poor.
In the end analysis, City Hall is more interested in carving out additional tax revenue rather than to seriously quantify and address the issue of affordable housing. The property at 70 Arlington Drive in Akinsdale was not chosen because of its suitability or due to any pressing need, it was chosen as it is the quickest way for the city to increase tax revenue to gloss over their wasteful spending. If this was not the case, we would be looking at allocating any of the 1300+ hectares of annexed land to affordable housing, creating a land bank or partnering with the Edmonton region to look for solutions.
City Hall should address itself to resolving the real issues we face here in St. Albert. They would be able to find out what these issues were if they listened to their constituents.
Cam MacKay
St. Albert
SINC SAYS:
Cam, you raise some interesting questions that every taxpayer should ponder. All too often we simply take politician’s word for figures and it looks to me like that 15 percent number is far from correct.
I have long maintained that the last three councils, have been tightly controlled by administration. I often refer to the current administration as “Robbing Hood And His Merry Band Of Men” for picking the pockets of the poor to enhance the lifestyle of the rich in this city, $ervu$ Place being but one glaring example. Any council who blindly plunges ahead with the support of a tiny percentage in a plebiscite does no service to its taxpayers. The opposition was huge then as it remains to this day. I voted against it, have never set foot in it, and never will.
Did you get your copy of the new $ervu$ Place glossy brochure that had to cost thousands of our tax dollars in the Gazette on Wednesday? I see that only as more wasted tax dollars, appealing to nearly half the residents of this city who do not have the means, nor desire to afford to use that White Elephant in the first place.
It’s time to clean house at city hall and I don’t mean this council alone. Administration needs to be purged starting right at the top and carry on on down the line to mid level management. It is the only way we will ever regain control of spending in this city. The Gucci and Lexus taste of this administration must be stopped before they build themselves a new Taj Mahal (city hall) to go along with their lavish governance of this city.
Council Needs To End Administrative Control
Many years ago during a future leaders training session, an instructor told a story. It went something like this:
12 adults attended a training session, where 11 class members have been told to give the wrong answer to a certain question when it is posed to the group.
The 12th member gives the correct answer, but the other 11 give the incorrect answer they were told to give.
After some discussion the member who gave the correct answer, against his better judgement, gives in to the majority, even though he is 100 percent sure his answer was right and the rest were wrong.
I think this is what happens in our council, even if we had a whole new council elected, administration convinces them into thinking their way.
I once told a candidate running for election about a problem that no one seemed to be able to solve. That candidate solved the problem for me before they were elected.
But now that they have been elected, if I asked for help solving a problem from the same now councillor, I would be told the problem doesn’t exist in St. Albert.
So I wish this gun-ho young man James Van Damme all the best BUT . . .
Geordie
St. Albert
SINC SAYS:
Isn’t it odd that so many local residents think the problems we face with over taxation is directly the result of an out of control administration?
The most disturbing part of it all is that not one member of the past three councils has had the cajones to do the right thing and rid ourselves of the lot of them.
Perhaps that will change with the election of a new council this fall? The buck has to stop squarely in their court and we need a council willing to do it.
READER RESPONSE:
Another Reader Weighs In On Spending
Hi Don,
I've kept these comments to council around for almost 30 years, I was so impressed by this contribution to our GMP update. Have you ever heard of Dennis Mooney? And he never even saw Servus Place or Ray Gibbon Drive or $29 Million Riel sports facilities ... Wonder if he is still living in St. Albert?
This man lived and worked all over the world and picked St. Albert to live in because of ads he saw and because of his interest in Fiscal Responsibility. Part of his submission (emphasis mine):
"...but Canada, my home and where I chose to come back to for good reasons, has not come face to face with the realities of the next century. We are still building monuments to ourselves, and what I mean is that elected officials seem to want to point to some expensive structure and say "my blood and sweat is responsible for bringing this marvel of engineering to you and future generations." I believe that St. Albert Place and the new Protestant School Board building are evidence of monument building. Instead what these elected officials are leaving us is a legacy of debt and high taxes.
I am asking this board (Allred, M. Plain etc.) to have the integrity and foresight to say to yourselves and to your neighbours that you have put into place a sound MDP for the 90's that will take St. Albert's residents proudly and financially secure into the next century. Please no more monuments, just sound spending.
If we can' t afford to grow, who says we have to. Simply saying that we have to grow without asking ourselves why is monument building in itself."
Elke Blodgett
St. Albert
SINC SAYS:
Well Elke, that proves two things to me. First, they didn’t listen then and second they don’t listen now. Is not a single one of them any smarter today than they were 30 years back?
