Readers offer their opinion on Saskatoon city hall’s response to snowstorms and proposals for tax relief by Saskatchewan’s two main political parties.
Regarding snow removal, the greatest damage that the city’s dilatory ineptitude has done is not the resultant vehicle damage, inconvenience and safety concerns, it’s the normalization of incompetence.
None of us are surprised at the aftermath of a large snowfall; we are frustrated and enraged, but we are not surprised. It has become simply the way things are.
The false equivalency that is offered to us concerning adequate service and hugely increased taxes is glib, but dishonest. The city has adequate funding for services, but it has inadequate rigour in spending priorities. For example, we spent $300,000 on a naming exercise for a rapid transit system! (Who wouldn’t like to know the backroom dealings that prefaced that boondoggle?)
Further, we are told that to attract and retain “the very best people” in management, taxpayers must provide extremely generous salaries. Presumably, the “very best people” would produce the “very best” results. They haven’t.
This is a discontinuity — and it is to the advantage of the multiple sinecurists in city hall, and to the disadvantage of those who fund those sinecures.
Impassable streets, hideous icy ruts and potholes as a way of life is not normal practice elsewhere It is normal practice in Saskatoon because city council has chosen to be complicit in the normalization process.
If the newly elected governance of this city wishes to make beneficial changes, they must radically address managerial incompetence, and make use of the new brooms they have been issued.
Parties out of touch on true needs
The Saskatchewan parties seem to be out of touch. The NDP proposes a gas tax cut, in order to take advantage of that you have to be able to afford a car! The working poor and those most in need would benefit more from subsidized bus services.
The personal tax relief to save a family of four $3,400 over the next four years — please Scott Moe, that’s a grand total of $2.33 a day; won’t buy much will it? Lastly a home-renovation tax credit! This smacks of the ludicrous Grant Devine policy that drove the government deeply into debt.
Increasing benefits for those with children in sports and arts — good grief. You have to have money to enrol your children in these luxuries; more pandering to the rural vote. What’s the plan for those who don’t have a home and a car and are living on the street? That’s where the money needs to go!
Donna Flahr, Saskatoon
Snow plow policy leaves work behind
I am a handicapped senior. Yesterday a snow plow came down our street. Today I went out and found not one but two separate ridges left across our driveway.
The City of Saskatoon, as usual, was no help as apparently their policy is if the ridge is less then 30 centimetres, they do not care. So I ask why are we paying taxes. Why should I risk falling and hurting myself to attempt to do their job?
Dayton Marble, Saskatoon
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