CALGARY – After his 11-kilometre morning commute to City Hall took an hour longer than normal today, Mayor Dave Bronconnier said Calgary needs a bigger fleet to handle wintry roads.
The mayor said he’ll push for a “few extra million dollars” for snow removal when council adjusts the 2010 budget next month. But in a year where council already has to cut deeply to balance its finances, he wouldn’t say whether that money should come from additional service cuts elsewhere, or additioanl property taxes.
Despite perennial surveys saying Calgarians want better snow-removal service but don’t want to pay more for it, Bronconnier said the “cost is well worth the additional benefit.
“Even if it’s (to save) 10, 15, 20 minutes of your commute time, I look at that at money well invested,” he told reporters after giving the new U.S. Ambassador to Canada a white-hat welcome.
Commuting delays mean losses for business, and parents often have to pay penalties for arriving late at daycares, the mayor said.
He credited the city’s more than 70 salting and grading trucks for hitting the road by 4 a.m. “The repoonse is adequate for the material and personnel we have,” he said.
Next month, aldermen will debate a 2010 budget that features a property-tax increase of 6.1 per cent, although officials are trying to lower that to 5.3 per cent, the level of last year’s hike.
Neither figure includes money for better winter-road clearing.
Bronconnier again floated the idea of sub-contracting private trucks, a potentially costly initiative in a city that doesn’t see as much snow as others in Canada.
Right now, some drivers can barely even get out of their own communities, he said. It took the mayor about 40 minutes just to clear out of his neighbourhood.
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Mayor+more+funds+snow+removal/2097346/story.html
Property Tax Assessments to be Mailed Soon
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