Calgary City Budget Review Open to Public

The Calgary budget review is coming up and is open to the public. I hope the active public outcry at the out-of-control spending by Silly Hall will result in a large taxpayer attendance. The open house will be held on Saturday, Nov. 15, 2008 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Plaza level of the Municipal Building 800 Macleod Trail S.E.

The current city council has been arrogantly pushing spending to unreasonable levels.
If rate inflation is only at a maximum of 4% why are the increases over three years amounting to 25%?

Is it time to ask for Cochrane to annex parts of NW Calgary?


Text below is from the link at www.calgary.ca:

The City released its 2009-2011 proposed business plans and budgets on Thursday, 2008 November 6. This marks the second cycle of multi-year planning and budgeting, which builds upon The City's commitment to municipal excellence, accountability, transparency and excellence in financial management.

The proposed business plans and budgets together provide a view of what citizens can expect from City services over the next three years. The proposed capital and operating budgets provide the financial resources required to implement the proposed business plans, which are, in turn, reflective of Council's declared priorities for 2009-2011.

The 2009-2011 proposed plans and budgets are also available for viewing at all branches of the Calgary Public Library and at the City Clerk's office in Historic City Hall, Municipal Building Complex.

City Council and Administration will host a public open house:
Saturday, Nov. 15, 2008
10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Plaza level of the Municipal Building
800 Macleod Trail S.E.

Senior City staff will be on hand to speak with citizens about The City's 2009-2011 proposed business plans and budgets.

City Council meets to discuss the 2009-2011 proposed business plans and budgets beginning Monday, Nov. 17 at 9:30 a.m. in Council Chambers. Public speakers will be heard after an opening presentation. Presenters may address Council for a maximum of five minutes and should bring 35 copies of presentation material. For questions regarding meeting procedures please contact the Legislative Assistant, City Clerk's Office at 403-268-5861.

For those unable to attend the meeting on Nov. 17, communications concerning this matter should be received by the City Clerk before Friday, Nov. 14.
Mail to: City Clerk (#8007),
City of Calgary,
P.O. Box 2100, Postal Station "M",
Calgary, AB T2P 2M5.
Fax: 403-268-2362.
Email: cityclerk@calgary.ca
Deliver to: City Clerk's,
Main Floor, Historic City Hall,
700 MacLeod Trail S.E.

If you have questions regarding meeting procedures please contact the Legislative Assistant, City Clerk's office at 403-268-5861.

City of Calgary Tax Gorging

The City of Calgary has tabled its next budget. It includes a proposed property tax increase of 23.3% over three years - 9.6% next year, 6.8% in 2010, and 6.9% in 2011. This is even more than what was predicted!

Congradulations to the Americans

Yesterday the United States voters elected a black man to be their president. I am encouraged that a new generation has finally found their political voice. After listening to multiple reports, reporters, evaluations, and group discussions on this election, I have come to the following conclusion.

If one more reporter uses the word historic to describe the election results, I will scream.
Additionally, the phrase "I would have never believed that in my lifetime...." seems ingrained in the lexicon of news writers.

I wonder if I should start selling "I Backed Obama" t-shirts......

The Country the World Forgot - Again

This article from Kevin Myers was written Friday, April 26, 2002, but seems still appropriate today.

I heard it for at least the second time on the Charles Adler radio show just today.

It was published in the UK newspaper The Sunday Telegraph
The original online article is here

By Kevin Myers
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 21/04/2002

UNTIL the deaths last week of four Canadian soldiers accidentally killed by a US warplane in Afghanistan, probably almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops were deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will now bury its dead, just as the rest of the world as always will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does.

It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again.

That is the price which Canada pays for sharing the North American Continent with the US, and for being a selfless friend of Britain in two global conflicts. For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two different directions: it seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had an address in the new one, and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the gratitude it deserved.
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Yet its purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom in two world wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy. Almost 10 per cent of Canada's entire population of seven million people served in the armed forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British order of battle.

Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect, its unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular memory as somehow or other the work of the "British". The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the war with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the Atlantic against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the war with the third largest navy and the fourth largest air force in the world.

The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it had the previous time. Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only if it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign which the US had clearly not participated - a touching scrupulousness which, of course, Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a separate Canadian identity.

So it is a general rule that actors and film-makers arriving in Hollywood keep their nationality - unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J Fox, William Shatner, Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg and Dan Aykroyd have in the popular perception become American, and Christopher Plummer British. It is as if in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian ceases to be Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakeably Canadian as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to find any takers.

Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements of its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely unaware of them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves - and are unheard by anyone else - that 1 per cent of the world's population has provided 10 per cent of the world's peace-keeping forces. Canadian soldiers in the past half century have been the greatest peace-keepers on earth - in 39 missions on UN mandates, and six on non-UN peace-keeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.

Yet the only foreign engagement which has entered the popular non-Canadian imagination was the sorry affair in Somalia, in which out-of-control paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then disbanded in disgrace - a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for which, naturally, the Canadians received no international credit.

So who today in the US knows about the stoic and selfless friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan? Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac, Canada repeatedly does honourable things for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains something of a figure of fun. It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be proud, yet such honour comes at a high cost.

This weekend four shrouds, red with blood and maple leaf, head homewards; and four more grieving Canadian families know that cost all too tragically well.

USA 2008 Election Prediction

CNN has a neat flash interactive called the CNN Electoral Map Calculator where you can predict the results of the United States election by choosing electoral college votes for each state. Below is my prediction - not that I know anything about American politics....





UPDATE:
Okay the numbers and states are a little screwed up, but the overal result was never in doubt.

22% tax increase! Contact Calgary city hall (or burn it down!!)

Contact your alderman and the mayor to protest the 22% tax increase and the frivolous spending on exotic pedestrian bridges. Stress the fact that these measures has called into question your political support. For property taxpayers this will mean an extra $400 or more per year.

Inflation in Calgary for families should not be exasperated by a City Council gone mad with spending. Everyone - families, small businesses, and large corporations - is cutting back spending, why should the city be any different? I suspect I will not be the only resident and taxpayer to feel this way.

Bronco and Ward 1 alderman Dale Hodges have lost my vote if this huge increase goes ahead.

Contact the Mayor

Contact your Alderman (or whatever they call themselves this week!)


UPDATE:
1. My letter to the editor to the Calgary Sun was printed.

2. I received an email today (04November2008) from the Constituent Assistant to Alderman Hodges responding to the email that I sent. I am a little flabergasted that Mr. Hodges had more important things to do than vote on spending $25 million on pedestrian bridges. As the email explicitly states that:

This communication is intended ONLY for the use of the person or entity named above and may contain information that is confidential or legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient named above or a person responsible for delivering messages or communications to the intended recipient, YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED that any use, distribution, or copying of this communication or any of the information contained in it is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by telephone and then destroy or delete this communication, or return it to us by mail if requested by us. The City of Calgary thanks you for your attention and co-operation.

I will paraphrase the content.

• Thank you for the comments.
  
• THE ALDERMAN WAS NOT PRESENT IN CHAMBERS AT THE TIME OF THE VOTE ON THE PEDESTRIAN BRIDGES!
  

There better be a damn good reason why Hodges was absent from an important vote, where Ric McIver was looking for support for the quashing of the designer pedestrian bridges. Even a doctor's note should not suffice. Could he not vote in proxy?