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Ward 12 News
Tax Increase 4.5% for 2008
City Council has set the tax increase for 2008 at 4.5%. The
Government of Alberta has set their increase at about 6.5%.
I am relieved that council did not drastically increase your
tax at the last minute as done in the past few years. There
was an attempt to increase the take but it did not succeed.
Since 4.5% is at least close to the rate of inflation, this
year's increase was more reasonable than most.
Zero Based Budgeting
Zero based budgeting is a very normal process used by many
businesses to keep their costs under control.ZBB assumes
that all spending needs to be justified. Just because we
spend an amount last year is not an excuse to spend it again
this year unless a reason is given. Sadly, this has not been
done at the City for a number of years. I shall introduce a
motion to council on May 12, 2008 to do a ZBB process before
setting the Calgary Budget for the next three years. If $7
billion dollars in spending is not a good reason for a ZBB
process, I wonder how much spending would be. It will be
telling to see if council agrees to go with Zero Based
Budgeting.
Lack of
Bus Service
I have heard of several complaints about the lack of bus
service in Auburn Bay. Serviced was promised before now. It
has been postponed until sometime in September 2008. You are
right to be unhappy. We have too few drivers and the
decision was made to delay new services rather than have
unreliable service on established routes. I am not asking
you to be happy, only to have the information why. I shall
continue to work with our transit people to try to get this
vital service started as soon as we get people trained.
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