 Top News - May 7, 2008 |
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| Protesters gather at city hall |
By Bryan Alary
Staff Writer
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A small group of St. Albert residents, some carrying signs reading "Enough is Enough" and "More Service, less Servus" gathered outside city hall Monday to protest this year’s tax increase.
About a dozen protesters were at St. Albert Place Monday afternoon before council approved the 2008 tax rate. Homeowners will see an average increase of 5.9 per cent in municipal taxes this year.
Many homeowners will see far greater increases due to record increases in property assessment. Seniors’ United Now chair Frances Badrock said the tax increases will hit seniors particularly hard.
"Are the seniors going to be doing without food or without medication? They are going to have to do without something," she said.
Badrock wants council to exempt seniors from paying part of their taxes.
"We have to have rebates. We have to look at what the elderly have got," she said.
Grandin resident Stuart Loomis asked council to cap tax increases so that no homeowner would see their bills climb beyond 14 per cent. He suggested the city could then adjust the mill rate to spread the tax increases to a wider segment of the population.
"The lowest area of tax rate increase is Kingswood and Oakmont, where you have the $600,000 or $800,000 homes," Loomis said. "Mission Park and other older neighbourhoods, have 10-, 12-, 15-plus per cent anticipated tax increases. There’s a gross inequity that has to be realized by council."
Loomis and other protesters also directed their anger toward council decisions to subsidize Servus Credit Union Place by $2.2 million this year.
"Some of us feel the terms of the original plebiscite have been at least morally abrogated, if not legally. We all should have a say in what’s going to be done with Servus Place in the future," he said.
Loomis suggests a second plebiscite should determine if Servus Place is mothballed, run by private operators, or used by other city departments, possibly as home for a branch library.
"There’s probably one or two other possibilities out there that could be considered that would relieve taxpayers of a long-term operating deficit," he said.
Elke Blodgett hopes the small protest will lead to an outcry about taxes in a similar fashion that the death of 500 ducks near Fort McMurray last week led to an uproar about Alberta’s environmental policies.
"In a way the ducks triggered an uproar in the tarsands. We are triggering an uproar in this town," she said. "I see it as a trigger that had to happen sometime." |
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