As a beleaguered taxpayer of St. Albert, I noted, with interest, the recent comments of city manager Patrick Draper, at a recent public session (page 3 of the Nov. 8 edition of the St. Albert Gazette ‘Public sounds off on city budget’), explaining how the city wants to use new property taxes, collected for the first time in 2015, to pay for 24.5 new ‘full time equivalent’ positions instead of increasing funds from the current tax base. Draper added that this was an attempt to address the ever increasing workloads and overtime within various city departments.
At first glance, this sounds like a good idea; St. Albert has a growing need for more people to provide core services such as police, fire, utilities, etc.
But wait. On page 8 of the Nov. 1 edition of the Gazette, there was an article entitled, ‘Where does your money go? Highlights of the draft 2015 city budget,’ which detailed the job titles of those 24.5 positions. These included a graphic designer, a communications adviser, a human resources co-ordinator, something called an I.T. generalist (not to be confused with an I.T. service technician as that is another of the titles listed), a fund development associate, a social master plan co-ordinator, a parks planning and capital project co-ordinator, a manager of parks operations, a Starbucks’ assistant store supervisor (too much work for just one manager to perform at Servus Credit Union Place, I suppose), and the list goes on and on.
The city estimates it would cost approximately $1.16 million to fill these job positions, of which only a handful sound to have any core value at all.
St. Albert utility rates are proposed to go up 20.1 per cent, and property taxes are proposed to be in excess of three per cent. In my case, this will mean in excess of $500 I will have to pay on top of my current $7,500 property tax and water utility bill.
“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.”
Randy Kish, St. Albert
