Over-Compensation?

    The City of Calgary alderman and mayor are the among the highest paid councils in Canada.  Now don’t get me wrong, I love my city and do believe that it is one of the greatest places to live in the country.  My problem with the salaries of our elected officials is that they have decided that they will get automatic pay increases each year, regardless of our economic situation.  They also receive numerous perks and privileges that further increase their take home pay, such as a vehicle allowance, a generous pension plan, benefits and the ability to expense a variety of items, including top notch seats to a Flames game and even iPads.  I do believe that our council does have an important job to do.  But I also believe that my job is important, and that my time is valuable.  If me and my colleagues got together, and decided that we deserved a 5% raise, my boss would probably laugh, and say, well you know where the door is if you are not happy.  When I do have to travel for work, I am compensated on a per kilometer basis, but if I were to say, hey, you should be paying my monthly lease as well, I would probably get laughed at.  During council meetings, meals are provided.  When I go to work for 8.5 hours a day, I know that come lunch time, I will be hungry.  Does anyone provide me with lunch?  Not usually. I just cannot understand why we, as taxpayers, need to pay for our council to eat a well prepared meal at every meeting.  One councilor last term expensed not one, but two brand new iPads.  This just seems ridiculous to me.  In supposed tough economic times, we are allowing them to purchase toys… Interesting.  There are numerous other examples that I could ramble on about, but in the end, it really doesn't matter.  Council will continue to do whatever they want, and only have to answer to the constituents every four years.

Where is the Light Travelling?

     “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is a quote that has been used countless times.  I am somewhat narrow-minded in my opinion of beautiful artwork.  What some people would call art, I usually miss the meaning and would call junk.  The piece of artwork installed along 96^th Ave a couple of months ago would be in the junk category.  The huge blue ring with two little sprouts on top named “Travelling Light” cost a head scratching half a million dollars.  The City of Calgary has a policy mandating  1% of capital project budgets be allocated to art.  I just can’t understand how no one at city hall looked twice at this piece and said “hey, maybe there is something more worthwhile we can spend that money on”.  How is it that our elected officials can continue to spend taxpayer money on anything and everything that they want.  Taxes seem to increase year over year, with no end in sight.  Now I know that $500,000 for this metal loop is not what is going to make or break our City’s budget, but I think that it is just a prime example of the wasteful spending going on at City Hall.  The citizens of Calgary usually have no say about these art projects, and are only told the costs after they are installed.  I would argue that if there had of been a survey before “Travelling Light” was selected, that there would be no way that it would have ever been considered. But hey, who am I to judge right?   

The $52 Million Dollar Question

       Politics affects every citizen in this city, whether or not they care.  The mayor and aldermen keep the city functioning and running as they see fit.  This last election had just over 200,000 people turn out to vote.  In a city of over one million people, I feel this number is painfully low, and just goes to show how many people really do not care about who is running our city.  If you look around local news sites, you can see numerous people who have made it their life’s goal just to criticize and bash our city and council.  And I can honestly say, that I feel the same way about most of the issues!  The major issue that has a lot of people fuming, is the $52 million in Provincial taxes that were not taken by the province,  that the City of Calgary has claimed as their own.  To me, I just have a hard time understanding why the Alberta government would claim that they have to reduce funding to education, and then turn around and say there is all this money that they don’t need.  I have felt from the beginning that the City should put that money towards the post-secondary institutions that were short-changed by Ms. Redford.