Winter Walking and Cycling

[danbrotherston]

Surfacing this option is a strange distraction device. The context of the debate for the public, in the news media etc [1], has always been in terms of new money. (eg Kitchener residents don’t want to pay for snow shovelling).

Why are the only options for spending city money snow shovelling and homelessness? You're presenting a false dichotomy using two social safety systems in a year where one of the loudest protests is for defunding police specifically to go towards helping all kinds of people before the police are required, including and especially homeless folks. There are more than two dials in any budget.

There are 3 dials.

1.  Cut planned spending (Affordable housing, Cycling MP, Planned Rec amenities in the south end etc.)

2.  Cut existing spending (which typically regresses to "cut the things that "I" don't use".)

3.  Raise taxes

To be clear, I would raise taxes on the wealthy, but that is not within municipal power.  We must tax rich and poor alike, considering only their property value.

Actually property taxes are explicitly wealth tax...by raising property tax, you explicitly tax the wealth people have. Now I'm sure you are speaking colloquially, plenty of people who live paycheque to paycheque have a high net worth because they bought a home (and vehicles) beyond their means.

I assume you meant to make this distinction?

1. New spending, i.e., the money we will waste on pro-active bylaw enforcement, that is not currently in the budget and

2. Planned spending, things we have already figured out how to pay for in previous years.

I would very much like to see 2 evaluated. We are doing things like widening roads and spending on police (regional I realize) that are a very poor use of money, but are never questioned...

I would love to hear my question answered though, why are we introducing new spending which all evidence we have says it doesn't acheive anything of value.