Winter Walking and Cycling

[the_councillor]

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.

1. The money spent on proactive snow-clearing is inconsequential compared to full clearing.  i.e less than $1 per avg household annually.

2. This is a popular sentiment among the anti-car folks, but to my knowledge, we have only *reduced* the number of car-lanes since my election in 2010.  Certainly true in my ward... where there have been zero additional car-lanes added in my 10 years, and a reduction at least on Lorraine Ave from 4 to 2 to accommodate cycling infrastructure.

*Police services are beyond my jurisdiction as a lower-tier councillor.