Article content continued

Instead, as you open your property tax assessment mailed out this week, ask if you are getting good value. In just seven years, council has pushed through compounded residential tax rate increases of 55 per cent, and business tax rate increases of an astounding 180 per cent.

More than 45 per cent of the city’s tax-supported spending now goes to salaries, wages, overtime and benefits. There’s a lot of hustle and bustle at city hall, but our mayor and council regularly confuse activity with achievement. They spend their time on the wrong things, and it’s no surprise when they spend our money badly.

Council’s job is to review and scrutinize the ever-growing city budget to ensure that we are receiving the best quality services at the lowest possible cost. While Calgarians grapple with our new reality and tighten our belts, we are seeing the opposite from our council.

Last November, council abandoned the usual weeklong, line-by-line review of the budget and actually refused to take public submissions. Instead, they approved the bureaucrats’ $3.7-billion plan in just minutes.

They continue to waste up to half of their meeting time on secondary suite hearings, where they pit neighbours against one another, and parade out families to share intimate personal and financial details in order to beg for the use of their own property. We’d be on a better track if council showed more interrogative enthusiasm to city officials who are paid to be there, and less to families who just want to make ends meet.