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How many of you expect to get a 4.9-per-cent wage increase each of the next three years? How about the next two years? The next year, even? How about maybe just hold on to your job?

Alberta is now in a recession, with rising unemployment. Yet in the face of economic downturn, Edmonton city hall is carrying on as if this city were booming. City administration has put forward a budget that calls for a 4.9-per-cent property tax increase in each of the next three years.

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If that increase isn’t chopped significantly, this city council will be hit by the biggest wave of tax rage this province has seen since the 1990s.

Will Mayor Don Iveson and city council take appropriate action to avoid that backlash by controlling and cutting spending at City Hall? I wonder if they have either the appetite or the stomach for it. The majority on council sings from a marvellous, old hymn book with a heavy focus on social equity, equality and helping out the disadvantaged. There’s a great deal to be said for such progressive instincts, but they must be balanced by fairness toward homeowners and wage earners. They’re not to be treated like council’s own personal piggy bank for council’s own causes, no matter how fine those causes.