With a new council that will be in charge of our city through 2017, it's time for a little forward looking for Edmonton in the coming year.

What would I like most from council in the New Year? Less forward looking.

For the past decade, councils have spent too much time worrying about the future and not enough time living in the here and now. The result has been lousy core services, such as road maintenance, debt that has climbed to nearly $3 billion and skyrocketing property taxes.

The irony is, when the Stephen Mandel era was ushered in in 2004, the complaint against council was that it had not put enough thought into future development and needs. The concern was the city had too few rec centres and not enough iconic projects like fancy bridges, bike lanes, expensive LRT lines, spherical sculptures besides freeways, urban beaches and vaulting "welcome" signs at the city limits.

If the Bill Smith era was marked by too much belt-tightening (I would argue it wasn't, but let's indulge that argument for a moment), then the Mandel era was marked by too little concern for the bottom line and too many frivolous distractions away from core services.

That's how our roads ended up in such awful shape this past spring.

So let's hope the Don Iveson era is marked by a better balance. Let's hope council does not get sidetracked by the shiny baubles of forward looking before it has got the basics right. Let's hope it doesn't vote in 2014 for anymore bridges that cost twice what they need to just so they look pretty.

Let's hope they realize their first-and-foremost duties include maintaining city streets and roads year-round and providing enough police and fire protection for every neighbourhood (outer suburbs as well as inner city).

Private companies could be contracted to run garbage, sewage, water and power, but that's a debate for another day. The key in this year-end discussion is that the city has to make sure someone is providing these services, and at a reasonable fee, before it moves on to forward-looking projects.

Fixing sewage and drainage issues may not be sexy, but they don't look after themselves. And they have to be taken care of even before council moves on to parks and transit, let alone before it moves on to decorative lighting for bridges and slick new marketing images for the city.

Then -- and only then -- if it can squeeze in desirable projects (not needed, but desirable) without jacking up taxes, again. Then it could think about forward-looking baubles.

Council should also keep top of mind this coming year that over the decade that ends in 2014, it or its predecessors have raised Edmontonians' property taxes (both residential and commercial) by nearly two-thirds.

Enough is enough. Hold the line on taxes now and for the next five years, or so.

If the proposed LRT line from the southeast to the far west end cannot find funding soon, postpone it. That is a far better solution than raising local taxes again and again and again.

The problem with the forward-lookers on council and in the city's business and cultural elites is that at their heart they are not satisfied with what Edmonton is.

That is not a bad thing if it leads them to push our city to be all it can be. But when it gives them bauble envy, when it leads them to urge council to spend hundreds of millions on projects they claim will magically make Edmonton important internationally, then the forward-lookers need to take a step back and rethink their priorities.

lorne.gunter@sunmedia.ca