Rural ‘ripo ’ urban whining

Re: “Time to end the industrial tax ripoff; Towns and cities get a pittance while rural counties rake it in,” by David Staples, Aug. 7. David Staples bemoans the “pittance” that Edmonton and regional cities and towns get and cites Don Good as “an expert on the rural ripoff.”

Staples used Good’s numbers in his rant to make his point. He says that of the $137 million collected in industrial taxes in the Edmonton region in 2011, four rural counties got to keep 70 per cent, while Edmonton and surrounding urban centres — except Sherwood Park, which Staples says has a “sweet deal” because it is part of Strathcona County — got only 30 per cent.

However, both Staples and Good fail to acknowledge what rural Albertans have to put up with from the various industries — pollution, noise, violation of their land — in exchange for those tax dollars.

Nor does Staples mention that rural Albertans have no access to the various benefits that city and town dwellers enjoy, such as water, sewage disposal, street lights, paved streets, garbage collection, police and security services, schools, public transit, hospitals, ambulances, and malls, all only minutes away.

Rural Alberta has a much smaller residential tax base than the more densely populated towns and cities, so rural Albertans have to make do with less.

We do well to get our gravel roads graded intermittently, and we provide all our own water, sewer and garbage services, while often being at least an hour away from the nearest hospital, school or store.

Rural Albertans find it appalling that Edmontonians whine about tax “ripoffs” while choosing to spend their own tax dollars plus multimillion-dollar provincial grants — which come from all Albertans’ pockets — to fund a new downtown arena for a billionaire’s hobby hockey team.

As long as Edmonton spends its tax dollars so foolishly, they have no cause to whine or complain about tax “ripoffs” if they run short of tax dollars.

As long as rural Albertans’ tax dollars are funnelled to Edmonton for such idiotic schemes, we turn a deaf ear to the whining of urban folk who covet more industrial tax dollars to misspend.

M. Leithead, Bawlf