City council’s courage

Mayor Michael Fougere and city council are to be commended — not condemned — for showing the courage to propose and presumably implement tax increases to deal with the city’s needs. So many of them are backlog needs that were not dealt with in years past because that same fortitude was apparently missing.

If a little more courage had been around in decades past, through administrations of a variety of philosophical persuasions, much of our crumbling infrastructure would have been dealt with in a more timely fashion. That wasn’t the case so we now have what the Leader-Post’s Feb. 5 editorial headline referred to as a “big ask,” which it is.

Seven per cent for property taxes and eight for utility rates are even bigger demands for lower-income taxpayers. Count me there. But the needs can no longer be ignored.

On a local TV poll this week, 72 per cent of respondents voted that the proposed increases were too high. Many of those same voters will be among the first to complain that their street needs fixing. Mine needs fixing, too, but I’ll wait my turn as necessary.

Sure, lower increases would be preferable, but the situation we have come to must be faced.

I take one exception to proposed increases. In the interests of downtown viability, any increase to parking fees should be very modest.

Richard Wood, Regina