That adage about the customer always being right is put on its head at Calgary City Hall. In that alternate universe, the customer — that being ratepayers — is usually assumed to be wrong.

As way of comparison: Imagine owning an auto dealership where your salespeople complain that customers abuse them and then leave in a fury, without spending a nickel.

Do you console them by closing the doors, promising not to reopen until those rude shoppers smarten up? Unlikely, I’d suggest. Instead, you’d ponder if it’s firing and hiring time before your business goes belly up.

Suffice to say that city hall bears no resemblance to any auto dealership.

You see, it’s our fault if we’re angry. We’d better calm down and do as we’re told or, to borrow that immortal line from Seinfeld, there’ll be no soup for us.

The latest example of this increasingly authoritarian attitude toward regular citizens by public servants comes amid a gathering storm over proposed........

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