Lorne Gunter: Parking-fee proposal no tax-reduction windfall Before I examine the merits of making Edmontonians pay for parking city attractions and recreation centres, can we all please just agree that no one on council or in administration should use as an excuse for spending taxpayers’ money the line “because our city will soon have two million people.” |
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Before I examine the merits of making Edmontonians pay for parking city attractions and recreation centres, can we all please just agree that no one on council or in administration should use as an excuse for spending taxpayers’ money the line “because our city will soon have two million people.”
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At the very least, we should have an unwritten rule that no one gets to use the two-million projection until we at about 1.8 million.
Michael Janz, the far-left councillor who proposed making visitors to attractions and rec centres pay to park, explained “We’re a big city on our way to two million people.” Paid parking is “part of the growing pains of being a big city.”
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The city’s population is currently estimated by administration at 1.22 million. We’re growing at about 50,000 a year. That gives us 15 or 16 years (to 2042) before we hit two million, provided we continue growing at a record pace (which is not guaranteed).
Council and administration have no crystal ball that enables them to see into the future. So, for them to say things like we need more LRT and more density of housing is a crap shoot.
If they can predict the future that well, they should quit politics and become investors, buying up all the stocks they “know” will make them rich a decade or two from now.
At the very least council and admin should take a 10-year hiatus from spending billions on their........