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2017 Budget: An Election Budget with Shiny Baubles

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5 minute read

The city will soon be deliberating on the 2017 operational budget, an “Election Year Budget”.
The pressure will be on the councillors, who plan on running in the upcoming election, October 16, 2017. How high will our taxes go? How much more will we pay for water, sewer, garbage and recycling? Which other employees will lose their jobs? Will councillors get a raise?
The city is currently sitting at 66% debt capacity, but the city lost 905 residents last year, revenue is down, and their capacity has been down graded, can the city stay below their 75% imposed limit? Will the city have the ability to reverse this downhill slide we are on, and have been warned about for years?
I know, I am being a cantankerous old man, and I should look at the bright side, why, when it appears everyone looks at the bright side and ignores the bleak reality?
1970, Parkland Mall opened, making Red Deer a shopping destination across Central Alberta. It changed shopping by-laws and inspired growth, but the city turned it’s focus south, and now the Parkland Mall is but a shadow of it’s former self. Businesses are closing, sales are dismal, families are leaving, but they are still paying their taxes to pay for a trail and a footbridge, to entice shoppers away from the mall. I am being cantankerous again. I cannot help but cringe, that the city basically makes businesses on the north hill subsidize their southern competition.
A long term employee at city hall, 20 months from retirement lost her job before Christmas and I should go ooh and aah about a 20 million dollar proposed footbridge downtown. 20 million dollars so the Riverlands residents don’t have to cross the Taylor Bridge, 300m away, when they walk to Bower Ponds. Remember when Red Deer Lodge was renovating their pool, they offered their guests free access to the Recreation Centre, just 2 blocks away, and they had trouble giving them away. This foot bridge is just another shiny bauble that will cost the tax payers dearly.
The 2017 budget will see more money go towards the Riverlands, as will the 2018-2038 budgets. Let us recap the last 10 years when we spent in total about 250 million, so we can prepare for developing over the next 20 years. 135 million to move the public works, 10s of millions to re-align the roads, bury power lines, upgrade services, and ready for developing a 23 acre lot worth 30 million dollars and only 60% will be developed. If my math is correct we are selling off the developable land for 18 million over the next 20 years but we want to build a 20 million plus footbridge, a 2 million dollar trail to enhance the deal.
How do I come up with these numbers? By paying attention to the details of many different budgets.
What strikes me as odd is that the same councillors, who will argue that the footbridge is necessary so the new residents of Riverlands will not have to cross the neighbouring Taylor Bridge, sees nothing wrong with making teenagers travel all the way across the city to go to high school, or parents to travel all the way across town so their children can enjoy a public waterslide.
The 2017 budget will weigh heavily come October 16 2017 at the ballot box. The capital budget deliberated earlier hints that expenses will continue to increase, so I expect the operational budget will increase at the same or faster pace. The incumbents who campaigned last time on fiscal restraint will be tested and judged on the 2017 budget. Politicians are good at deflecting, good at politicking, and will have 9 months for damage control, but I am sure that that laid-off at Christmas mom, will remember.
I will still be the cantankerous old man, worried about how I will be able to afford all those shiny baubles the city wants. Perhaps my personal budget will necessitate my following those 905 residents who have already left Red Deer, to a less expensive city to live out my golden years? I hope not, there is a lot to be thankful in Red Deer, but I believe in equality and I do not believe in shiny baubles.
Thank you.

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Community

SPARC Red Deer – Caring Adult Nominations open now!

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Red Deer community let’s give a round of applause to the incredible adults shaping the future of our kids. Whether they’re a coach, neighbour, teacher, mentor, instructor, or someone special, we want to know about them!

Tell us the inspiring story of how your nominee is helping kids grow up great. We will honour the first 100 local nominees for their outstanding contributions to youth development. It’s time to highlight those who consistently go above and beyond!

To nominate, visit Events (sparcreddeer.ca)

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Addictions

‘Harm Reduction’ is killing B.C.’s addicts. There’s got to be a better way

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Susan Martinuk 

B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy

Since 2016, more than 40,000 Canadians have died from opioid drug overdoses — almost as many as died during the Second World War.
Governments, health care professionals and addiction experts all acknowledge that widespread use of opioids has created a public health crisis in Canada. Yet they agree on virtually nothing else about this crisis, including its causes, possible remedies and whether addicts should be regarded as passive victims or accountable moral agents.

Fuelled by the deadly manufactured opioid fentanyl, Canada’s national drug overdose rate stood at 19.3 people per 100,000 in 2022, a shockingly high number when compared to the European Union’s rate of just 1.8. But national statistics hide considerable geographic variation. British Columbia and Alberta together account for only a quarter of Canada’s population yet nearly half of all opioid deaths. B.C.’s 2022 death rate of 45.2/100,000 is more than double the national average, with Alberta close behind at 33.3/100,00.

In response to the drug crisis, Canada’s two western-most provinces have taken markedly divergent approaches, and in doing so have created a natural experiment with national implications.

B.C. has emphasized harm reduction, which seeks to eliminate the damaging effects of illicit drugs without actually removing them from the equation. The strategy focuses on creating access to clean drugs and includes such measures as “safe” injection sites, needle exchange programs, crack-pipe giveaways and even drug-dispensing vending machines. The approach goes so far as to distribute drugs like heroin and cocaine free of charge in the hope addicts will no longer be tempted by potentially tainted street drugs and may eventually seek help.

But safe-supply policies create many unexpected consequences. A National Post investigation found, for example, that government-supplied hydromorphone pills handed out to addicts in Vancouver are often re-sold on the street to other addicts. The sellers then use the money to purchase a street drug that provides a better high — namely, fentanyl.

Doubling down on safe supply, B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy — though for now that effort has been stymied by the courts.

According to Vancouver city councillor Brian Montague, “The stats tell us that harm reduction isn’t working.” In an interview, he calls decriminalization “a disaster” and proposes a policy shift that recognizes the connection between mental illness and addiction. The province, he says, needs “massive numbers of beds in treatment facilities that deal with both addictions and long-term mental health problems (plus) access to free counselling and housing.”

In fact, Montague’s wish is coming true — one province east, in Alberta. Since the United Conservative Party was elected in 2019, Alberta has been transforming its drug addiction policy away from harm reduction and towards publicly-funded treatment and recovery efforts.

Instead of offering safe-injection sites and free drugs, Alberta is building a network of 10 therapeutic communities across the province where patients can stay for up to a year, receiving therapy and medical treatment and developing skills that will enable them to build a life outside the drug culture. All for free. The province’s first two new recovery centres opened last year in Lethbridge and Red Deer. There are currently over 29,000 addiction treatment spaces in the province.

This treatment-based strategy is in large part the work of Marshall Smith, current chief of staff to Alberta’s premier and a former addict himself, whose life story is a testament to the importance of treatment and recovery.

The sharply contrasting policies of B.C. and Alberta allow a comparison of what works and what doesn’t. A first, tentative report card on this natural experiment was produced last year in a study from Stanford University’s network on addiction policy (SNAP). Noting “a lack of policy innovation in B.C.,” where harm reduction has become the dominant policy approach, the report argues that in fact “Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms.” But it concludes that “Canada overall, and B.C. in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.”

The report is admittedly an early analysis of these two contrasting approaches. Most of Alberta’s recovery homes are still under construction, and B.C.’s decriminalization policy is only a year old. And since the report was published, opioid death rates have inched higher in both provinces.

Still, the early returns do seem to favour Alberta’s approach. That should be regarded as good news. Society certainly has an obligation to try to help drug users. But that duty must involve more than offering addicts free drugs. Addicted people need treatment so they can kick their potentially deadly habit and go on to live healthy, meaningful lives. Dignity comes from a life of purpose and self-control, not a government-funded fix.

Susan Martinuk is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of the 2021 book Patients at Risk: Exposing Canada’s Health Care Crisis. A longer version of this article recently appeared at C2CJournal.ca.

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