county taxes?

[coppertop]

Linda, rural municipalities have demands for urban services from their citizens. Hamlets demand paved streets, street lighting, municipal water and sewer services etc.

In our municipality there are six hamlets all with street lights, skating rinks with a roof over the playing surface, many have paved main streets, municipal services, garbage pickup etc.


Lands adjacent to urban centres that lie within the rural municipality are never going to remain in agricultural production, so of course the rural municipality will allow industrial and commercial development to occur, this in turn, requires 'urban' services.

I think we need to get away from the rural/urban mindset and come up with some sort of revenue/cost sharing in urban fringe areas that will allow the urban municipality to see some revenue from lands adjacent to their boundaries, if that were the norm in this province, rural municipalities would be saving millions in legal fees.

[cowman]

Coppertop: First off...in regards to private contractors...I can only assume it is a better bang for my buck? I don't really know...but my reeve, my councilor...tell me that? The CAO has told me personally at a townhall meeting it DEFINITELY is!
Now what should I say? Should I say you guys are all a bunch of BSers and liars? When truly I don't know? I suspect what they say is true...but bottom line...what do I know?
Maybe I am naive or something but when Mr. Kinsella, Mrs. Archibald and Mr. Coon tell me that...I tend to believe them!
Linda: I hope you will be very happy when the grader/snowplow catches your road every couple of years! Who do you think is paying your bills? Do you have any idea of the cost of gravel or equipment? Your land tax "donation" wouldn't pay the cost of policing your area...to keep the little bad boy quads off the roads! You really should check into this stuff!

[coppertop]

cowman, you are correct in saying that the taxes on property and residential do not pay the bills for municipalities either rural or urban. In fact, hamlets with mainly residential assessment are a negative as far as tax dollars go. That is why there is a push in many rural municipalities to create a light industrial/commercial district within hamlets.

Policing costs are paid by the province for RCMP, however, if the rural municipality wishes to have enhanced RCMP policing they can enter into a contract with the RCMP to provide it. This is currently being done in several rural jurisdictions.

Local by-law enforcement is a huge cost for some municipalities. Ours is a resource based municipality and our local constable spends 90% of his time keeping the industry in line on local roads, which includes the use of portable scales during road ban season.

As far as monitoring the use of quads goes, if the county has a bylaw prohibiting the use of quads on local roads they are responsible to enforce it.

The use of quads has declined here over the past few weeks. The constable happened to be on this road when three kids were roaring up and down on their ATV's and he paid a visit to a couple sets of parents to advise them that they were responsible for not only their children but also the use of their ATV's. He also advised them that the next time their 12 year olds were caught racing down the county road on any ATV, the vehicle would be seized.

Guess moms and dads figured it was much easier to make the kids walk the line than to lose their quad, snowmachine etc. In fact, at least one set of parents had no idea that the kids were racing up and down the road,because it was always going on when they went away for the weekend.

My house is on a roadway with a blind hill on it, and I worry constantly that some kid is going to have a head on collision with a vehicle on that hill.....so thankfully we do have a county constable that is doing his job.

[cakadu]

Cowman, I am under no delusions as to who pays what and what things cost. I GET the fact that my taxes do not pay entirely for the services I receive. Doesn't mean that just because I live further out than you I should be "content" with having fewer services than you do. How would you feel if after a dump of snow your roads weren't plowed for up to a week? It's easy to be happy when you don't have to wait. Might be a different story if the snow boot were on the other foot.

Without seeing the actual books and savings it is hard to determine if we are actually saving money on the privatization. The savings could be in the form of not making payments and maintaining depreciating equipment. The service is no where near where it used to be, so is that where the savings are? Show me where the savings are. Remember the old saying - believe nothing you hear, 1/2 of everything you read and everything you see.

Copper - if it is costing the municipality more to keep the infrastructure going than they are receiving in income, then should they be providing the services? Smart growth principles do not work that way and we need to take hold and implement smart growth.

[coppertop]

Linda, unfortunately your analagy would also apply to rural roads. Taxes paid per quarter of land, even with average homes on them, do not pay to grade, plow and gravel 1/2 mile of road, so should the county provide that service ? I am thinking it should. Everyone within a rural jurisdiction does not choose to live on farms and acreages. The Municipal Government Act requires that municipalities within their Municipal Development Plan provide various land districts, including residential and hamlet residential if they do have one or more hamlets within their boundaries.

Rural municipalities cannot walk away from their obligation to all their citizens whether they live on the farm or in a hamlet or the fringe of an urban centre.

As far as your getting less than equal service on your roads I would ask for a meeting with the Director of Public Works, and provide lists of when your road has been plowed after a major snow fall. I would also provide your councillor and the county CEO with the same list. If there is inadequate service that should get someone's attention.

[cowman]

Linda: I don't live in utopia! I live out in the sticks just like you on a gravel road.
Every contract grader has a route? Basically they start at one end and go to the other? Sometimes the school bus route gets plowed out first...I do not live on a school bus route. I don't have a lot of pull where I can phone up my councillor and get my road plowed? In fact I would never do that as fair is fair? I have on occasion plowed myself a way out, if I couldn't get down the road with a 4X4! If the road is too rough I figure all you have to do is slow down?
I live in division 3. Our grader operators have as many miles to cover as the operators in div. 5?
Not sure where you think the county depreciates equipment or something, because they don't own any equipment other that the little bit Ag Services has? The grader/snowplow thing always was contracted out...long before privatization? I believe the county had one public grader that was used in div 2, in an area no contractor wanted. That is now contracted also.
At a townhall meeting I asked if the county intended to go on with phase II of privatization? Phase one was get rid of all the operations and field service personal, equipment and buildings? Phase two was get rid of agricultural services, assessment and I believe accounting? Phase three was planning? Phase four was policing and fire fighting?
The Reeve and CAO said they had no intention of going beyond phase one! When I quoted his own figure of $1.5 million in savings and asked why we wouldn't want to increase those savings by moving ahead with phase two,three, and four...he told me the public was not interested in privatizing anymore services! He did however assure me that the $1.5 million was a real number and that he could show me the savings! I never took him up on it though.
I kind of laugh at some of these old farmers who complain about the roads? One guy told me with the taxes we are paying the roads should be paved? I said okay...your taxes should cover about a hundred feet...who picks up the rest? When I told him how much "real" pavement costs...he was flabberghasted!

[cakadu]

Cowman, sometimes these roads get so bad out here it doesn't matter how much you slow down - your teeth get rattled. This fall they were terrible, particularly with all the oilfield equipment moving on them. The answer was to pile gravel in the middle of the road and let us drive it down to a more manageable status.

We live on a school bus route and the last snow we waited almost a week for the roads to be plowed.

[coppertop]

Linda, if a shool bus driver complains about the condition of a road on their route, it will get attention, whether that is snowplowing or grading. In this area, someone from the school division each driver decides whether or not to travel their route, if the roads are snowed in they can refuse to travel.

I think most roads were rough last fall, the rain combined with industry travel pounded a lot of roads out. The county didn't get this area bladed down far enough before the first snow it, so these roads are still quite rough.

Cowman, you are correct in your comment about the cost of paving. Putting down pavement isn't the only cost, crack sealing, overlays every few years, not to mention having plow and sanding trucks on paved local roads at the first sign of wet snow, or icy rain.

[cowman]

Now my little "inside source" tells me there was a budget freeze last fall! So despite the graders knowlege that the roads should have been graded properly...the money just wasn't there?
So yep, the roads didn't go into winter how they should have?

[coppertop]

In any progressive municipality like Red Deer county, there is no excuse for a freeze on dollars to maintain roads. Our county has a policy of not blading the pot holes and washboard out of the roads, just scraping the top surface. When I was on council there was a lot of discussion about how the roads should be maintained, but the CEO felt that public works knew what they were doing, so things are still being done the same way. Our old grader operator used to take twice as long to do the roads but they were in excellent shape for weeks after he got through. I was RETIRED, because he and the public works foreman did not agree on how maintenance should be done.

The most important things to the public are decent roads, recreation facilities and services for those within hamlets.

In all my years on council rough roads were by far the main reason for complaints.

[coppertop]

Geez, can't spell today, I meant to say HE was RETIRED, not me, I never did drive a grader !!

[cowman]

Well I think the county is fairly progressive, despite a lot of goof ups, but I guess they got caught by some rising costs? They budgetted for one number...and got another! It was a pretty tough year out on the roads? The frost went out so darned fast in the spring they were behind the eightball right from the start?
Not only that but they are still trying to fix some problems created by screwups over the last several years?
I do believe they are starting to get it right, though!
For one thing they've pretty well got all the gravel out of the ditches from their three years of putting it there...when some brightlight decided you could gravel the roads in December! And they finally started listening to the old gradermen about cutting the shoulders! Why after five years of incompetent management...the operations management is actually learning that they don't know everything! Who knows...maybe there is hope for the the planning management...

[coppertop]

This county went on a five year paving spree to the detriment of the gravel roads. There was a lot less shoulderpulling, etc. The past two years with a different council have seen them trying to do damage control and get the local gravel roads back into decent shape. With the increased traffic in the resource industry the roads are really getting put to the test.

Every project came in higher than expected in 2006, so thankfully the council had put a considerable amount in contingency to deal with the cost over runs. One thing that we used to do was have a night crew on during the winter, it cost more but during storms the plow trucks would get the roads open during the night, then the graders would go out first thing in the morning and wing them out etc. Since that was discontinued there have been numerous times that the school busses haven't been able to travel due to drifted in roads.

[cowman]

Heres an interesting sidenote:
Red Deer County privatized for a couple of reasons: One the workers decided to unionize and due to ideology, many councillors wouldn't deal with that? The other reason was the CAO had ripped off the county for $3.5 million and it was very apparent that nobody was minding the store...so a diversion was needed so ratepayers wouldn't be asking too many embarassing questions!
So out went the old and in came the new! I doubt more than 3 or 4 employees survived the "revolution" to this day!
One who did was a very competent lady in planning. She asked for a buyout but was refused...because basically she was the only one who knew anything! The county brought in a new manager, despite the fact she had been the head planner! Obviously she was not a happy camper and she certainly did not agree with the new outsider! She is a highly respected lady from an old pioneer farm family within the county.
Long story short...she finally got the boot in 2006! Now without a doubt she probably engineered the whole thing as her and her boss fought constantly and she ran him down every chance she got.
So she got the "golden handshake" and promptly set herself up in private business! Lets just say "She is doing very, very well"? She has the confidence of developers and landowners as the "go to guy" who will get things done! They lost a good one when they let her go. Brenda Hoskins.