|
Credit when credit is due
Councillors at both the MD of Big Lakes and Town of High Prairie have, in the past three years, done a wonderful job of making sure our region is healthy, prosperous, viable and wealthy. Don’t you think?
We say this with good reason. Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel is crying the blues about taxes probably going up at least ten per cent next year in the city. Locally, we can sit back, relax with a beverage, and thank our lucky stars we don’t have the growth pressures Edmonton has. Or for that matter, just about every other community in Alberta.
Mandel says Edmonton can’t keep up with the demands all the people moving in are creating. New roads. New sidewalks. More police. More fire fighters. Even bus fares are going up 20, 30 maybe 50 per cent in the next couple of years. Oh, the horror of it all.
High Prairie doesn’t have to worry. Two years ago, High Prairie mayor John Brodrick told the Businessmen’s Breakfast Club he had personally counted 96 residential lots available in High Prairie. Seriously. Since there are only about ten new homes built since then, High Prairie still has an enormous supply. If you need to build, just call the mayor! Thank goodness High Prairie tax dollars aren’t being sucked off, as they are across Alberta, to build even more housing lots and new subdivisions.
Speaking of being sucked off, the MD of Big Lakes floated the idea of creating a new industrial park in the MD, perhaps at Enilda. This won’t go anywhere of course. Once again, it would be such a terrible waste of taxpayer dollars to build something for which,obviously, there is no need. Both the MD and Town have, over the past three years, done a great job making sure the Seal Lake road into that huge oil field north of Peavine and Gift Lake isn’t easily accessible from High Prairie. Those silly fools in the MD outside of Peace River spent an enormous amount of money building 25 miles of road into the oil field from Peace River. If our boys and girls keep up the good work and keep pointing fingers at somebody else, heck, there will probably never be any need for a road from our neck of the woods. And if there is no road, we probably won’t need to waste money on that industrial park either. Send our local businesses to Peace Creek.
Because you know where all that growth leads, right? Wal-Mart comes to town. Tim Horton’s comes to town. Boston Pizza comes to town. Canadian Tire comes to town. Many in our retail and restaurant business community are quite relieved the Seal Lake road is going nowhere. Look at the competition that would bring! Not to mention, as Edmonton Mayor Mandel says, higher and higher taxes. Nope. Let Peace River take all the headaches. We’re doing just fine and dandy, thank you.
Now, the next thing we have to do is make sure places like Joussard and Faust learn how to keep a lid on their growth. We can’t have these people coming in from places like Edmonton and Grande Prairie snapping up property and driving up prices. This is just plain rude don’t you think?
We don’t have a ready answer how to deal with this. Give our local governments a chance though. It’s a truly great group of professionals doing just a fantastic job keeping the growth pressures at bay. They will come up with something.
Jeff Burgar
Jeff Burgar
Copyright © 1999-2005 South Peace News. All Rights Reserved.
No part may be reproduced without written permission.
View our Privacy Statement.
Send website suggestions to the Webmaster
|
