In a vote 12-3, city council decided to water down the Plan It Calgary document to the status quo. This will result in a $11.2 billion increase in taxes over the next 50 years for taxpayers. Of note, only Farrell, Pincott, and Ceci voted against the amendment. The suburban developers have won again, their hard lobbying paid off.

This reminds me of the Living Wage campaign in March of this year. City Council was lobbied by business groups and eventually City administration watered a living wage just to full time workers. It ignored on-call, casual, and employees of businesses who sell goods and services to the city, many of which used to be City jobs, but were privatized out. Full time workers at the City though were already being paid a living wage. Like Plan It Calgary, it was watered down to become meaningless.   

Though it has been estimated that 20 units per acre is the density needed to make public transit sustainable, city council decided that 10 units per acre in new communities is ok. Most of the new communities being built are already meeting 10 units per acre.

Supposedly fiscally conservative city councillors (McIver, Connelly, Stevenson, Jones, Colley-Urquhart) all voted for an increase in taxes. This was consistent to earlier in the day when these phoney conservatives also voted to give Race City Speedway a $3 million subsidy, which will also raise taxes. These are the same councillors who cry about taxes increasing, yet it is they who vote for motions that raise taxes.

When will the citizens of Calgary stand up and call BS to their rhetoric and hypocrisy? Until then we will be increasing taxes to subsidize suburban homeowners and those who like to watch monster truck rallies and race cars.  

Clearly we need to mobilize to vote out the phoney conservatives in the October 2010 election.