Dear Editor,
I read the very ill informed letter to the editor by Gary Mason and I just had to respond. Just to set the record straight, I don’t care how many people live in Okotoks so long as I am not asked to pay so more people can come here. With the successful annexation, the town has indeed won, even if we paid $1 million too much in the process. We stood to lose $7.4 million in offsite fees from just the Windwalk (at the old offsite rates), not to mention all the taxes they will pay to help pay for facilities. We got approximately a one-kilometre buffer almost all around our town, so that isn’t so bad.
We are keeping all the existing water infrastructure and it’s costs so any extra costs from a pipeline, the Calgary water and the maintenance will be on top of what we are paying now. Even if the province had awarded us the $30 million to build the pipeline (at this time), that money comes off the amount we would get in grants from the province anyway. We have approximately 10,000 dwellings to spread the pain of a pipeline, which amounts to about $4,000 per household. I asked our town financial manager if the new people would be paying the higher marginal costs of pipeline water and he said that everyone would pay equally based on the water used. Translated, our water bills will go up and we will get nothing for it.
Six years ago I ran for council and asked the following question of many hundreds of Okotoks’ residents. “How much are you personally willing to pay so more people can move to Okotoks?” I never had a single person volunteer to pay more. Show me how we can build a pipeline and get more water from Calgary without it costing existing residents personally and I would gladly support it. I don’t even oppose some level of borrowing for the project.
I too care about the future of the whole town and I bristle when you say “will address the real issues.” I simply don’t agree with you as to what the “real issues” are. I have been to council meeting’s many times and curiously I don’t remember seeing you. Does that mean you are “paying more attention” to what our council is doing or less?
David Clark,
Okotoks
