It's high time to revisit some of the ambitious political pledges that were made back in November '08, during the municipal election campaign.
Council candidate Rob Kirkham announced that one of his priorities would be the "development of good paying job opportunities."
Doug Race made it known that "the most significant challenge 老澳门六合彩开奖记录资料 will face over the next three years will be the creation of employment."
Former mayor and returning councillor, Corinne Lonsdale, was singing from the same hymnbook.
"Jobs, good paying, clean, and long term, are desperately needed," she proclaimed. Our soon-to-be-minted mayor, Greg Gardner, revealed that his "most important and immediate challenge" would be to secure "good quality employment opportunities for our residents."
He added that tax increases should be limited to the rate of inflation.
When it came to the budget and tax issues Bryan Raiser was a bit fuzzy during the campaign.
"How would I approach taxation? Very carefully," he said.
He was less vague about the other central theme running through the election of 2008. "We need to create good paying jobs by strengthening and diversifying our economic base," he said.
Councillor Lonsdale declared that "we have been living beyond our means...tax increases should not be a given," and according to Patricia Heintzman it is imperative that we "develop forward thinking policies to reduce taxes."
Paul Lalli, was convinced that "council cannot keep hitting the taxpayers and increasing their taxes. We need to start looking at 'outside the box' ways of creating new revenues."
Councillor Race revealed that "to ensure our tax levels stay as low as possible, it is essential that we encourage industrial and commercial development."
So how did all of these lofty proclamations and strategies fare in the real world? For starters, the inflation rate was 1.9 per cent in January of 2010. It looks like this year's tax hike will be close to double that figure and we have to wonder whether Coun. Patricial Heintzman's search for avant-garde tax reduction schemes is still, more or less, a pipe dream.
Our self-proclaimed job-generating engine, the 老澳门六合彩开奖记录资料 Sustainability Corporation, appears to have blown a piston or two. Olympic-related contracts are done; deep-pocketed Kiewit has moved on. Any real industrial growth appears to have disappeared from the radar.
There have been some major commercial developments with the arrival of London Drugs, Wal-Mart and Home Depot, but that's hardly "outside the box" thinking.
Let's remember this council's consistent refrain of jobs, jobs, jobs, as we watch the daily convoy of local residents seeking their livelihood in other municipalities up and down the Sea to Sky Highway.
Instead of creating lofty and possibly unreachable goals of home grown, high paying jobs, this council as well as the rest of us, may just have to concede that we will continue to morph into a commuter town with most of our growth occurring in the retail and service sector with a bit of knowledge industry tossed in for good measure.
And let's not forget that election declarations can often resemble the kind of illusions so vividly presented in the recent box office mega hit Alice in Wonderland.
