A recent article  reviewed council’s property tax considerations for 2013 (Three per cent tax hike considered, Tribune, July 19).
Costs on a national average have been increasing the last several years something in the neighbourhood of two per cent.
Yet Guelph city hall staff reported that to simply maintain the current level of services in Guelph, staff would need an increase of 8.5 per cent  in our 2013 property taxes.
City staff should be embarrassed to have reported that they would need more than four times the cost of inflation to maintain services.
Supporting this position was Coun. Maggie Laidlaw who took the position that we should start at 8.5 per cent and try to work down from there. I hope the citizens in her ward will remember that the next time she stands for election and do what should have been done a long time ago – make her membership on city council part of Guelph history.
I take it that we are all supposed to feel a sense of relief that most people on council seem to feel that a tax increase of anything greater than three per cent is unacceptable.
We should keep in mind that even that is greater than the cost of inflation and even a three per cent increase is something that city council should not be considering.
Mayor Karen Farbridge has dramatically increased the size of city staff. In fact, our city staff has risen, as a percentage, that far exceeds the percentage growth in our population during Karen’s reign.
We are paying to increase the size of Karen’s Kingdom but are we better served?
It is my opinion that service cutbacks are signs that we are not better served by the dramatic increase in staff.
To make matters worse, staff increases are not something that you pay off, rather they become a built-in part of an ever increasing bureaucracy.
Hopefully at the next election we can elect a mayor who understands that a bigger government does not necessarily mean a better government.
David T. Starr
Guelph