Municipal council's tax grab comes up empty, but the poor must still pay more

For those who have been following my one-man crusade against our municipal council's recent implementation of their Property Tax Penalties Bylaw, starting with my initial post on this issue, Wall Street 'GREED' Comes to the Crowsnest Pass the results are in, according to Dean on his blog with respect to what was achieved. Nothing! That is, nothing was achieved by their attacking our local poor to get at non-residential property owners who were in arrears on their property tax. That is, nothing in the sense that increasing the penalties from 21% to Mafia type usury fees of 52% achieved nothing in that there was relatively no change from year-to-year in what people normally paid by the December 31 deadline, with what they paid this time around.

From what I have been able to surmise, the only thing substantive that was achieved is our local poor now owe more to the municipality than they did before. Thanks, I suggest, to this council's brain-dead, politically charged and motivated attack against victims of alleged fraudsters in residential land development deals here, supported and promoted by a former mayor and his hood-winked councils.

Pouring good money after bad was not in the cards for these investors for a variety of reasons, including on-going legal court proceedings. This should have been obvious to our council, if they had even an infinitesimal iota of common-sense or due diligence in having taken the time to talk with these people. Using a hammer to attack victims (due in large part to our own creation) while creating even more victims in the process by attacking our local poor, subjecting them to even greater financial hardship, is what our elected municipal representatives did. Shame on them!

I have been quoted before as saying; this will be a one-term council. Unless they rescind this abomination of a Bylaw, I personally will do what I can to make certain this becomes a reality. They can take that to the bank!

Note: For more reading on this subject in chronological order from earliest to latest, go here...

Timing is everything

'Scrooge' has no better friend than Crowsnest Pass council

"It is a good thing that we do not get as much government as we pay for."



Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.

Deepest problem for people today: our inability to accept, or even to recognize, reality

Over the holidays I had the chance and good fortune to read a couple of really good books on modern living, life and reality. Chris Hedges book "Empire of Illusion" lead me to another titled "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America", by Daniel Boorstin. Both books have been an eye-opener to how society has transformed itself in modern times from being an active traveler to one of passive tourist. Pseudo-events and images have flooded our consciousness to the point we no longer know what is real anymore? Reality has become a blur.

America's religion today is entertainment. Our culture today in Canada is no longer Canadian, it is American. Like Americans we no longer know... or maybe even care (for some)... what is real, or what is fake.

Which brings me to a recent Letter to the Editor in our local papers. ... His contribution to this community was immense.

I don't know about you, but I just can't live a lie. What an insult to my and everyone else's intelligence to portray the opposite of what is true in fact and deed. An illusion, an image of the untrue.

Is it any wonder this community cannot go forward when it continues in its ways much like what we did in the days of Emperor Pic when everyone knew what he was up to but with a conspiratorial wink to one another turned a blind eye. Much as what the writer of this letter (on behalf of our local establishment), I suggest, is attempting to do by trying to portray this individual as a great benefactor to our community when the reality is he was a disaster in all areas of his life: personally, professionally, and most importantly for our municipality, as a politician.

To say otherwise is a lie, which I personally will not stand by and let others attempt to create an image of reality which I know from personal experience to be false. An illusion, a fantasy, and as such, the furthest thing from the truth. Others may stay quite but I certaintly won't. For I am neither a hypocrite nor a phoney.

If this community ever hopes to move forward, then it must deal with reality as it is and stop living in a dream world of illusions... and false messiahs. As it has been said, the truth shall set you free.



Speak the truth, but leave immediately after.

Open Letter to MLA Evan Berger

Evan, for several months now I have seen a significant increase in my EPCOR bill and today upon receipt of my latest bill I was almost floored in that it is 47% higher than this time last year.

The ever increasing cost of living is having a severe impact on those least able to afford it due in large part because of the insatiable appetite (greed) of corporations and financial institutions who are free to charge what ever they want, it seems, while wages for workers and those on fixed incomes have been pretty much stagnant for the past 30 years. Do the math, something has got to give. When more and more people find there is more month than money can social unrest and/or revolution be far off?

Considering the conservatives under Klein took us (Alberta) from having the lowest electricity rates in North America to now having the highest I believe the onus is on your party to do something about this outrageous cash grab by greedy, incompetent corporations such as EPCOR (FORTIS). One thing you can do is to consider a rebate program.

It is my understanding, because of poor management on EPCOR’s (FORTIS) part that no contingency plan was in place for when they had to close some coal firing plants resulting in us, the consumer, now having to pay through the nose for electricity because of their incompetence.

Between the government’s past actions and those of our electricity providers we the public have to pay the piper so to speak. This is not right and it is not fair but knowing how the system works there is also no accountability. So we won’t even bother going down that road.

Shame and moral outrage are what is left for people who are fed up with being victimized by both government and big business. With an election coming up, I don’t think this needs to become an election issue provided action is taken to alleviate or reduce the financial damage being done to our people by onerous price increases.

Again, I stress that you and your party consider an immediate rebate program to electricity consumers in this province.


Comment: The above letter to Evan was sent by me today at the bequest of EPCOR. I suggest others do likewise by emailing him at livingstone.macleod@mypcmla.ca



Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.

Honeymoon is over and we never even got kissed

Well with council fast approaching the half way mark in their mandate it is becoming increasingly clear that the honeymoon is over, with respect to giving them any more time to get settled in and to implement much needed and anticipated changes that will take this community forward, both economically and socially.

The print media (especially the more progressive Crowsnest Promoter) has done an excellent job in reporting the public’s growing dissatisfaction with our lack of progress to-date e.g. Development remains slow. In fact, people here are quite disillusioned, which is reflected in the Promoter’s recent poll that shows the majority of people in our community do not feel the economy here will improve any time soon. At the same time, both local papers in recent weeks have had countless letters to the editor loudly complaining over the process (lack of consultation) and manner (heavy handed) in which this council has conducted themselves so far, in the little that they have done. Issues such as the upcoming Heavy Truck Bylaw and the recent implementation of the Property Tax Penalty Bylaw are just two wrong-headed issues that have the ere of many residents here who feel this council is both out of touch with the real wants and needs of this community, on the one hand, and lacking in intestinal fortitude to do what is needed to turn things around here in order to spur on growth, on the other. Much as what our neighbours have successfully been doing on either side of us.

Getting hemmed down with the day-to-day little stuff while ignoring the bigger picture is pretty much what we had here for two decades with the previous mayor. Until that changes, nothing else really will, don’t you think? I mean micro-managing a community by hiring people lacking in qualifications, knowledge and practical experience (but drawing the same paycheques as true professionals) is a clear sign of leadership (mayor and council) that is far from being progressive and forward thinking. Instead it shows a desire and effort to maintain the status quo due to a fear of the unknown, loss of control, and a conservative retrograde leaning in both manner and conviction.

One thing is for certain, this mayor and council is not interested in hearing from the likes of me, or anyone else who is not part of the status quo. As such, the same go nowhere do nothings are still running the show and taking us all nowhere fast. When that changes, so will we. But don’t hold your breath for we all know a generation or two will have to pass away before that day comes. Sad but true!



The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better.

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder

I'm sure, Y-all missed me dearly. Now, didn't ya? :-)

Between my computer crashing over the holidays and work commitments, I have been one busy beaver who now has the weekend to get back at it, considering all that is happening in the world of politics here in the Pass.

Did you hear that Sparwood is getting a Timmy's... and a Best Western Hotel? That's right! A Best Western Hotel! Still waiting on this council to deliver something like that here, aren't we?

Btw, today's my... BIRTHDAY!!!

According to the Eastern Orthodox Church (I'm Ukrainian, on my mother's side) that makes me a New Year's Eve baby. I'm blessed! I have the surname of a Prince, and the middle name of a Saint (Nickalos... or Santa Claus) and therefore the eye of the Gods... who must be blind these last few years. :-)


In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on.