Letters, June 13

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/06/2022 (1401 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Read meters electronically

Last Saturday, a City of Winnipeg employee appeared at my home to read the water meter. Also, Manitoba Hydro still employs highly paid union personnel to read their meters.

Why haven’t the city and Manitoba Hydro invested in a joint venture to convert to electronic readings of water/gas/hydro meters? This is not new technology. In many major metropolitan areas, meters are calibrated to electronically read, bill, and maintain historical data, report delivery issues and much more.

For example, San Antonio, Texas, with a population of 600,000, put taxpayer interests above political self-interest and is moving ahead with smart meters. Between 2022-2026, San Antonio will install smart meters in every water/gas/hydro user site. The change is expected to be self-funded by incrementally eliminating many high-paying union and management jobs and other outdated practices.

You can expect Manitoba bureaucrats and labour unions to react negatively to such an idea, inventing dozens of reasons why it won’t work.

Key question: do the people we have elected both provincially and at city hall have the courage to entertain contemporary change, or is political popularity their only focus?

Ray Bauschke

Winnipeg

City priorities misguided

Re: Pothole archeologist alarmed by decaying roads (Opinion, June 4)

For more than two decades, Winnipeg’s public works street operations budget has been cut to the bone. This was exacerbated by our city council’s decision to not increase our municipal taxes for 14 years from 1998 to 2012. This was then followed by a decade of minuscule tax increases for roads and rapid transit.

Regarding our current pothole minefields, I suggest that there is little if no co-ordination and integration between the various components of, and resources available to, public works.

For instance, approximately a week before we had our major snow-melting rains in April, the city allocated seven pieces of equipment, at considerable cost, to remove the accumulated snow piles at intersections on Beaverhill Boulevard. Within two weeks, most of the snow had melted.

Meanwhile, over the past two-plus months, I have personally seen only two small, three-person crews actually filling potholes, and only during the day.

The contracted cost for each front-end loader hour of service is approximately $60-70/hour. It is estimated that the cost to fill a pothole is approximately $20.

My question: what is the better return on investment for our city’s allocation of our tax dollars?

Rick Lambert

Winnipeg

Let’s try internet voting

Re: Mayoral bids begin in earnest (May 31)

Only 42.33 per cent of eligible voters cast ballots in Winnipeg’s municipal election in 2018, according to the city clerk’s website. That is pitiful.

I’d like to see Winnipeg’s upcoming municipal election hit over 70 per cent voter turnout, but how can we do it? Personally I favour the internet-voting system used by the small European country of Estonia. I-voting was established there in 2005, and nearly half of the Estonian voters used this option to vote during the last European Parliament elections in 2019.

Look, if Estonia, a country that is perpetually on the verge of Russian aggression, can establish smartphone and internet voting, surely Winnipeg can.

Voting through a phone attracts the 18 to 25-year-old crowd, a demographic that rarely participates in the political process because standing in line at a voting booth is so boring, man, and mail-in ballots are so last century, dude.

Will Jones

Winnipeg

Protect Assiniboine Forest

Re: Next city council needs to up its green game (June 9)

Only six per cent of Winnipeg’s total city area is public park land, compared to the average of Canadian cities at nine per cent.

An incredible opportunity rests with the City of Winnipeg’s agreement with the federal government to explore establishing a National Urban Park. While a site has yet to be announced, Assiniboine Forest is the most obvious — and impactful — choice.

This beloved natural space needs protection. A simple two-thirds vote in city council is all it would take to open it up to developments such as a shopping mall.

A national park designation will not only preserve our beautiful urban oasis for future generations of people and wildlife; it will also enhance park services.

While the Charleswood Rotary Club and the city have done a commendable job of stewarding the forest with limited resources, it lacks basic services needed to make the park more accessible, such as public washrooms.

A significant federal investment will bolster management and monitoring efforts, and could also enhance invasive-species removal. New jobs could be created in interpretative services and enhanced park maintenance and management.

Natural lands to the south connected to the forest could potentially be acquired and included in Winnipeg’s National Urban Park. This outcome would add much-needed green space to our city.

As the mayoral candidates prepare their platforms, I sincerely hope they strongly consider including Assiniboine Forest and potential for its enlargement as a key priority for our great city.

Ron Thiessen

Executive director, Manitoba chapter

Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society

Take Pride trash cans shameful

Re: Make way for the clean-up guy (June 6)

Kudos to Dan Gordon for using his own time to clean up the Osborne Village area throughout the year.

I am constantly appalled at the amount of trash and litter on Winnipeg’s streets and neighbourhoods. There are public trash cans sprinkled about the city, but they are unsightly, too. They are ugly, shabby, broken and over-stuffed. Many of these receptacles should be replaced, and all should be emptied daily.

Ironically, many of the overflowing trash cans bear the slogan of the local organization Take Pride Winnipeg. Indeed.

Theresa Shaw

Winnipeg

Hike deposits for cans, bottles

Wherever I go in the Manitoba outdoors, I see many beer cans and bottles littering the environment. It is the same at hiking trails, golf courses, parks and roadsides.

The long-standing 10-cent deposit on these items clearly no longer provides adequate incentive to return them, and it should be updated to 20 to 25 cents to account for inflation. Higher deposit amounts would also motivate passers-by to collect the litter.

Murray Singer

Winnipeg

Quiet lawn tools available

Re: Ban gas-powered leaf blowers (Letters, June 3)

I was prompted to write by Dan Herzog’s letter saying Winnipeg should follow the many other cities that have prohibited all gas-powered leaf blowers and grass trimmers.

My immediate neighbors use a property maintenance service. I know when they have arrived, as their power equipment makes enough noise to wake the dead.

As a result, I tried Googling for a local company that uses battery-powered electric equipment and actually found one. I called them to suggest they drop a brochure in my neighbors’ mailboxes in the hope they would hire them, but sadly,the company does not service my part of town as yet.

Low-noise, non-polluting power equipment does exist.

Michael Dowling

Winnipeg