Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Sep 26/01) - City council paid a high price Monday night for leaving the door open to tax hikes next year.

After a furious debate left council deadlocked, Mayor Gord Van Tighem cast a deciding vote to kill a motion that would have frozen taxes next year.

Gord Van Tighem

That vote wiped out any hope of broad council support for a unifying vision to govern their term -- council's "goals and objectives."

It was an issue tailor-made for forging consensus but in the end it left city politicians as far apart as they've ever been.

Things went relatively smoothly on Monday night as council ran down the list of seven goals and objectives -- until Coun. Alan Woytuik tabled a motion to freeze taxes next year.

Councillors Kevin O'Reilly, Ben McDonald, Wendy Bisaro and Blake Lyons squared off against Robert Hawkins, Dave Ramsay, Dave McCann and Woytuik in a heated exchange over freezing taxes.

With Andrew Morton, union president of city hall local XO345, looking on, O'Reilly, McDonald and Lyons raised the spectre of job and service cuts.

"Why don't you say to administration 'we will close the pool and cut the economic development department?' " asked O'Reilly.

"Let's tell the public now there may be lay-offs," said Lyons.

Woytuik retaliated by calling the attacks "fear-mongering."

"This motion was not meant to put fear into our employees," said Woytuik, as Morton angrily left the room.

Ramsay said the freeze was about setting priorities and Hawkins accused the tax freeze opponents of "flipping union workers on the barbecue."

McDonald, however, argued it isn't fair to put the political decision on administration by sending them off to hash out a balanced budget with a tax freeze.

"We shouldn't tie administration's hands. They should present options and we choose," said McDonald.

Van Tighem, who settled the argument with his tie-breaking vote, said the wording of the motion was too restrictive but welcomed the ideas it triggered.

When the smoke cleared, however, consensus on the broader issue of the goals and objectives was also out of reach.

Council split along the same lines as the tax freeze, this time on whether to accept the framework for administration that define council's vision for the rest of its term.

Once again, Van Tighem had to cast the deciding vote, leaving council with goals and objectives that enjoy only the more precarious level of support.