How would you fund these new Fire stations/staffing? Increase in taxes or what would you cut spending on?

My response:

well for starters I said 'as Red Deer continues to grow'. It'll be another 5 to 10 years before Capstone starts to influence our population if at all. Right now the concern is funding what we already have, which I believe we can do if we are more fiscally responsible. Red Deer Firefighters may have been 3.2 million dollars over budget but that was overtime. That was enough money to hire 50 more fire medics. If we have more people employed we don't pay as much overtime.

​But let's just take that 3.2 million and look at the 11.2 million that were wasting on the bridge. All mathematics and budgeting aside what we're wasting on rehabilitating the 'Homeless Highway' could have paid for 3 years of overtime with our Emergency Services. We're not spending money wisely.

And now you take sitting council member (up for reelection) who wants to spend 50 million on pedestrian bridge to link Bower ponds and Capstone. Granted this has been under debate and discussion for 15 years but I would put an end to it. We don't need a bridge to link those two together we already have one it's called Taylor Drive. It's these frivolous projects that have led to us being millions of dollars shortfall every budget. It's not a question of who would you cut it's a question of where you would stop wasting money.

The point I made to somebody the other day is, if we're talking fiscal responsibility it's not freeing up more money for new things it's having the money to maintain the things that we already have. Like Emergency Services, or our roads, or are necessary Bridges, or maintaining our parks, Etc. Council needs to be fiscally responsible to stop the wasteful spending and worry about maintaining what we've already got.