What city services would you perform if the workers were not there to do it?

Cut the funding of any thing not directly involved in the operation of the city . If you want the arts or whatever make it pay for its self or bye . See the province .

Based on the story, I would get involved in something like that.....and then take the clippings and dump them on Paul Moist's front yard.

Since I live in the "old" part of the city where the city is still responsible for the upkeep of the boulevards, I don't have a problem with looking after the boulevard in front of my home as we already do that and better than the city does. We prune the boulevard tree as well as it has in past inhibited the power lines for the street and coming to our home. When the grass gets extremely long on the vacant lot next to our home we cut the grass because we don't want the weeds to over run the lot and spread more into our yard. We shovel our front public side walk as well in the winter just because we use it to get to our cars on a daily basis. We take offense when the city come down our sidewalk to clean as they usually make more of a mess of what we and our neighbours have done.

We look at it this way, for the common things, like grass cutting and snow clearing it take maybe an extra 15-30 minutes more for peace of mind that everything is neat, tidy and safe. If it came to the point where there was a need to have the community park cut I would be there to help. After all it is my community and it needs to be my responsibility to keep my community livable.

I've got the same attitude, but it irks me to no end that I pay for these "services" and they are either not done or completed in a half assed manner. And in a lot of cases, by civic employees who are earning a respectable wage.