Sometimes I feel all alone, then I read the letter by Sharon Burton and I am thankful there is still some sanity out there.
How quickly we forget a man who was punted from cabinet at one time for calling the premier and his ministers gutless and later had to resign as premier.
Well, here's the pot calling the kettle black!
When our buddy Bill Vander Zalm came into power in 1986, he kept any plans he had for British Columbia and its citizens kind of loosey goosey. No laying out a plan, that way no one can say you strayed or misled your constituents. That's good planning, Bill.
And now our buddy Bill is back — lucky us. He's stirring up that black pot. To heck with democracy. Bill doesn't like the fellow who was legally elected to office and he wants a 'do-over' at taxpayers' expense. Bill doesn't like the policies introduced by our legally elected officials so he wants a repeal, a referendum — at taxpayers' expense.
I think our buddy Bill ought to go, well, I can't tell you where I think our buddy should go.
I think it is a shame that someone with such a past can influence so many people and do so much harm to the province of British Columbia.
Bill is the gift that just keeps on giving. How quickly we forget.
E.L. Franson
WRITER CLARIFIES
In response to Sharon Free’s passionate support for the Toronto Arts (Jan 18, 2011), I would like to clarify any confusion about my earlier letter. I do not object to the arts community getting their fair share of the municipal budget. By all means let them have their slice of the financial pie.
However, our politicians need constant reminding that they have a responsibility to the taxpayers not to keep serving up bigger and bigger pies. Fiscal fitness at city hall has to be more than an unfulfilled New Year’s resolution.
Lloyd Atkins
GREAT DEBATE
Once more the great water debate is on.
It is high time that the City of Vernon stops and realizes that the citizens of this town do not have bottomless pockets. When are all the tax and fee hikes going to come to a reasonable end?
In a recent Morning Star we now read of a quite substantial hike in water rates, once more, and that they are liable to be unable to hold our taxes to a zero increase in the next year.
The spending and planning in this town is completely out of hand and it is time the city stopped and had a long hard look at what they are doing.
The extensive work and beautifying of 20th St. between 43rd Ave and 46th Ave. (which, as yet, is not a completely finished project,) is a grand example of what I am referring to.
The project has taken a wide section of well used road, cut it down to two narrow lanes removing the turning lane at the high accident intersection at 43rd Ave. There are new lamp standards installed of the kind found in new developments, but on the south side of the road, the esthetics of them are lost as directly behind them stand the old power poles from which they simply transferred the lamps to the new standards. There are wide bike paths and sidewalk on both sides of the road, and there have been new boulevards installed.
I was horrified to see that they have put in these small sections of “garden” automatic sprinkler systems. Yet they are saying to conserve water. Are we now expected to pay for this within our taxes? To me it is completely hypocritical of the city to do this.
I suggest that instead of recalling MLA’s in this region, we should start a campaign to recall the city council of Vernon.
Maybe that would make them realize that many of us are fed up with their high handed attitude, and seemingly, to me, complete lack of regard for the good of the community.
Valerie Redstone
taxing time
On page 1 of a recent Morning Star Bill Vander Zalm’s final quoted comment is “We never set out to get a premier fired . . . our intent is to get rid of the HST”.
Over the last year a number of writers and speakers have referred to the need to “get rid of the HST” or to “get rid of this new tax.”
Does any reader seriously think that “getting rid” of the harmonised sales tax means getting rid of combined taxes of 12 per cent?
Do you actually need the provincial sales tax of 7 per cent and the goods & services tax of 5 per cent to be shown separately on every invoice? What would that achieve in real terms?
Perhaps readers should also ask business people how they feel about possibly being forced to revamp their accounting systems twice in two or three years just because some people have swallowed Vander Zalm’s blinkered rhetoric.
And maybe they can come up with a way of repaying to the federal government the $1.6 billion transition fund already being paid to B.C. And how to re-establish and pay for the now defunct PST collection and auditing system.
Me? I say stop wasting everyone’s time and money and start worrying about some of the really important things happening in the world today.
A. Witts
