Editor, The News:
Re: Tax, city spending top Pitt Meadows concerns (The News, Oct. 17).
The article mentioning the results of the Pitt Meadows survey shows how much Mayor Deb Walters is out of touch with reality and the people, on whose behalf she is supposed to be working.
She believes taxation was a high concern in the survey due to a petition gathering signatures of residents, and finds it humorous that this newspaper is, in her words, “keeping it in the news.”
What she seems unable to grasp is that residents are fed up with significant tax increases year after year.
Her post-election remark about being responsive to the residents was just so much smoke that has now evaporated.
She says a zero increase next year is “unrealistic.”
This clearly demonstrates the inability of the mayor and council to do the job for which they sought election.
A capable mayor and council would work to find ways to reduce spending while maintaining essential – note, essential – services without further increasing taxes. Resorting to unnecessary increases of four per cent in each of the next three years before any budget work has occurred demonstrates a lack of any fiscal responsibility.
Her “lean city hall” seems to have a lot of excess baggage.
Having the second lowest taxes in the region is no defense. They could be the lowest, but still be higher than necessary.
This is nothing more than a feeble attempt to skirt the real issue, and that is an inability to do the job for which they are being well paid – by the residents, again.
Only 300 residents were surveyed, and a quarter of those raised the issue of high taxes as their major concern. We can readily assume this is more widespread across the city.
And it is not going to go away, and may well last until the next election.
Byron Hosking
Pitt Meadows