Editor: I’d like to add my voice to the massive number of people who continue to be outraged by the ongoing propensity of people such as TransLink board members and mayors whom I did not vote for, cannot elect, and whom I cannot hold accountable, to feel free to add tax after tax after tax.
They know they cannot and will not be held to account for their outrageous spending habits.
TransLink must, at the very least, learn to spend within its current revenue stream, which is already outrageously punitive.
If that means the Evergreen Line must be delayed 10 years, then delay it.
If that means the Evergreen Line is never built, then so be it.
TransLink, at best, is taxation without representation.
It flies completely in the face of the basis on which democracy itself was founded.
Outlying areas, such as Langley where I live, have been used and abused to fund this bloated and out-of-control bureaucracy for far too long.
The per capita contribution of the ballooning gas taxes provided by outlying area populations (where using your vehicle is not an option) far exceeds the contribution per capita of the population in Vancouver.
It is outrageous that I am used to fund Vancouver’s Cadillac system.
To sum up: No more taxes, of any kind.
Learn to live within your revenue streams. If you must increase revenues, then listen to the proposal by John Cummins of the BC Conservative Party and pass laws upon yourselves: one per cent (virtually nothing) of each municipal budget be rededicated to Translink.
That proposal would ensure each municipality would contribute according to its ability, instead of the current model of imposing costs without accountability.
John Dueckman,
Langley