In the newspaper the other morning, I see that our Mayor and her intrepid city council are still plotting to spy on the citizens of our city. But is this an idea of spying on us or just driving our city further into debt? They claim that the installation of license plate recognition cameras would solve the downtown parking problem and the matter of unpaid of parking tickets. Could they not, with all the high-priced bureaucracy they have in city hall, on the city payroll collect their outstanding bills like every other business.
The only problem I see downtown is the inability of people to walk a couple of blocks to a parking spot. Give downtown employees a break; reduce the rate for parking in the city-owned parking spaces.
Wouldn't it be an incentive to get them off the street and it won't cost as much as license recognition cameras, because hardly anyone parks in these concrete eyesores now.
Also I read in the newspaper that after paying my homeowners and utility taxes for more than 40 years for sewer and water and to maintain these systems I'm now lead to believe they want to create a new tax to pay for the repairs. What have I been paying taxes for all these years? Where has all the money gone, maybe for trips to China or architectural monuments to someone's inflated ego, or for over-priced city management that can't seem to solve these problems? Has this money been mismanaged; because our infrastructure is falling apart?
Then I read they want to cut back on snow removal. Isn't a cutback to services another form of taxation or at least a punishment. I hope these cutbacks mean they won't be plowing the street unless there is actually snow on the street? That would be management?
Our city is a business and should be run like one, if your accounts payable are larger than your accounts receivable, you fold. If the board of directors (the mayor and council) and the department managers aren't managing then we're out of business. But then this business has contributors with deep pockets, the taxpayers. And again I ask, doesn't anyone with in city hall know the meaning of a budget?
Mel McConaghy
Prince George
