1.7 C
Niagara Falls
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Letter: Traffic, trash and other boondoggles in prettiest dysfunctional town in the colonies

Dear editor:

As a resident for 20-plus years of the prettiest dysfunctional town in the colonies, it behooves me to comment on a few of the latest boondoggles and non-sensical matters facing the town:

1. Traffic and parking: The town files will reveal an early proposal to acquire the land where now sits the fire station and make this a parking lot, closing the road to visitors, and running a paid park-and-ride shuttle into town for visitors. Following this failed solution, time and dollars were spent to create the current parking on side streets etc. and the acquired land dedicated to housing the fire station, library and community centre, and soon-to-be nursery school.

2. The District School Board of Niagara justified the closing of schools on expert studies that showed there would be no student-aged population to justify schools. School buses now run around town replacing the joy of children walking and playing on their way to and from school with diesel fumes. Now the town is building facilities for a nursery school while a former school sits empty on King Street so we supposedly wealthy (soon-to-be impoverished) taxpayers will pay school taxes, municipal and regional taxes, and now a nursery school tax. I guess the experts were wrong or are we busing in children from the Garden City and the Falls? Lovely.

3. Garbage pickup is now every two weeks, a 50 per cent reduction with a 0 per cent reduction in taxes. Now I recognize this is a regional thing (another boondoggle that should be eliminated) but it is a perfect example of political logic – reduced service for the same expense.

4, The town's planned business directory should be a Chamber of Commerce project and, quickly reviewing the Chamber's web page, it already seems to be doing the job. It should not be taxpayer-funded or -subsidized. This is, pure and simple, a bureaucratic make-work project that should be scuttled immediately.

All of which proves, once again, that government waste continues asunder at the largesse of the suffering taxpayers (suckers are us!).

William Cochrane Sr.

Queenston

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