Happy New Year anyway

What is this city doing? To increase service to a bus programs that apperas to be flondering is crazy. When Iam out and about all I see is a big bus with no one on them. I wounder how we compaire to other areas when it comes to riders per Km driven. I think we need smaller buses ( less cost) with fewer trips.

I was of the understanding that the new garbage cans and pick up system was going to save the city a lot of money. So, how do they justify jacking up the rates? Chester

'Water meters' are another tax grabbing farce. They tell us that water is scarce, that we're running out, and must be 'forced' to conserve. It's the same old story, apparently, everywhere.

A friend of mine in New Zealand related this experience with 'water meters' there.
The City of Auckland told its citizens the same story we're being told. That they had to conserve, and the only way to do that was to force people to do it.

So they installed water meters, not just on new houses, but on every house.
And jacked the rates up, too, to pay for them. And to additionaly penalise those who wouldn't stop wasting this precious resource.

Well, Aucklanders took the conservation message seriously, it seems. Too seriously.

For a great many of them installed cisterns on their properties, and piped the downpipes from their eavestroughs into them. Every time it rained, (often enough there, apparently), their cisterns filled up. And they used this free water for washing clothes, watering the garden, cleaning the car, etc. Even flushing the toilet, in some cases.

They conserved so much of the precious, City provided, water that the City fathers had implored them to conserve, that water usage from the City's system fell to the point where, even with the meters in to make it more expensive, the revenues weren't coming in as expected.

And then the whole 'conserve' scenario was revealed for exactly what it was. Another tax grab. For what did the City do, after everyone had done what they said it should do to conserve? It enacted a Tax on cisterns ~ on 'free' rainwater, that had been collected and distributed, and recycled at the citizen's own expense!

Kinda like the guy in Delta who, it was alleged built a fence on his property. The city then raised his taxes as per improvement. He got angry, tore the fence down and the city again raised his taxes citing "another improvement".

There is plenty of water in this area. Last year I saw very few people watering their lawns - they now let their grass grow without much care and hardly any water at all. The lawns look weedy and patchy as a result!

Not the kind of appearance a city would be proud of!

Yet, we are constantly being harassed and admonished by the City to mend our sinful ways and stop wasting water, OR ELSE!

There are two rivers flowing together here, there are aquifers loaded with pure water and there will never be a shortage of water here!

The Mayor should quit bellyaching! Listening to him it sounds as if we are living in a dust bowl!

The City should turn its attention to other more important issues, like potholes, sidewalks that are too narrow and too cracked to walk on and the sidewalks that still need to be constructed so people don't have to walk in the street, etc.

Why doesn't the city give a free rain barrel or two to each residence so one is encouraged to use rain water for the flowers and garden instead of the city water that reeks of chlorine and is poisoned by the addition of deadly fluoride?

Tell the people on the Nechako that we have a water shortage.

People, please.

We must allow the city to raise taxes and up rates and that kind of thing. Where else are they going to come up with the money for the drug users to have safe houses, women with 15 kids to have money for "the kids" and where is the money going to come from to fix our roads. Because we all know a lot of money goes into that.

opion1...

you go and try and ride a bus along 15th ave during a weekday morning and then try to tell me theres nobody on them.

standing room only is the norm, and there have been a few times you cannot even get on the bus because its too full.

If we now have water meters on our houses, then we should be allowed to pay less for less water consumed. Those who use more water will accordingly pay more. Hopefully that is why the things were installed?

"Hopefully that is why the things were installed?" It isn't quite as simple as that. The idea is to punish those who have no water meters by increasing the flat rate user fee substantially.

Multiply that by a few ten thousands of meterless homes - voila, more moolah! It's something the bean counters just can't resist.

It means we who have ALREADY paid for the capital costs of the existing water system, (probably a few times over, and which is still perfectly capable of meeting OUR needs), have to subsidize developers who can't add the full cost of the upgrades necessary to the existing system to service THEIR developments and recover them from lot or new home sales. Not and still make as good a profit on peddling those lots and new homes as they believe they're entitled to.

Who the hell can afford to retire now anyways, with all these raises in the cost of living in PG?

Politicians. The ones with indexed pensions. The rest of us can only look forward to looking backwards.

Our ancestors didn't have to pay anything into pension plans on top of what they were already contributing in taxes to general revenue. And those taxes were a fraction of the percentage of your gross income that they are today.

And the more we grow the worse it'll get. The way we do the books at present, anyways.