Dear Editor:
Where’s Option 4?
In regards to the ‘letter to the editor’ and the related articles in last week’s Cochrane Eagle, I really hope there’s a lot more folks like Mr. Uffelmann around, for I too attended the open house, and there’s obviously a lot of mixed messages being delivered.
Here’s some examples I hope gets some other folks scratching their heads, and hopefully many more will start asking the question — where’s Option 4?
Consider:
• A proposal isn’t yet on the table in front of council for a transit option, and yet our current mayor is claiming he has six, if not seven, votes in the bag already?
• The options presented at the open house are to be “100 per cent outsourced,” yet we the taxpayers would be “buying” the buses?
• The economic/business model as presented was either flawed, or all of the information wasn’t presented.
For example, if the proposed option were implemented and box fares doubled, would taxes be reduced accordingly? What about other revenue streams, like bus-side advertising? What are we spending currently just studying it? What are the implementation costs and time frames required to set this up?
Any bet-takers that it would take 18 months, and that just happens to be as long as it takes to have the buses delivered. Coincidence?
• Advice was received from open house hosts that this was essentially a “one year bargain basement experiment” (with our money), with a maximum cost of half a million dollars, and it could then be closed down after a year if it wasn’t working.
Would the taxes associated with this endeavour then go away too? Remember how well that worked out after income tax was introduced in 1917 to support the First World War.
• If it was shut down, what would we do with three very lightly used buses? Like any vehicle, they devalue 20 per cent the instant they leave the factory and then driven (lightly of course) for a year.
• Did anyone else notice that similar municipalities that we are being compared to are all incorporated as “cities”, and all have populations (and tax bases) of at least three times what Cochrane has?
• Last one — why can’t a mayor seem to last more than two terms in this town?
Where’s Option 4?
Ron Douglas
