To the Editor:
Creston is a town with some people having to pay as much as $6,000 for their property tax. For that, they have no sidewalk out front nor a treed boulevard on their street. Their children have to walk in the vehicle traffic lanes to get from point A to B. Likewise, a young mother has to push her baby carriage in the same unsafe environment to visit a friend in the next block.
There is a real hick town scenario all around, with the town crew pushing the snow off the streets and piling it up at the curb for the length of the block so that either the passenger can’t get out of the car or the driver has to step through the pile over their ankles to reach a storefront. If the piles happen to freeze, then the person is risking injury.
Then there is the problem with all the heavy haul diesel trucks with the toxic cancer-causing fumes, plus the fact that it is just a matter of time before there is a malfunction in their brake system, or a driver at the wheel will have an aortic aneurism or heart attack. The resulting carnage would be indescribable.
Yet, the town has department superintendents and executives that collect a salary from $100,000-$140,000 annually, to think! The thinking part is that they think they deserve it. We also have a six-person council (two too many) that is paid to think, but that could become stressful. But when they think it is time, they give one or all of their colleagues an increase in salary.
The council and a group of regional directors travel about the province like a bunch of aristocrats to a convention and return unnoticed except for a $20,000 dent in the town coffers. If they all stayed home, the town system would still carry on like a leaky faucet.
Folks, we have a municipal election coming up this November. All the incumbents in council and the Regional District of Central Kootenay have to go, every last one of them. We need some new, fresh, accountable stock in order to replace the executive superintendents, some of who appear to be on a working holiday, also.
Creston