To the Editor:
(Re: “Creston resident suggests paying others to leave to reduce police costs”)
Having lived in the Creston Valley for almost 20 years, with 14 years in business in Wynndel, I have noticed that twice there has been an attempt to reduce the population of Creston to cut down on operating expenses, such as the RCMP bill.
I always thought that to have a successful community you need population. To have and maintain population you must have jobs that come from light industry and successful commercial businesses. By adding job-creating industry and businesses, you will gather the population, all of which will greatly add to the tax coffers of the town.
Some years ago, one of our mayors publicly stated that we should reduce the size of our town by eliminating Alice Siding, thereby keeping our town under the magic number of 5,000. Now we have the comment made to town council that we should pay our citizens of Creston $2,000 each to leave town and subsequently bring us back to that 5,000 level.
This tells me that we are going backwards. Why can we not put this effort to better use and make our town more population friendly by creating jobs through light industry and new business? The taxes collected from these sources would more than out weigh the increased costs of our over-5,000 status.
The health of a prosperous town is gauged by the number of empty commercial doors on its streets, and the number of for sale signs on residential and commercial buildings.
I would hope that the town council will spend their time on increasing its size, not reducing it.
Ron VanDusen
Wynndel