Editor:
Re: Uncharted territory for Surrey tax hike, Nov. 13.
Our taxes continue to go up much faster than inflation and, Lord knows, much faster than most people’s income, despite a massive increase in the tax base given the explosion in development in Surrey in the last seven years.
It’s always easier to spend than it is to earn, and while governments don’t earn – they collect – it would be reassuring to see some commitment to holding the line on costs.
Meanwhile, Surrey plans to approve paving a little piece of paradise and put up a parking lot, in fact a dump-truck parking lot, in the pristine Little Campbell Valley (Paving way for parking, Sept. 18) – much to Langley’s concern, and that of the many who enjoy passive recreation in the valley, which has the Little Campbell River, a significant salmon spawning site, flow through it.
And while sorting out parking, Surrey orders closure of a business that has been in the community for 50 years to create a swamp to promote biodiversity and passive recreation (Civic expropriation to close Riverside, Sept. 25), when the Serpentine Fen is just a couple of kilometres down the road.
No chance that the recent development upstream from the Riverside driving range has created a need to force this local business to leave to create a wetland to accept run-off from the development?
Or that expropriation will remove the land from the Agricultural Land Reserve and ‘pave’ the way for development in the future? It is, after all, ‘Riverside’ and desirable property.
You have to shake your head and wish our elected officials would shake theirs, too. We have just gone through ‘time for a change’ in Ottawa; maybe it’s time to apply that locally for the same reasons.
Get someone running Surrey who is committed to keeping tax increases to no more than CPI, and who has concern for protecting what we have for the people who live here and provide the tax money that politicians seem happy to spend.
It might be Surrey First. It’s just not clear who ‘first’ is, because it looks like it’s not the people who live here.
A.L. Hills, Surrey