| Send to Printer | << Back to Article |
| Letters |
|
City taxpayers are right to just say no
In regard to Ken Garcia’s column (The Examiner, April 29) about taxpayers saying no to more expenditures, I couldn’t agree more. It seems like San Francisco is a city that expects its residents to have endless cash reserves, when The City itself does not. All this while The City pays employees, such as the head of Muni, ridiculous sums of money, while that agency underperforms year after year. But one place where I must distance myself from Mr. Garcia is about fines for trash and recycling containers being left out. While he seems to feel it’s unjust, I feel this is a quality-of-life issue. San Francisco is above all things beautiful and that’s why I’m willing to pay ridiculous amounts of money to live modestly here. Trash and recycling containers being left out in sight are a blight on our beautiful city. Maybe Mr. Garcia is able to afford to live in an expensive neighborhood where his neighbors have enough common sense to put away their ugly, filthy, smelly refuse containers, but many of us do not. Where I live, in the Sunset district, refuse containers being left out is a huge problem, and it takes away from our neighborhood’s cleanliness, property values and community pride. The people who are receiving these fines are not poor victims. They are thumbing their nose at a law for which they’ve received warnings before being fined. Furthermore, the media has blitzed about the law requiring refuse containers to be put away for nearly two years now. I just hope The City does these same sweeps for violators in the Sunset district. San Francisco Ken Garcia’s April 29 column “Taxpayers: Just say no to more expenditures” is advice that should be heeded by every San Francisco voter. In spite of a $6 billion annual budget (a budget bigger then that of 20 states), San Francisco can’t keep its streets clean, maintain its parks, fix its potholes or run Muni on time, and then keeps coming back to the taxpayers asking for more. Perhaps if we didn’t have supervisors who would rather spend the taxpayers dime to add positions on the city payroll to facilitate illegal immigration and other ideological pet causes, The City could easily maintain high-quality basic services with the revenue they have. The cause of the problem therefore points to the solution. The voters in November need to elect supervisors who are pragmatic problem solvers rather then ideological problem creators. San Francisco Ken Garcia amazingly seems to believe that local government’s purpose is little more than for parks, recreation, libraries and clean streets. No wonder he is so disappointed! He conveniently forgot the far more expensive and more important services such as Muni, police, fire, planning, health and human services, S.F. General Hospital (which services people without money for health care) and Hetch Hetchy, just to name a few. Why do I suspect the “pet projects” Mr. Garcia resents most are services for people who can’t afford them? San Francisco Congestion pricing is absurd While congestion charging may work in London, I do not think it could in San Francisco. Let me explain why. In Britain, by law, all vehicles must display licence plates on front and rear. Any vehicle without one will be stopped by the police. The plate details are captured by cameras as vehicles enter the charging area. Then the photo of the plate is checked through the Driving and Vehicle Licencing Centre (similar to California’s DMV). The registered keeper is then sent an invoice to pay. This has led to an increase of theft of licence plates, in some places as far as 500 miles away from London. The stolen plates are then put onto other vehicles and used to defeat the charge. Now let’s look at San Francisco. How many vehicles have you seen on city streets without front or rear plates? In a normal day, I see 50-plus. It seems strange that the CHP and SFPD ignore these vehicles, when they could be stolen and used in robberies. Learn from NYC’s mistake In “Congestion pricing” (Letters, April 15), Sprague Terplan endorses its application to discourage driving and encourage transit usage, biking and walking. Too bad he didn’t serve in the N.Y. state Assembly on April 7. Reluctant to allow congestion pricing in one of the nation’s most congested cities, the Legislature rejected a $354 million federal grant that may now go in part to Los Angeles to purchase and operate new express buses on converted diamond lanes. Let’s hope that San Francisco and the state Legislature don’t repeat New York City’s mistake here. To add your voice The Examiner gives preference to letters containing fewer than 150 words. Please include name, phone number and city of residence. By e-mail: letters@examiner.com By mail: Editorial Page Editor The Examiner, 450 Mission St. San Francisco, CA 94105 By Fax: (415) 359-2766 |