The numbers don’t lie. At $15 for a day pass, paid parking adds $270,000 annually to the treasury.

Mayor Close wants free parking.

http://www.bayshorebroadcasting.ca/news_item.php?NewsID=55550

If he prevails, taxpayers will have to pony up at least an extra $270,000 per year, and likely a lot more.

That’s almost a four percent increase in property taxes. That’s an extra $40 per year for the average residential property. That would bring the increase in the three years since Mr. Close took office to 21% or $210 on the average residential property.

Mr. Close clearly doesn’t give a damn about the residents of the Town, and is especially contemptuous of Sauble residents. For the pecuniary benefit of his chamber of commerce buddies he thinks nothing of throwing the residents under one of the tour buses Lieutenant Kirkland has unloading along Lakeshore Boulevard at Sauble. Or who knows, maybe he does it just for sport.

Mr. Close says “in these rough economic times, [we] need the tourists in the region to enjoy the beaches”.

Translation: I (John Close) and my chamber of commerce buddies need the beaches and free parking so we can make a year’s salary on two months work while the rest of the residents pay for the beach maintenance and clean up the tourist litter in their front yards and breath the diesel fumes from Lieutenant Kirkland’s buses.

Mr. Close is implicitly claiming that he and his chamber buddies are entitled to the treasury and the beaches and free parking for their customers.

The treasury does not belong to Mr. Close and his chamber buddies. It belongs to the residents. The beaches do not belong to Mr. Close and his buddies. The beaches belong to the residents. And the streets and shoulders do not belong to Mr. Close and his buddies. They belong to the residents.

Mr. Close has already contributed plenty to the “rough economic times”. If Mr. Close gets his free parking wish, he’ll be making the “rough economic times” even rougher. The smartest thing we can do for the local economy in these rough economic times is to load John Close and his lieutenants up on Councillor McKenzie’s septic-tank-pumpout-barge and ship them off to Michigan. (I hear they welcome economy-destroying politicians there.)

Mr. Close calls paid parking “the most regressive form of taxation known”. That rings hollow coming from the man who promised us a 15% property tax decrease and instead gave us a 17% increase (so far).

Craig