Wage restraint better than a freeze

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Editor: The editorial in The Times (“Yet more property tax increases, Feb. 26) targets negotiations with unionized staff. It fails to recognize that these individuals too face the inflationary pressures of health care (MSP), Hydro, ICBC, and the GST/PST fiasco.

Wage restraint is a fairer expectation than the punitive “wage freeze” that you advocate. You also fail to recognize that much of this negotiation is determined at the regional (Metro) level, or in the case of policing, by federal mandate beyond the control of locally-elected councillors.

Opportunity does exist at the local level to restrain compensation for management and the mayor and council, but such attempts receive no support from the mayor and councillors of Langley City, and go unreported by your newspaper.

Your editorial does raise questions about raising taxes to finance aging infrastructure. You suggest that this could be financed by casino revenues instead.

This is an interesting question but inaccurately leaves the impression that Langley City should continue a capital dependency on a source that has shown recent decline and may be jeopardized by future rival development.

Certainly once Langley City paid off its debt (largely accumulated from infrastructure projects), there should have been a complete review of the casino revenues policy and the allocation of funds.

However, a number of years later, there has been no visible support from the mayor or other members of council to conduct this discussion in the public realm.

Councillor Dave Hall,

Langley City