PelhamToday received the following letter about bureaucracy in Niagara.
It scares me when I read a CEO of the Greater Niagara Chamber of Commerce equating "service and efficiency" with the largest and fasting growing bureaucracy in Niagara Region.
The recent budget deliberations for both the Region and its 12 municipalities mostly indicate a total lack of service and especially efficiency. There are still growing basic infrastructure deficits, and apart from very few, if well deserved, "feel-good" stories from individuals who have been lucky enough to receive good service from various government funded agencies within Niagara Region, there are few signs of improved services, and even fewer of government efficiencies.
As far as I can see the suggestions offered for embracing this imposed government reform only mirror the frequent recommendations from those bureaucrats seen as the solution. An ever growing and expensive bureaucracy first, all paid for by increased taxation on already overtaxed residents and taxpayers.
Having set aside all the tax funded costs of this growing bureaucracy, any tax revenue left over will be spread across those same services who continually complain of a lack of funds.
His only recognition of the ordinary taxpaying citizens of Niagara Region, and its 12 municipalities, is an obscure commitment to ‘public submissions’, almost as an afterthought.
Any concerned citizen who has ever submitted their concerns to their local government, on any issue that bureaucrats have recommended, know only too well that come a final report those concerns will have been buried and will all be ignored. Big government in any way, shape or form, has never been, and never will be, a solution.
Andrew Watts
Wainfleet
