Dear Editor:
Re: North Vancouver City council gives $1.1M Keith Road bike lane the green light, Feb. 26 news story.
When will City of North Vancouver residents end the lack of fiscal leadership at city hall?
After spending hundreds of thousands on the white elephant Jones Avenue bike lanes, I hoped more than one councillor would have had enough. Sadly, council voted to spend an additional $230,000, a nearly 25 per cent increase, on an another misguided project. Surely after two years of work, budgeting and estimates for this unwanted project should be far more accurate. What leadership is there when council decides that, in a time of tight budgets, $230,000 grows on trees for council to recklessly spend?
The Jones Avenue bike lanes are not used. From my observation from a few doors away, 90 per cent of cyclists heading north use the street – not the bike lane. Heading south all cyclists fly round the corner to Keith Road and routinely ignore the stop sign. If Coun. Linda Buchanan’s quote is correct, I trust she walks or cycles to every council meeting or community event.
Most of us do not function in such a delusional world.
The public meetings for the Keith Road section were a fait accompli and a joke. No option was ever available to say no, enough, stop. All options – some crazier than the final proposal – were presented as something that must be built. So much for community consultation.When will it end?
And when will the city’s residents clean out and defeat the big spenders and impose some fiscal restraint at city hall? It can’t come soon enough. Sadly, we’ll have to wait to see how far over budget this project goes to get another example of wasteful spending.
W. Joseph Whiteside
North Vancouver
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