DEAR EDITOR:
Regarding your front page article in Friday’s edition, and
Supervisor Don Gage becoming chairman of VTA, can we now expect to
hear the truth about VTA’s deficit?
DEAR EDITOR:
Regarding your front page article in Friday’s edition, and Supervisor Don Gage becoming chairman of VTA, can we now expect to hear the truth about VTA’s deficit?
Your reporter stated VTA’s annual deficit at $100 million, but if VTA’s fares bring in less than 15 percent of its operating budget, that cannot be correct. If VTA’s annual operating budget is $327 million, and riders pay 15 percent, then taxpayers subsidize 85 percent, or $277.95 million every year.
The real deficit must also include all capital costs, too. So, will Supervisor Gage continue his predecessors’ cover-up, or will we have truth in transportation? Will he lie to his old friends and neighbors to continue VTA-SVMG’s socialist transit waste? How can VTA wastefulness be justified if SVMG’s members send our high-paying jobs overseas? Can he end VTA’s compulsive spending disorder? Or will he continue VTA’s Sovietization of American transportation? Is he now “Boondoggle” Don?
Premeditated, cold-blooded deficit spending is bad government. When our Legislature enacted Section 99268.12 of our Public Utilities Code, it authorized our transit agencies to earn only 15 percent of their operating expenses from fares.
So, tell me where is the mystery if it was so well engineered by the Politico-Transit Alliance. Does Supervisor Gage support the taxpayers or the public-sector unions? Does our former mayor have the wisdom and courage to tell Emperor Transit First that he is stark naked? Boondoggles like Caltrain, Lite Rail, Amtrack, Outreach, and empty transit buses must end.
Joe Thompson, Gilroy
Submitted Wednesday, Jan. 21
