Sunday, March 08, 2009

Bateman/Falcon Overpass To Nowhere And Gateway mega-projects running into opposition (The Province, 08 Mar 2009, Page A12)

The public is overwhelmingly anti BATEMAN/FALCON's Langley Overpass. Even our Langley Times Editor (Kudos - he also now points his finger clearly to Clr. Bateman's symbiotic Liberal/Coleman relationship that pretty much guarantees his compliance with anything Provincial Liberal!) is not enthralled with the decision that council has to make.

And Minister Falcon is absolutely WRONG & INCORRECT (I'm being polite and not using the words, big fat lie!) when he strongly infers on this Friday's Bill Good radio show that the previous Township Mayor spent 2 and a half years of "consultative process" before our new Mayor Green supposedly 'AGAIN' wants to "go back to starting the consultative process over" ! There was no consultative public process in the whole two and half years! See the CKNW audio vaults for Falcon's erroneous and/or misleading answer to a taxpayer questioning his Langley overpass tactics and decision. Again there was NO public input in the past 2 and a half years! NOT until way after the election! The only open houses and real public debate was initiated finally under Mayor Green's council and NEVER, EVER by the previous Mayor's council! Is this the democracy, consultative process and transparency that Minister Falcon and his desperately wannabee Mayor or MLA or whatever, Clr. Jordan Bateman espouse as "consultative"? Or do they mean secretive behind closed door "consultative" with a final ultimatum financial gun pointed to the Langley Taxpayer's head?

What people don't understand is that the Clr. Bateman's 'Gang of 4' led council's run away financial fiasco train (forgive the pun) is still hurtling towards even more out of control financial decisions. His 'Gang of 4' have still not come to grips with the world wide recession, scratch that, depression! As proof, watch the, I predict, continuing Bateman's 'Gang of 4' sabotaging and hijacking of the Township budget process with I again confidently predict they will forcibly be trying to push the Township budget again to at least the standard Bateman annual 5%+ (oops-- 4.99%--lol) annual compounded increases! Just spend, spend, tax & borrow! Bateman's 'Gang of 4' ever increasing Taxpayer's past hit list consists of, to name just a few, moving record high tax increases, record project cost overruns like the Grandstand, driving the LEC at least $5 million over it's initial budget without even a proper P3 contract, taking Langley into higher & higher levels of debt and now pushing for an overpass to nowhere, that we must again go into massive debt for. Adding insult to injury this overpass still leaves the Langley bypass plugged with the increasingly massive long heavy trains to come FOREVER I might add while bisecting the heart of the Langley's with a ribbon of dirty, loud and increasingly longer and frequent steel heavy trains!

Maybe our expensive Tourism Langley can figure out how to make this a tourist attraction like building another Bateman Grandstand to view the colourful train graffiti perhaps as they go by every 20 minutes for 20 minutes?

Finally and most importantly, the Township is going to borrow an additional $9 million for our share of the BATEMAN/FALCON overpass that we are FORCED to borrow (due to the sponsered Clr. Bateman continued year after year spending spree) at an annual debt repayment burden of $767, 000.00 for each and every year for the next 20 years for a grand total of $15,344,000.00 NOT the original $9 million! Did you know that the $767,000.00 annual debt repayment for the BATEMAN/FALCON overpass is equal to well over to an annual 1% tax increase to Langley Taxpayers! Can we really afford the Bateman 'Gang of 4' council any more?

And Folks, we have yet to be told the details of what the Liberal gifted Langley Events Centre annual operating cost that WE the Township taxpayers will be paying for each & every year too! I can hardly wait for this secret to get out of the bag and the political spin from the financial fiasco Clr. Bateman's 'Gang of 4' financial wizards!

In any event this Editor NOW predicts this vote:

The YES Side: Bateman, Fox, Ward, Long, Dornan
(Dornan the only remote possible swing vote? Meanwhile watch the 'Gang of 4' try to mitigate their decision in the voter's perception that they will still lobby to reroute heavy trains out of the Langleys (Fox's B.S. Motion!) ! Watch for Them all say we can't turn down $40 million but we will valiantly fight to reroute heavy rail! Yeah right, B.S.! What a joke because this is just a smokescreen to mitigate compliance to the Bateman/Falcon overpass to nowhere when they know full well that approving the overpass even more so guarantees NO CHANGE to heavy rail routing! What a scam)

The NO Side: Green,Kositsky,Richter,Ferguson
(Ferguson the only remote possible swing vote? Remember Fergie was pretty low on the last election tally and the long list of historical Langley families and their contacts, not to mention 600 petitioners, is enough of a serious concern to force Fergie breaking temporarily from his Gang of 4? But just temporarily! Gee, How do you spell political expediency or survival? )

LFP Prediction is 5 - 4 YES to the Overpass!

ENJOY THE OVERPASS TO NOWHERE !



Gateway mega-projects running into opposition
Brian Lewis
The Province
08 Mar 2009

The full impacts from two proposed Gateway-related mega-projects directly linked to Deltaport’s expansion are beginning to register at street level. As of Friday afternoon, for example, a small group of protesters were on their fifth day of a...read more...

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