Remember the debate about Langley City's casino when all their supporters (mainly $ in their eyes city councillors) including at that time the local now retired Langley top cop said there would be no increased crime if the city's casino went ahead and that there was no proof of increased crime statistics around BC casinos. Guess again. Richmond taxpayer's are in a public outcry over the intense and ever increasing and even violent casino related crime scene there.
Today's Province writes about Richmond Councillor Bill McNulty lobbying for a 1% tax hike to add 6 more cops to help out with the dramatic increase of violence, assaults, shootings and loan-sharking based out of the Richmond River Rock casino resort. They are talking about a dedicated police unit for the River Rock casino too. How much of this is happening in Langley City's casino and how far behind Richmond are the City's casino related crime expectations?
Meanwhile in little old Langley some of our Township politicians reversed themselves on police funding recently when they voted in our all time historic tax hike that added more cops to help out Langley City in their increasing crime problem at Township taxpayer's expense. The author of both last year's and this year's ~5% Township tax hikes is the most prominent councillor to have reversed himself on adding these cops for the city courtesy of you the Township taxpayer. Expect the tired old line "I ran on public safety as my platform and will not reduce police services" excuse from this Councillor and others. These same politicians first said they would hold off and not approve adding this increased taxpayer tax burden of more cops because Langley City is still being subsidized by the Township for cop costs and essentially our new cops would also be increasingly sucked in to responding to city crime at Township's expense.
This Editor believes that a year or two ago Cllr. Kim Richter made a motion to review the police sharing agreement and move to sever the agreement and go it alone to probably no seconders! Of course the ole boys never did so and since then the City has severed tons of parks & rec agreements that will be costing us millions more of taxpayer dollars while city residents still get free sudsidized use of our pools and the like. The Mayor Alberts council slate did a superb job of jaw dropping on this one since these Jenuises never even saw it coming. Go back to sleep boys.
Keep in mind that the City is still doing a stellar job of dragging their feet in negotiating a better financial police sharing agreement with the Township. Equally the Township Mayor and Council are doing an equally traditionally stellar job of just doing nothing on the issue as usual and spending more and taxing us more as usual. Way to go boys.
Each and every year Township taxpayers are estimated to be paying $700,000.00 and climbing to subsidize the Langley City policing needs. This has been going on for 3 or 4 years. Do the math on the cumulative costs to Township taxpayers. But then again we are all used to paying more like $3,000,000.00 instead of $800,000.00 for a grandstand fiasco not to mention our now traditional annual ~5% tax increases and our target goal of "10 years for 77% tax Hike!)!
LFP predicts that this Editor will still be writing about this Township/City negotiations on cop sharing at the same time as Harper's Conservatives swing into actually addressing the global warming solution in 2050. Peter Fassbender the much more astute Mayor of Langley City must be smiling all the way to the bank. More power to him. He's doing his job well for his citizens and doing it very well indeed. Unlike our Mayor Alberts Council slate whose knuckle dragging solution to everything is to tax, spend and borrow us to death. We wrote about the police funding inequity quite a few times before most recently here with more details. So see you again on this topic in six months. Why? Just because it will still be there!...
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