Letter: New Westminster needs to cut city staff, lower salaries

Editor:

Re: New West must cut costs, not raise taxes so much

Taxpayer Don Doyle is one of many of us homeowner taxpayers that is frustrated with the one-way free ride on city expenses.  What we would approve is the expense of contracting with a truly independent auditing firm to conduct an “efficiency study” on the massive salary and benefits cost of all city employees.  And I don’t mean just a comparison to other cities, as they all play that “tit for tat" game. How many “duties” could be consolidated with fewer employees? How much red tape can we reduce, not increase? We can’t go on ignoring this for much longer as the world comes out of a pandemic, increasing the cost of living expenses big time.

And I would want to know how many of our city employees lost a single paid hour of wages during the past two years because of the COVID virus?  A solid question, as we know for sure how many tens of thousands of non-government workers lost major income; some lost everything and not a peep of publicity on government salaries being reduced or eliminated.  And if we have to cut services down a few days a week like we had back in the 1950s, then so be it.  We lived with it then and can do so again.

Please write in to this newspaper if you support these concerns that Mr. Doyle and I have brought up.

Bill Davis, New Westminster