To the Editor,
Re: Property owners wonder how tax dollars spent, June 30.
This is what must be done to give Victoria Crescent the new street lighting it was promised in 2005 by the Business Improvement Association which it neglected to do: Take $255,000 from the DNBIA’s budget and just do it. It is that simple.
There also must be a city investigation or police probe to determine where the lighting money went.
The News Bulletin says in the DNBIA’s 2006 financial report (called Downtown Nanaimo Partnership Society at that time): “Victoria Crescent street lighting was approved over a period of years and installed in 2007.”
Yet to this day the new lighting has not been installed. Where did this money actually go?
It seems most of the association’s money goes to everything but physical improvements to our city centre, which is why it was created.
Street lighting is a city issue and money from the taxpayers should not have been outsourced to the DNBIA in the first place.
All that is taking place here is a second level of taxation and a second layer of bureaucracy.
One city hall is enough.
J.C. Smith
Nanaimo