5 per cent hike is indeed too high

Dear Editor: Congratulations on your excellent editorial “5 per cent too high” (Herald, Feb. 20).

You nailed it, especially regarding council’s intention to double the cost of its communications department. If their idea of ‘communications’ is to Tweet out silly little duplications of announcements already advertised by various community organizations, businesses, or featured in the local news media, then there’s definitely something wrong with their thinking. (Sounds more like a “make work” project to me.)

I’ve always felt that within any level of government (Feds, provincial and municipal including RDOS) duplication of anything means wasted effort, at unwarranted costs.

You also nailed it regarding the infrastructure deficit they should have been dealing with and instead they’ve turned north-bound “Downtown Eastside” Main Street Penticton into a disaster.

Visitors from out-of-town must ask themselves ‘What the Hey?’ when they’ve suddenly found there’s nowhere to go if they’d been cruising down the centre lane. I bet even their GPS is confused!

Further to your mention of increased utility bills, I’d like to point out that this occurred at a time when pensioners had to wait five weeks between paycheques near the end of Dec. 2016, and Jan. 2017.

Yes, pensioners do budget accordingly (we’re not stupid), even though it was over the extremely cold winter Christmas season! It’s even more of a challenge if your income is less than $20,000 annually.

But no one could see the 165 per cent increase in gas bills from December’s 28 days and January’s 34 days hitting them in the face when they least expected it.

I certainly took exception to Mayor Jakubeit’s condescending “explanation” in his recent column published in The