Time for Braun to just move on

Dear editor: City installs barriers to downtown begging, Herald, A1, May 16

The downtown circus has gone on long enough.

Paul Braun’s defiance of city bylaws supported by kind but misguided citizens is past due. Mr. Braun should pay his negotiated fines, consider himself lucky and move on.

He has cost Penticton thousands of dollars in man hours and placed an additional burden on apparently scarce police resources not to mention the cost of those services. All funded by Penticton taxpayers.

The business people in the downtown area pay taxes, generate jobs and most work hard for a living. They also work within the system whilst paying those taxes. They don’t sit on a street bumming and expect us to take care of them or rush to their defence when they defy the law.

Once these bylaws are proved unsustainable Penticton will be overrun with ne’er do wells that expect to have “their rights” protected at the steep cost of taxpayer rights.

Downtown business owners, even though in my opinion their taxes should be higher, are entitled to have their needs met by the city.

Any residential taxpayer that feels sorry for Mr. Braun should ask himself whether he would be willing to have panhandlers sitting on their door step every day. If they are then they should invite them to their neighbourhood, then they and their neighbours can undertake the responsibility of serving the panhandlers’ needs.

I have heard many times that you can make $50 to 60 an hour panhandling: This is tax free; so scrounge for a couple of hours a day, then you can go have lunch at the soup kitchen. Beats working for minimum wage.

We should be concerned about the working poor. We should be concerned about the medically unfit that are doomed to live on starvation government handouts.

As Steve Boultbee says (Herald, Letters, May 16) we should be concerned about abused women and children that need and