Revoke Partnership with VTA
– a Truly Bad Deal for SBC
Revoke Partnership with VTA – a Truly Bad Deal for SBC
Editor,
COG’s Executive Director said at the “stakeholders” meeting I attended that so long as the General Plan Revision conforms with the COG regional transportation plan (“County Transportation Plan”), then COG will approve it. To put it in a legal phrase, that’s bassackwards. If COG can dictate the terms of the General Plan Revision regarding transportation and land use, then COG has supplanted the SBCBOS as governing body for our county. No statute, regulation or court decision authorizes COG to oust SBCBOS from its historic jurisdiction. The voters of our county elected, carefully upon due deliberation, our supervisors, to uphold and enforce our law upon their sacred oath, with a trust earned every working day. Neither COG’s executive director, nor VTA’s, are authorized to dictate transportation and land use terms for the General Plan of this county, and its periodic revisions. It’s the elected supervisors who have the voters’ authority entrusted to them; not COG’s unelected executive director.
We need SBCBOS to take a proactive leadership role and defend the county residents against the undermining of our elected leaders‚ power and authority. Furthermore, there are so many mistakes, errors, flaws and incorrect assumptions in the COG County Transportation Plan, as I’ve pointed out numerous times to COG’s directors, that SBCBOS would be foolish to follow such a damaging transport plan.
Following COG’s plan, which applies ultra-socialist VTA boondoggles for transport, will plunge this county into the insolvency mode facing Santa Clara County and VTA.
Nearly nine years ago I first saw COG’s directors‚ negligence in conducting the transport functions for our county, and numerous times said so during COG’s many subsequent meetings.
In 2002 I asked COG to answer some basic, fundamental questions, the answers to which would reveal the insanity of COG’s foolish (VTA boondoggle wastefulness) policy. The reply that I received from COG was that they did not know the answers. Five years later I asked COG again. In 2007 they say that they still don’t know the answers to these fundamental questions.
So, if COG cannot answer simple questions about their spending of taxpayers’ dollars, then COG is not competent to dictate the terms of the SBC General Plan Revision, which COG’s executive director says they will do.
Here are the questions that COG is ignorant of from 2002 to today:
n Percentage of seats moved empty (load factor for carriers of passengers)
n Costs in total for moving empty seats
n Total empty seats moved each year
n Pollution and health care costs caused by COG transporting empty seats
n Percentage of buses running empty
n Losses incurred by COG due to running empty buses
If in five years COG cannot answer these basic questions, then they ougnt to be abolished, dissolved as the Gilroy Dispatch Editorial Board said we should do with VTA. Worthless agencies milking taxpayers, claiming deficits when in fact they have no need to exist.
Joseph P. Thompson, ESQ.
Tres Pinos
