Hats off to San Benito County Board of Supervisors, who had the
wisdom and courage to stand-up to the Valley Transportation
Authority.
Editor,
Hats off to San Benito County Board of Supervisors, who had the wisdom and courage to stand-up to the Valley Transportation Authority. There’s not a single elected official in Santa Clara County who would – with the possible exception of Mountain View City Councilman Gregg Perry – even though the Santa Clara County Grand Jury indicted the VTA for gross fiscal irresponsibility and governance flaws, and after it was named the worst-run transit agency in the US in the MIT study of all the nation’s transit agencies.
Why should we follow the advice of the indicted, the worst? The VTA’s prodigious wastefulness on Light Rail – heavy Socialism – and BART show their utter contempt and disdain for highway safety improvements like the Don Pacheco Y.
The VTA has revealed their highest priorities, and motorists’ safety is not among them, based on what they do and how they spend, not on what they say. Sure Santa Clara County elected representatives want SBC to impose new taxes – they receive the vast majority of the tax dollars that SBC, and 36 other rural counties, pay.
The donor counties like SBC would be fools to enact higher taxes on their citizens just so that donee counties, like LA, San Francisco and Santa Clara, could waste more billions on empty transit buses, Light Rail, BART, Caltrain, and, next, the bullet train. The San Benito County Board of Supervisors ought to lead the rebellion against VTA-type wastefulness, which forces motorists to pay 99 percent of the costs of transit system riders’ rides.
It is high time for us to have a Citizens Policy Advisory Committee, and give a voice to private-sector solutions for our transport policy. Please join me in asking SBC supervisors and the Council of Governments to redress this governance flaw. We must not repeat the wasteful mistakes of VTA. Caveat Viator!
Joseph P. Thompson, Tres Pinos
