Dear Editor
Chuck Winslow is right. (Feb. 4: Rethink this expensive water treatment plant). Ashcroft’s intended compliance with an order from Interior Health that would put us into astronomical debt for the next 30 years is incomprehensible. Ashcroft is poor. These are the same bureaucrats who dismantled our hospital year after year, leaving us with no alternative but an hour drive to an already overburdened hospital in Kamloops, and a three hour drive for cancer treatment in Kelowna.
We’ve had no indication, other than boil water advisories during the heat of the summer, that the community is suffering gastro intestinal disorders, or worse. We’ve had no outbreaks that imperil the health of the elderly or our children. Common sense seems in short supply in that order from Interior Health.
Anyway, I can’t understand how an order from Interior Health can override the usual referendums for plans as costly as this. Do the people not realize the new equipment would not last long enough to cover the debt that will take 30 years to pay?
It doesn’t make sense. Our federal government is struggling to educate us about debt. How to get out of it. How to avoid getting into it. We are being continuously reminded in the press and by our finance ministers that the average family has debt in excess of $25,000.
This is clearly evidence that the bureaucrats are not listening to the government.
Who are we going to listen to? Every taxpayer in Ashcroft should be demanding a referendum. Sure, it costs a few thousand dollars. But compared to the millions this poor little village would be saddling itself with, that’s peanuts.
Esther Darlington
Ashcroft