To the editor:
I’ve ridden public buses in lots of places — as well as subways, trains, taxis, ferries, even horse-drawn buggies — and whether I was in Paris or in Seoul, in Washington, D.C. or Hong Kong, on the Turkish highway to Ephesus or on I-5 going from my job in downtown Seattle to Northgate Park-and-Ride, those rides all had one thing in common: As a passenger, I paid a fare.
I find it amazing that on Whidbey Island, all people who shop here must support the bus system, not because they choose to, but because they are taxed to do so, whether they ever ride the bus or not. Providing free public transportation should not be a government responsibility.
Our economy is in trouble today because too many people believe the government —county, state, and federal — should provide all kinds of benefits, forgetting that “the government” consists of you and me, the taxpayers.
I’m tired of being nickeled and dimed to death paying for things that should be paid for by the people who use them; from bus fare to computer use and Internet access in the libraries, to the conservation education and advice proposal that our county commissioners are considering, to supporting Greenbank Farm while it goes bankrupt, to providing emergency healthcare for people who chose not to buy medical insurance, to rescuing people who overspent their credit cards or bought mortgages they couldn’t afford.
The individual citizens of America are taxed too much already to support benefits for the masses.
It’s time to say, “Collect from the people who use it.”
And don’t expect me to believe that a fare-collection program on Island Transit would cost $7.32 million in the first year alone. If so, that’s the wrong program to adopt. Shop for an alternative.
The principle of free and private enterprise which made America strong was based on innovation and ingenuity, adapting costs to meet the demand, thinking “outside the box.”
Before the livelihood of employed Americans was taxed away to give somebody else a free ride, the American economy thrived. We have to start again, at the grass roots, saying, “If you think it’s necessary, then you pay for it and you make it pay.”
Vote NO to increasing taxpayer support for a bus system that does not require its passengers to pay their “fare” share.
Anita Dragoo
Coupeville
