I am adamantly opposed to any possible tax increases going into general revenue where any government (NDP or Liberal) will mismanage them. We don’t need tax increases. We just need much better management of revenues.

If we must have tax increases, I want them directed to firm and untouchable predetermined purposes, such as building or upgrading schools, hiring more teachers, improving hospitals and diagnostic and treatment modalities, hiring more nurses so that more operating rooms can open and waiting lists for surgery can be reduced or eliminated, building better facilities to treat and house people with mental illness (which will greatly reduce homelessness, police and court expenses), etc. Dedicate those new taxes to needed projects exclusively.

It should be obvious by now that governments don’t know how to manage tax revenues, and that unless any tax increases are locked tight for a specific purpose, those extra funds will be mismanaged on hare-brained and unnecessary projects like the building of the airport-Pat Bay interchange instead of one at McKenzie.

Common sense and good management should trump ideologies in government. Politicians’ “bright” or partisan ideas of what we “need,” as opposed to what we really need, should be disregarded.

And each year, I want to know what my tax increase achieved, down to the last nickel.

Ana Porzecanski

Victoria

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