Take Transit Away From Municipal Councillors

Burlington Pays GO Over $3.3 Million Per Year
The transit file is a complicated one and it can quite be difficult to handle. As an example, most people don’t know that the City of Burlington has to pay GO over $3,300,000 per year because we have 3 GO Stations here. (http://cms.burlington.ca/Asset1995.aspx) The $3.3 million is the amount it was in 2002. I haven’t looked up the current amount. Halton Region used to pay GO but they downloaded most of the cost to the Cities that have the GO service. That money comes out of the Burlington Transit budget. Personally, I think Burlington’s share of the expense is higher than it should be but, I don’t know how the Region came up with the splitting of the costs.

Sometimes I think transit should be handled by outside experts and not a Municipal Council. Probably the majority of the Municipal Councillors in Ontario don’t use the system or even fully understand terminology but yet, they make decisions on how to best to allocate the millions of dollars we put into it. Education matters can also be quite difficult and costly. That’s why we elect Trustees to make decisions on how to spend that budget. They devote all their time to working on that one file.