My new pet peeve! Public Transport.

[Eamonn]

I live out in the sticks.

If I need a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread, I have a 3 mile round trip.

We do have four vehicles, one is four wheel drive for when conditions are not that great.

The roads are not that good, some are State maintained and other are not maintained. I''m told that funding for non-state maintained roads is just not adequate.

I pay all the little indirect taxes that go with owning motor vehicles.

Gas is costing about $2.80 a gal. I''m unsure how much of that $2.80 is tax?

I also pay a lot of money in property tax. The taxes on my home are over $6,000.00 a year. For that I don''t have a local police force, no street lighting, no public library. Yet still the roads maintained by the Township are just plain bad and when I complain I''m told about how much snow removal costs!!

More and more of the State roads seem to be toll roads and the tolls keep creeping up.

Now I hear that these tolls are being used to help pay for public transportation.

There seems to be a big fuss about a 20% increase in public transit fares.

I choose to live where I live.

I knew where the milk and bread shop were located.

But these public transit users are really getting up my nose!!

Don''t they see what a gallon of gas costs?

Don''t they know that the bus driver is being paid and the cost of having a employee is not cheap.

The cost of a gal of gas has doubled in the past five years.

Why? should I have to subsidize public transportation?

Of course I could walk to and from the store for my gal of milk and loaf of bread -Well I could if there were side walks and street lights and maybe if it didn''t seem like taking my life in my hands.

We have just as many needy and poor people in our area as they do in the areas served by public transportation.

The elderly people don''t have the luxury of hopping on the next bus. They rely on taxis or family members.

Something seems out of whack!!

Eamonn.

[Joni4TA]

That does seem rather silly. I, too live in a very rural community, though we have the luxury of an asphalt road and there is ONE street light at the end of my road *about a 1/4 mile away* down by the community mailbox.

 

We don''t have public transportation within at least a 20-mi radius and our raods are riddled with potholes and many are still dirt and if we''re lucky - roadbase. Our property taxes are high as well. I think ours are like $4,000 and nearly half of that goes to the local school district. I''d be a little peeved if I was told my taxes were going to subsidize public transportation.

[evmori]

I''''m unsure how much of that $2.80 is tax?

 

About $0.65.

[Eamonn]

"About $0.65."

Filling up all four cars takes about 50 gals of gas.

On the news last night the public transit users were crying about a weekly ticket from where I live to Pittsburgh going up $15.00 r/t a week.

For me to take the Turnpike (18.9 miles) it costs $1.25 each way - $12.50 a week. Seven cents a mile just to use the road!!

A trip to our Council Service Center on Turnpike 66 (8 miles) costs $1.50. almost 19 cents a mile!!

This is daylight robbery!!

Ea.

 

[eisely]

Living in a suburb of a major metropolitan area I use rapid transit almost every day just to get to work. I also used rapid transit when we lived in Oak Park outside Chicago and in the Washington DC suburbs in Virginia. Having said that, I too object to the level of subsidies for little used services. In Contra Costa County in the San Francisco Bay Area we have a county run bus system whose buses run mostly empty.

 

Many folks see public transit as a panacea for a variety of ills, including global warming allegedly caused by humans. Good public transit renderes positive benefits but I doubt if many systems would pass any basic market test based on real usage.

 

One of the positive aspects of owning a home in California is the cap on property taxes passed by the people in 1978. Taxes cannot exceed one percent of assessed value without local voter permission.

[Beavah]

Ah, Eamonn, you are one of da few who are catching on...

 

If you''re a politician these days, yeh don''t raise taxes. Raising taxes is bad.

 

So instead you raise fees. Put fees on all kinds of things. Increase fees on roads and bridges. Increase campsite fees, hunting license fees, auto license fees. Put "demonstration program fees" on camping in what used to be free federal lands. Claim that the fees just go to the park/forest ... then take away all their original funding.

 

Every government level is doing it.

 

''course business has caught on, too. What are the ATM fees up to these days? Having to pay money just to get our own money back from the bank! Imagine what it would cost ''em to hire old fashioned bank tellers if we all stopped using the boxes.

 

Beavah

 

[packsaddle]

We have to drive 4 miles r/t for that milk and I don''t come close to thinking this is rural. I pay about $1200 property taxes for a 4000 sq.ft. home. The streets are nicely-paved and lighted. The neighborhood is safe and family oriented. Public transport comes within a couple miles of our home (at the milk, actually) and goes through several towns. It is free to ride (paid out of taxes and grants).

My friend, you need to move South and leave that heathen yankeeland. BTW, there are quite a few former Brits living in our neighborhood and in the nearby sailing club.

[OldGreyEagle]

What''s that they say in the south, sure it''s hot, but at least it isn''t a dry heat?

[scoutldr]

"What are the ATM fees up to these days? Having to pay money just to get our own money back from the bank!"

 

No offense to the Beav, but I keep hearing this whine, and I don't understand it. I am a member of a federal credit union. Use of their ATMs are free to members. Only if I want to use the ATM of a bank of which I am not a member/customer do I get charged a fee. I feel this is a reasonable price to pay for the convenience of not having to drive 20 miles to my own credit union. It is even more of a convenience when I am out of town. Why do people expect a bank to provide them a free service? If it's not YOUR bank, it's not YOUR money. They are loaning you theirs until they can get it from YOUR bank. I do know of a bank that charges fees for everything...every check you write, every teller transaction, every savings deposit. I choose not to bless them with my business.

 

In this area, public transportation is non-existent. You can't even get a Taxi unless you call and make an appointment. It would take me 2 hours to get to work by bus, and I would still need a car to get me to the closest bus stop (park-n-ride). I can drive myself in 30 minutes, and my employer provides a free attached parking garage, so I don't even have to go out in the weather. I am free to leave work when I want, without being tied to a schedule. They are trying to get a "light rail" system started, but it would only be one straight line ... 98% of the population do NOT live within walking distance of a station. I guess you gotta start somewhere. If we had a system like the DC Metro, I would use it all the time.

 

[OldGreyEagle]

Actually, it may be fun to compile a list of "services" or industries that rely on public funding even though they are held out as private enterprises such things as agricultural "Soil Bank" programs. Milk and related dairy product price support, Healthcare and I am sure a flock of others

[packsaddle]

Heh, heh, OGE, what was that sign Harry Truman had on his desk, "If you can't stand the heat, be willing to pay high taxes" or something like that.

[Ohio_Scouter]

Talk about raising fees! Well, it looks like the City of Philadelphia has found a new way to raise fees. Check it out below.

 

Posted on Thu, Oct. 18, 2007

 

City hikes Boy Scouts' rent by $199,999 over gay ban

By Joseph A. Slobodzian

Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

 

 

The Boy Scouts of America's refusal to bend its rules to permit gay scouts will cost the organization's local chapter $200,000 a year if it wishes to keep its headquarters in a city-owned building on Logan Square.

 

Representatives of the Boy Scouts of America's Cradle of Liberty Council were notified that to remain in their 79-year-old landmark headquarters, they needed to pay the city a "fair market" rent, Fairmount Park Commission president Robert N.C. Nix said yesterday. Currently, the rent is $1 a year.

 

The city decided on the rent proposal after it was unable to reach a compromise with the local scout council in talks that have gone on since May.

 

"Once we know what the Cradle of Liberty Boy Scouts want to do, we'll probably want to weigh in with the city about how to proceed," Nix told the park commission.

 

Barring a resolution, the Cradle of Liberty Council - about 64,000 scouts in Philadelphia and parts of Delaware and Montgomery Counties - must vacate the property at 22d and Winter Streets after May 31.

 

"It's disappointing, and it's certainly a threat," said Jeff Jubelirer, a spokesman for Cradle of Liberty Council, referring to the rent's impact on the scouts' chances of staying on the site.

 

Jubelirer said $200,000 a year in rent "would have to come from programs. That's 30 new Cub Scout packs, or 800 needy kids going to our summer camp."

 

Nevertheless, Jubelirer said, scouting officials will ask City Solicitor Romulo L. Diaz Jr. for details on the real estate appraisals that yielded the $200,000 rent figure.

 

Cradle of Liberty officials have said they could not renounce the scouts' long-established policy of not opening membership to atheists or openly gay people without running afoul of their charter with the scouts' National Council.

 

City officials have said they could not legally rent taxpayer-owned property for a dollar a year to a private organization that discriminates.

 

The land belongs to the City of Philadelphia but has been leased since 1928 for that token sum to the scouts, who built the landmark Beaux Arts building.

 

That lease came into question only after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2000 in a New Jersey case involving an openly gay scout who was barred from serving as troop leader.

 

The high court in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale ruled, 5-4, that the scouts, as a private organization, have a right of "expressive association" under the First Amendment to set their own membership rules.

 

The scouts have long required members to swear an oath of duty to God, and their rules prohibit membership by anyone who is openly homosexual. For that reason, scouting officials initially greeted the Supreme Court's ruling as a victory.

That mood quickly evaporated, however, as local government officials around the nation began reexamining long-standing preferential relationships with scouts.

 

Unlike the scouts, public officials are also bound by a line of Supreme Court opinions barring taxpayer support of any group that discriminates.

 

In Philadelphia, officials wrestled for months for a way to let the scouts remain at their longtime headquarters.

At one point in 2005, the city and scouts seemed poised to agree on a policy statement adopted by New York scouts. That statement, while not renouncing the bars against atheist or gay members, affirmed that "prejudice, intolerance and unlawful discrimination in any form are unacceptable."

 

But last year, Diaz wrote Cradle of Liberty Council officials to say the suggested policy statement could not be reconciled with the city's own anti-discriminatory fair-practices ordinance.

 

Again, both sides began trading proposals. That ended May 31, when City Council voted 16-1 to authorize ending the lease with Cradle of Liberty Council.

 

The resolution was introduced unexpectedly by Councilman Darrell L. Clarke and passed, 16-1, with no debate.

 

Both Clarke, a Center City Democrat whose district includes the scouts building, and Diaz, a prominent member of the city's gay community, said they hoped the resolution would spur talks to resolve the dispute.

 

Nix said yesterday that those talks had apparently failed, leading to the lease proposal.

[packsaddle]

This needs to be in that old Cradle of Liberty thread. OGE, you listening?

[OldGreyEagle]

Unfortunately Moderators may only move threads from one section to another, not specific posts in threads to other threads.

[packsaddle]

For some reason I can't edit these things.

Sorry, OGE, I didn't understand. Maybe Ohio_Scouter will repeat that message in the other thread and bring it back to life.