OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to an article regarding potential changes to Orillia Transit, published Feb. 14.
I am outraged that the mayor is trying to dramatically reduce the city’s transit service.
We live in a growing city and a tourist city that has both a college and university and many, many thousands of students that rely on this transit service to get to and from school as well as their part-time jobs.
Does the mayor understand that transit services the most vulnerable in the city including the seniors and all of the seniors homes?
Does the mayor not care that reducing the transit service will mean an extra hour-a-day commute for many of these hard-working people, many of whom use the bus as their only means of transportation that they can afford?
The transit service needs to be increased, certainly not decreased.
The mayor talks about the transit service and how it costs the taxpayers money, but does he understand that so does the police service and so does the fire service and so does garbage rim removal? Transit is an essential service and, of course, it’s funded by the taxpayers.
To come into office as a newly elected mayor and instantly talk about cutting $300,000 out of the transit service when, in my opinion, it needs to be increased is ridiculous.
The transit service is currently outsourced by the city to the lowest bidder and the buses are very, very old and break down continually, and in the summer most of them don’t even have air conditioning that works because the transit service is so starved for funding.
I’m asking the mayor to rethink this idea of slashing the transit budget by $300,000 and realize that not everybody has a house on the water and can afford luxury vehicles to travel to and from work.
Gregory Ridgley
Orillia
