The Editor,
Re. “Police will probe $175k PoCo theft” (The Tri-City News, May 10)
I was saddened, but not surprised, to read that Port Coquitlam Mayor Greg Moore and council struggled in deciding whether to refer the $175,000 theft from the city by a former employee to the RCMP.
Why was a vote required? Council members only needed to ask themselves one question: Would I call the police if this person stole $175,000 from me? For most of us the answer to this would have been an easy “yes.”
Politicians, particularly at the municipal level, seem to treat the taxpayer as a host that can slowly, and with increasing frequency, be bled to fund ongoing budget increases. If politicians treated taxpayer funds like their own money, I suspect decisions like this would have been much easier and other financial decisions — such as salary increases beyond the inflation rate for municipal employees and managers and hiring nine new firefighters to act as pseudo-paramedics — would be looked at in a different light.
It is good that the former employee involved in the theft paid the money back but that is something that should be taken into account by the judge as a mitigating factor in sentencing if he or she is charged and convicted.
This decision should not have required a vote. The mayor or city manager should have called the police once it was confirmed theft was suspected.
Paul Martin,
Port Coquitlam
