BY COUNCIL MEMBER TOM BERG – At the end of this month my email address – tberg@honolulu.gov will be history /inactive . . . so if you want to stay in touch, please consider using my personal email address – which is tomberg00@yahoo.com
There were over 30 measures over the two-year term that I served you whereby I was the only NO VOTE – the only one to vote in opposition. Some of the (8 yes to 1 no vote) items where I took a stand in opposition were:
HISTORIC TAX CREDIT – why is it that for certain homeowners whose property is valued at over a million dollars only have to pay $300 a year in property taxes? I tried to stop this injustice.
CENSORING FREE SPEECH – a talk radio host made a joke on the air – and the other 8 councilmembers decided to use government resources to attack free speech – and I wanted no part of it. Get the gist of it by clicking here.
RAISING YOUR SEWER RATES – if you think your water/sewer bill is high now, watch it get worse over the next six-years as I was the only member of the council to vote no to the rate increases and argue that monies need to go into fixing our sewer and water lines instead of into the rail boondoggle.
REDUCING BUS SERVICE/CUTTING ROUTES – another example of how the council saw fit to scavenge off of the bus to make the rail finance picture look good. I voted to stop the bus cuts and wanted to enhance bus service, not cut it.
RAIL; BONDS, ATTORNEYS, CREDIT, FUNDING, ART STATIONS, HART – a few years from now, when your property taxes are raised for rail, the GET rail surcharge extended, the rail noise is more than you were told, no one wants to live or work near the rail noise, ridership is so low because folks have to stand for the entire journey and it takes longer on the rail than if on an express bus, transit stations are adorned with art costing millions while parks and roads fall apart, lack of security for riders, 17 thousand jobs promised to build rail that never transpired above the 600 currently used, iwi displaced, runs on electricity derived from oil rather than clean energy as hyped, hundreds of thousands of dollars paid on interest payments alone to float bonds, and rail overall did not improve traffic conditions, please then, after it is all said and done, remember my no votes and why I voted no to rail. You have been lied to, deceived and swindled. This rail project is the biggest con job of all time . . . from the State Legislature still taking its 10% cut off the top on the GET rail surcharge – clearing $100 million in profiteering scheme thus far, to contractors being paid $10 million a month to not build rail while the archaeological inventory survey is being executed. The debt ceiling was raised, line of credit created, percentage of all transit funds gouged, and on and on to make rail appear/seem afloat financially . . . and it is not even running yet! I leave you with this one video on the topic – please watch – only two minutes long:
And if you want to see the latest rail project failure in action, something we are duplicating, click on the YouTube below for the eye opener:
Councilman Tom Berg | Honolulu Hale | 530 S. King Street Room 202 | Honolulu, Hawaii 96813
TEL: (808) 768-5001 | WEB: www.councilmanberg.com | E-MAIL: tberg@honolulu.gov