BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to 'Orillia council gives green light to ice cream trucks,' published July 18.
I find it interesting that city council gave a green light to a very non-green presence in Orillia: ice cream trucks trolling up and down city streets, spewing harmful exhaust into the air at a time when there are already several major traffic diversions sending heavy traffic, including dump trucks and other heavy machinery, spewing diesel fumes and shaking foundations in residential neighbourhoods.
Sympathies should also be extended to the owners of ice cream stands, corner stores, and grocery stores, all of whom pay business tax, and property tax to the city, or a rental to a commercial landlord. Small store owners now will have reduced sales due to competition from air-polluting ‘stores on wheels.’
Traditional businesses might feel some irritation at the unleashing of ice cream trucks, and who could blame them? I know citizens are quite fed up with heavy traffic speeding through their neighbourhoods.
Such decision making is ruining this city. Whatever, next?
Janet Houston
Orillia
