Editor:

BART is adding insult to injury for East County taxpayers by proposing a parcel tax to replace BART cars. What’s a BART car? East County is getting something called “eBART,” so we shouldn’t have to pay a parcel tax, right?

Wrong! All BART counties would be asked to vote favorably on the parcel tax, the parcel amount which is unknown, but the total would be in the neighborhood of $1 billion. Amazingly, the BART Board had not set up a reserve fund to help pay for such a massive replacement (what’s a reserve fund?).

The rub, of course, is that we in East County have been paying BART taxes since the beginning, but we are not getting real BART, while Livermore fights over where to put their shiny new real BART station, and previously non-BART county Santa Clara moves forward on their real BART plans.

All this, on top of what some called a political ploy to offer BART riders a short-term discount to use up an unexpected surplus of funds. That idea was sent down the terminal siding. And then there is the matter of the golden parachute paid to the general manager, whom BART tried to fire secretly, found themselves in hot water and ended up paying a million bucks to get her out the door. So, there’s a couple million dollars that could have gone to East County, or to a reserve fund for car replacement.

At this point I’m for squelching the parcel tax idea for East County residents. Seems to me that BART owes us.

Kermit Sveen, Brentwood