To the Editor:
A lot of folks in the community wonder, how does Mendocino Railway’s privately owned excursion train qualify for millions in taxpayer government subsidies. The answer – they work relentlessly propagating the fiction they are a real railroad that provides needed passenger and freight service. The truth is they are nothing more than an amusement ride with overpriced tickets.
Why do they perpetuate this fiction? The answer is – the fiction enables them to get millions in federal taxpayer subsidies and take advantage of legal privileges robber baron railroad owners acquired by hook and crook going back more than hundred years.
The pursuit of corporate welfare over the years has paid off. They were awarded a $21 million federally subsidized loan and an additional $14 million dollar taxpayer funded grant just in the last three years. So in a time when our federal government is running record breaking deficits and cutting back on food, education, and healthcare programs for working families, Mendocino Railway has been raking in the corporate welfare at the taxpayer’s expense.
Now the railway is going around trumpeting its entitled to all that corporate welfare and special privilege, because of a decision by the federal Surface Transportation Board. But anyone that bothers to read the Surface Transportation Board’s decision immediately sees, rather than affirming the railway actually provides passenger & freight service, it simply states that until the Board decides otherwise the railroad can continue to claim its is a federally authorized railroad.
What Mendocino Railway fails to acknowledge in all its propaganda, is that California’s Attorney General disagrees with the Surface Transportation Board’s ruling and as filed an appeal in the courts to overturn the decision.
One way Mendocino Railway leverages its use of taxpayer money is by lobbying the Mendocino Council of Governments (MCOG) to designate the Skunk Train as “public transportation” in the county. Of course, the reality is the Skunk Train hasn’t provided transportation of passengers or freight between Fort Bragg and Willits in over a decade. Nevertheless, Mendocino Railway keeps making promises, like it has for over ten years, that its going to reopen its collapsed train tunnel and upgrade its dilapidated tracks back to a level that would allow safe passenger & freight railroad service soooooooooon!!!! Always promises, and more promises, but under the ownership of Mendocino Railway the Skunk train hasn’t run a train between Fort Bragg and Willits in a decade.
Meanwhile, they keep collecting federal subsidies at the taxpayer expense. And even worse, the railway has been trying to take other people’s property even when the owners don’t want to sell it to the railway.
Well it’s time to end the fiction! And as a step in that direction, many county residents have asked MCOG to delete the Skunk Train tourist ride from the County’s transportation plan. Why? Because the Skunk Train is in fact, a tourist amusement ride – not real transportation for passengers or freight between Fort Bragg and Willits.
The transportation plan is what federal and state agencies rely upon to decide where to invest public transportation dollars in the form of grants and loans. Inclusion in MCOG’s transportation plan isn’t a harmless fiction. It diverts taxpayer money that could be going to fixing our roads or improving our public transit systems. Instead, the taxpayers money is being diverted into the pockets of a privately owned amusement ride.
If you agree its time we stopped this wasteful fiction, send MCOG an email and urge them to stop including the Skunk Train in the transportation plan.
-Peter McNamee, Fort Bragg
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