To the editor:
With the municipal election upon us, it is time to review the actions of the mayor and city councillors.
As we look at the destruction of Marina Park, several questions arise. To start with have the members of the waterfront development committee really served the citizens of Thunder Bay?
The waterfront development committee has stated that the infill of the harbour expanded the recreation area by 9,000 square metres at Prince Arthur’s Landing.
But did Marina Park really get bigger? In July 2009, the City of Thunder Bay officially sold 2.65 acres (10,724 square metres) of land in the middle of Marina Park to the developers for the purpose of building a hotel and condominiums
A little math shows that the public space in the park actually shrank by over 1,700 square metres.
The recreation area in the park will be smaller, much smaller, when you add the loss of several hundred more square metres of land along the new fence line.
If you look closely, you will notice that the fancy new fence was built about a metre inside of the existing fence line, apparently to keep it on city property.
The total loss of recreation land at Marina Park is over 2,000 square metres.
This is a conservative estimate, as the new settling pond required for the hotel/condo development will take out another few hundred square metres of parkland and the CN Station has been leased for 99 years, taking it out of the public domain.
There are more questions to be asked about the cost of the waterfront redevelopment.
A little more math shows the real costs of this so-called development on taxpayers.
In August, 2009, city council approved a contract for the infill of the waterfront and covering up of the docks for $8,414,164.
A couple of weeks later, city council approved a tender for the sewer and water servicing for $2,542,861.
That’s a total of $10,957,025. The city is to be paid the paltry sum of $662,500 for the land in the agreement with the developers.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the net cost to the taxpayers. The fact is that taxpayers will have paid a net amount of over $10 million to create and service land for developers not to create additional recreation land.
This travesty continues. Marina Park is on a known brownfield – land contaminated by over a century of toxins from being a terminus for the railway and shipping. On Oct. 4, council will debate the costs of an additional tender for the remediation of this land, which is rumoured to be over $1 million.
Will the councillors do their job and question why the city is paying the costs to remediate this land?
Will they ask why this particular hotel development land is the city’s cost, when the council refused to pay for $300,000 to share the costs of remediating the land for a proposed Marriot Hotel at the corner of the Harbourview Expressway and Carrick Street?
Why is one hotel developer being favoured over another one?
Where were the voices of our elected representatives in these decisions?
Why did they not do the math before squandering millions of taxes on the Mistake by the Lake?
City council members of the waterfront committee are: Mayor Lynn Peterson and Couns. Mark Bentz, Aldo Ruberto, Brian McKinnon, Joe Viridamo and Andrew Foulds.
Only Couns. Larry Hebert and Linda Rydholm have questioned this dubious use of tax dollars in a depressed economy.
All citizens need to think carefully about our choices for mayor and councillors in the next election.
Can we afford to re-elect the incumbents who have saddled us with a massive new debt and given away public land that was developed for our city by previous councils?
What kind of councillors do we want next time?
Make sure your vote counts for a mayor and councillors whose decisions make sense, not nonsense.
With the municipal election upon us, it is time to review the actions of the mayor and city councillors.
As we look at the destruction of Marina Park, several questions arise. To start with have the members of the waterfront development committee really served the citizens of Thunder Bay?
The waterfront development committee has stated that the infill of the harbour expanded the recreation area by 9,000 square metres at Prince Arthur’s Landing.
But did Marina Park really get bigger? In July 2009, the City of Thunder Bay officially sold 2.65 acres (10,724 square metres) of land in the middle of Marina Park to the developers for the purpose of building a hotel and condominiums
A little math shows that the public space in the park actually shrank by over 1,700 square metres.
The recreation area in the park will be smaller, much smaller, when you add the loss of several hundred more square metres of land along the new fence line.
If you look closely, you will notice that the fancy new fence was built about a metre inside of the existing fence line, apparently to keep it on city property.
The total loss of recreation land at Marina Park is over 2,000 square metres.
This is a conservative estimate, as the new settling pond required for the hotel/condo development will take out another few hundred square metres of parkland and the CN Station has been leased for 99 years, taking it out of the public domain.
There are more questions to be asked about the cost of the waterfront redevelopment.
A little more math shows the real costs of this so-called development on taxpayers.
In August, 2009, city council approved a contract for the infill of the waterfront and covering up of the docks for $8,414,164.
A couple of weeks later, city council approved a tender for the sewer and water servicing for $2,542,861.
That’s a total of $10,957,025. The city is to be paid the paltry sum of $662,500 for the land in the agreement with the developers.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the net cost to the taxpayers. The fact is that taxpayers will have paid a net amount of over $10 million to create and service land for developers not to create additional recreation land.
This travesty continues. Marina Park is on a known brownfield – land contaminated by over a century of toxins from being a terminus for the railway and shipping. On Oct. 4, council will debate the costs of an additional tender for the remediation of this land, which is rumoured to be over $1 million.
Will the councillors do their job and question why the city is paying the costs to remediate this land?
Will they ask why this particular hotel development land is the city’s cost, when the council refused to pay for $300,000 to share the costs of remediating the land for a proposed Marriot Hotel at the corner of the Harbourview Expressway and Carrick Street?
Why is one hotel developer being favoured over another one?
Where were the voices of our elected representatives in these decisions?
Why did they not do the math before squandering millions of taxes on the Mistake by the Lake?
City council members of the waterfront committee are: Mayor Lynn Peterson and Couns. Mark Bentz, Aldo Ruberto, Brian McKinnon, Joe Viridamo and Andrew Foulds.
Only Couns. Larry Hebert and Linda Rydholm have questioned this dubious use of tax dollars in a depressed economy.
All citizens need to think carefully about our choices for mayor and councillors in the next election.
Can we afford to re-elect the incumbents who have saddled us with a massive new debt and given away public land that was developed for our city by previous councils?
What kind of councillors do we want next time?
Make sure your vote counts for a mayor and councillors whose decisions make sense, not nonsense.
Heather Woodbeck,
Thunder Bay
