To the editor:
This past Monday low and fixed income residents of Thunder Bay breathed a collective sigh of relief as the federal government put an end to any use of gas-tax funds for the city's proposed event centre.
These people are already on the financial edge with the increase in water rates and the already excessive tax increase voted on and we have yet to talk about what the police services board has in mind for the city financially.
I'd like to commend the five councillors who saw the financial suicide the city was about to commit and voted against continuing with the Mistake by the lake last Thursday.
I'd also like to voice my disappointment with Paul Pugh, who as a former Union Rep. should know better than to side with management on any issue.
This council is fast losing any credibility at all with the taxpaying public. It is long past time that we had an independent core review of a bloated city management that can't maintain roads, sewers, parks, maintain an reasonable cost transit system or plow snow in an efficient manner.
Now today Mayor Hobbs says that in his mind the project isn't dead and with all the money already spent it is only right to spend more on a project we clearly can't afford with our debt already pushing the $200 million mark, more by some calculations.
The mayor claims that he has had many emails lamenting the death of the project, if that is true then perhaps it is time to spend just $100,000 more and have that plebisite he had promised prior to his first election.
If a majority vote in favour then it would be the best way to settle the issue and get the city as a whole behind whatever we can afford to build to replace the aging Fort William Gardens. One thing though: don't tell us it will be a job creator, while that may be true for the brief time during its construction, we will only have to come up with another tax-funded project to fill the gaping maw that is the construction industry appetite for public money.
I hope that at the next council meeting more fiscally responsible heads will prevail and put an end to the current Mistake by the Lake.
John Brewer,
Thunder Bay
