Letter to the Editor
As a young reporter covering City Hall, I discovered that sewers were a big deal. City councillors saw them as a priority that deserved their personal attention.
Today, not so much. Nowadays, art galleries and expensive event centres are much more attractive.
So it wasn't surprising to me that city councillors were caught by surprise by a $1.6 million dollar sewer project in Northwood ward that came in a million dollars over estimate.
It seems today, out of sight is out of mind...until it isn't.
Sewers, in fact, should be a much higher priority. Our politicians should become experts.
More than that, we should have much more in-house expertise within city administration and the ability to do our own sewer work rather than handing it off to expensive contractors.
This makes sense when you think about how much we're going to have to spend over the next 20 years on stormwater sewers alone.
The 2016 Stormwater Management plan put the cost at 120 million dollars. That's six million dollars a year.
You add on top of that the big bills coming for the replacement of aging water lines and sanitary sewers and I think you've got a case for expanding the public works department.
I would like to see the Canadian Union of Public Employees and senior management at city hall crunch the numbers and make the case for going public instead of private and for profit.
Shane Judge
