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Parks languish under waterfront development priority

A new city report shows municipal spending on parks over the last five years fell to half of what it should have been to maintain infrastructure while the waterfront was under development.
Jana Roy
Lance Dyll, City of Thunder Bay's acting manager of budgets and long-term planning

THUNDER BAY -- The facelift to the city's waterfront has come at a cost to the rest of park infrastructure.    

Setting aside new waterfront development, over half of city's parks and recreation infrastructure has been reduced to "very poor condition," according to a new category in the city's annual Infrastructure Report Card.

The report lists the new "land improvements' category with an 'A' grade in both "condition versus performance" and "needs versus funding" assessments. A memorandum attached to the report, however, expresses the waterfront makes up 35 per cent of the total replacement value of the entire category.

When the waterfront value is excluded, 55 per cent of the remaining fences, parking lots, sports fields, parks and docks are listed in "very poor condition."

Without the waterfront, the category's performance grade would be listed as 'F.' 

Assets throughout the category received an average of $8.5 million per year in municipal investment between 2011 and 2015 but only an average of $1.6 million per year was spent on assets outside the waterfront. The memorandum suggests $3.4 million should have been spent on those assets per year, more than double the commitment the city made over that five-year period.   

Coun. Iain Angus called the memorandum "a sad tale of woe" as he inquired over administration's plan to improve those figures.   

"That's a big fail," Angus said.

"The big question of the night is, what are we going to do about it? What's the plan and more importantly, when are we going to get the plan? How much of that plan is included in the 2017 capital budget, if any?"

Director of Revenue Rob Colquhoun committed the category will be represented in the budget, whose first draft will be presented next week. 

"Yes, there will be items in the capital budget that will work toward a strategy to reduce the deficit," Colquhoun said.

The report came in the same meeting where city council voted to adopt the Recreation & Facilities Master Plan, a generational blueprint that will change the focus of recreation to respond to demographic and lifestyle changes over the next 15 years. 





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