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Recreation plan not fit for Neebing: Rydholm

Neebing Coun. Linda Rydholm will vote against the recreation master plan when it's presented on Monday at the first city council meeting of 2017.
Linda Rydholm
Neebing Coun. Linda Rydholm intends to vote against the Recreation Master Plan when it's presented to council on Monday. (TbNewswatch file photo)

THUNDER BAY -- Consultants will present a recreation plan intended to roll out over a generation at the first city council meeting of 2017 on Monday but one councilor claims the plan can't see the forest for the trees. 

Although Neebing Coun. Linda Rydholm anticipates council will accept the long-term recreation master plan, she intends to vote against it because it doesn't include a practical road map.

"I can't vote for something that is an obscure vision without step-by-step plans and funding," Rydholm said. 

The plan calls for twin ice pads at some city arenas while closing or repurposing others, notably the Neebing Memorial Arena. 

The arena was built in 1970 with community funds upon the announcement the former municipality would be amalgamated into the new city of Thunder Bay. 

"They didn't want to give that pot of money to the city so they spent it," she recalled. "One of the things they built was the Neebing Memorial Arena so there's definitely emotional attachment to that hockey arena."

Rydholm said her constituents voiced their concerns at a ward meeting Rydholm held in November to discuss the plan as well as through telephone and email correspondence. 

Beyond her concerns over the urbanization of recreation services, she pointed out the plan will operate on the presumption the Fort William Gardens will be replaced with the proposed Thunder Bay Event and Convention Centre, an investment the federal and provincial governments have both ruled out under existing and planned infrastructure programs.

Even should the event centre come to fruition, Rydholm argued, the plan will require funding for fields, rinks and gymnasiums in an era where senior levels of government are more apt to fund infrastructure to cope with socio-economic challenges and responses to climate change. 

"Somehow, a future council has to come to grips with fiscal reality," she said. 

"You can’t decide to go twin hockey pads when you don’t know what you’re doing with the existing Fort William Gardens. There might be some better solution, even. Whether we partner with say, the university? Right now, there’s not federal money for a convention centre, not even just for an event centre. The priorities are way different. They’re for transit, for housing, for environmental needs." 





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