The mayor says the crowd was small but mainly positive at an afternoon pre-budget meeting.
The meeting, which saw more city officials and staff than member of the public, was centred around a city plan to address its projected $15 million per year infrastructure deficit. The recommended plan is to start spending $12 million per year over the next three years to start addressing that gap. If not, in the next 10 years the city could see up to 30 per cent of its roads needing total reconstruction, which will cost Thunder Bay more in the long run.
The gap is partly because of a decision by city council in 2001 to reduce capital spending coming out of the tax base by $3 million.
“That quite frankly was not a good decision,” city manager Tim Commisso told the crowd at Thunder Bay Community Auditorium.
A decade later, the city is being forced to play cach-up he said.
“Had that money been left we would be a lot further ahead,” Commisso said.
Commisso said the city wants to be straight up with the public that Thunder Bay needs to address the infrastructure gap now, which will mean a tax increase.
“So that 10 years from now the tax payers of that day aren’t saddled with an enormous burden, which is really going to get into higher costs for reconstruction of roads,” Commisso said.
While some people questioned why the infrastructure deficit couldn’t have been covered by stimulus funding that went into projects like Prince Arthur’s Landing, Commisso said that’s not what that funding was for. The province and federal govenrment wanted the money to go into long-term job creation, not just temporary construction that road-building would bring.
“We certainly would not have gotten $30 million to fix up our roads.”
Others has some more unorthodox solutions to close the gap. Former city councillor Orville Santa said the city could consider putting a toll booth on Dawson Road because of the heavy transport truck traffic. Hobbs said he liked the idea.
“Maybe we have to look at something like that,” Hobbs said.
Although he wanted hundreds to attend the meeting, Hobbs said he was happy with the discussion Tuesday afternoon. While he hopes more people will attend the 7 p.m. meeting, maybe people are happy with the proposed plan.
“If they don’t (attend) maybe it tells us things aren’t bad and maybe we’re even rosy,” Hobbs said.
