concerning the LVEC.I hope each councillor will read the following carefully, as a number of shocking revelations were made at last night's council meeting. I have the tape and I have the quotes.
Mr Downes rightly expressed his concerns about a number of potential stakeholders being left out of the Stakeholders Advisory Group. Mr Stoparczyk poo-pooed this concern as the Advisory Group is not a decision-making group - council is. Well, that may sound true, but could you imagine council ignoring a set of recommendations and a collaborative view put forward by the Advisory Group. I doubt it very much. In other words, the recommendations made by the Advisory Group will weigh very heavily on the decisions made by council. So it is important that a proper cross-section of people be on this Advisory Group, just as Mr Downes iterated.
But there is a more troubling aspect to the above, and no one picked up on it. The LVEC Steering Committee is going to handpick the members of the Stakeholders Advisory Group. Do any of you think for one moment that the public will not be concerned about such a handpicking approach? There is no doubt in my mind that every person picked will show the selection committee that he or she is in favour of the LVEC on the Inner Harbour. How convenient!
Mr Stoparczyk then criticized a previous speaker on his monologue about rezoning, and said that discussions about zoning and Official Plan Amendments is premature. Perhaps Mr Stoparczyk should have read Report 24 wherein it states on Page 5, Section (i) -
(i) The target date for submitting the proposed rezoning changes and the Official Plan amendments is the week of February 20th, 2005.
Well, Mr Stoparczyk, I think someone just slipped another one by you. Isn't it correct that in order to submit proposed rezoning changes and the Offical Plan amendments to the Planning Committee, the applications need to be completed by staff? And don't the applications need to be supported by all the studies being carried out at this time? And isn't it true that the Traffic and Parking study won't be ready before the middle of March? So why wouldn't councillors be baffled and confused about what is going on regarding rezoning and Official Plan amendments? Is there a chance that the public is a bit alarmed about this February 20th date?
Mr Stoparczyk went on to say that during the Block D proposal, council waited for all the studies to come in. He went on to say when the studies were all in, most of council decided to vote against the proposal. The truth is, most councillors waited until about a month before election day in November 2000 before they voted against Block D. Councillors left citizens frustrated until the very end!
When Mr Gedge was asked to explain some of the statements in Report 24, he said, in regard to having received the Environmental Report - "what I wrote there isn't totally correct - there will be some environmental issues". More alarm bells. We have a sumission to council that is incorrect! And we have been warned that there will be tons of contaminated soil that will have to be removed from the site! How comforting.
Then Mr Gedge is asked by Ms Pater if the private sector could come in and build, own, and run the LVEC, and leave the city to look after the building and running of a multiplex. Here is his answer. "Absolutely not. There's not enough money in these facilities - as well, there's not enough money in the multiplex facilities for the private sector to come in and do the entire work - in the final analysis, it is the municipality that's going to be on the hook for the debt financing - that's just the reality of the situation".
It is my feeling that when enough people in the city of Kingston read this letter, there won't be any interest left in hearing anything else Mr Gedge and the Steering Committee have to say.
Bruce Todd