To the editor,
City council is now off to Round No. 3 of the AAP for a public works yard upgrade. So, several issues come to my mind. Firstly is the cost assessment; secondly is the financing proposal; and lastly is the AAP process itself.
The costing from the city website indicates a desire to borrow $90 million for the project. However, buried in those costs is $18 million for contingency, or 20 per cent of the project cost. Now, contingency usually means a failure to oversee the project and the project cost overruns. The next item of interest is $10 million for inflation between now and 2028. Now, one must admit that inflation exists, but 11 per cent in less than four years? Not even the Bank of Canada is that pessimistic. So $90 million is a wildly exaggerated number that offers no credence and a lack of project oversight and control.
Then, the project’s cost is spread out over 20 years. I guess that paying for the project over such a long period makes the cost to our taxes seem less but takes almost no regard for the interest to be paid on such a rather large sum of money.
And, lastly, we come to the AAP process. Is it a legal process? Well, yes. Is it a valid process? Heck no. It relies on the fact that government has made the totally false presumption that if less than 10 per cent of the people disagree then the other 90 per cent must agree. That’s just false.
In conclusion, I cannot come to terms with the cost assessments in many areas; I cannot tolerate the view that we’ll spread things out over 20 years; and I cannot conceive that the AAP is even remotely close to our democratic values.
J.R. Reid, Nanaimo
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