Editor: I am not a member of the reunification group referred in the Tuesday, July 19 issue of The Times, but the article evoked the following thoughts.
How arrogant of 91原创 City council to take a position, before a formal request for a study is even presented.
This council is disdainful of its citizens. Council stated that unless it sees a business case, it will not entertain the issue. It also suggested that a name change would make it go away.
Does this not beg the following questions?
1. How can a business case be presented without a study?
2. In passing a motion before a presentation is ever made, does it not make one wonder that perhaps council is a little concerned at what the results might find?
3. Is this the same council that says a study might cost $30,000 or $40,000, yet allows a street project to go over budget by $1.2 million? Is this the same council that spent $25,000 or so on a small lot subdivision study for south 91原创 City, when a sampling of the neighbourhood by staff could have saved the time and money?
4. It鈥檚 all well and good to point out the virtues of the casino money and the promptness of response from the hall 鈥� but is a four square mile city sustainable into the future?
5. Do we have enough of a tax base to pay for the replacement of our 50-year-old infrastructure?
6. As staff cost is a huge part of our budget, would there be substantial savings if staff services weren鈥檛 duplicated?
7. If we continue to go it alone, will our taxes (already higher than the Township) increase even more?
8. Would it even be advantageous for the the Township to merge with the City? It could be that it wouldn鈥檛 make sense.
I don鈥檛 know the answers to these and many more questions that a study might reveal, but it would seem to me that we ought to know.
Perhaps some fresh energetic younger members of the community will run this fall and have the courage to ask these and many more questions. Or perhaps there is a remote chance that those in office now will take their collective heads out of the sand and commission a study that would resolve this issue once and for all.
Its time that this council faced the issue, rather than attempting to bury it like an old bone in the back garden.
Don Woode,
91原创 City
