Dear Editor,
Council has decided to spend $75,000 of taxpayers’ hard earned money to hire a consultant to create a Parks and Recreation Master Plan. For comparison, this represents a little more than the amount required to surface a kilometre of gravel road with tar and chip. This, in a township where – as mentioned in recent informative articles by Councillor John Barclay – there are 130 km of unsurfaced roads, and where the Parks and Recreation operating budget is excessive and almost as large as the Public Works operating budget. I guess there must be numerous consultants going around to all the municipalities, convincing them to generate yet more expensive paperwork, because folks, that’s all you’re going to get from this master plan, except of course, multitudes of new parks and recreation projects that will require “upgrades” to the municipal tax rates.
We already have a very well-paid Parks and Recreation staff. Why can’t they come up with a master plan?
Where’s the master plan for making sure our roads are properly surfaced? And how about a master plan to stabilize property taxes, which, when MPAC is included, are rising at exceptionally high compound rates that are well above inflation and threaten the very foundations of property ownership?
Stephen Hammond
