More Money Spent On Hotel Deal

City Council Spends

$19,000 On Hotel Study

At last night's city council meeting Mayor Ruttan and Councilors Unger, Holdom, Sherry, Johnstone and Pattje agreed to pay PKF consulting another $19,000 for a hotel feasibility study update.

Councilors Kipp and Bestwick opposed the motion which I presume will be explaining the feasibility of adding a hotel downtown to facilitate the convention centre. There was zero discussion on the motion so few details were explained supporting the staff recommendation. It would seem that city staff feel an updated study is needed to attract the interest of people who 'might' have an interest in a hotel. It would seem the study done in 2004 resulted in no one building a hotel, and given the current economic state you would have to wonder what has changed for the better?

This is yet another small example of how council demonstrates their inability to quit spending money on dust collecting studies. Is a downtown hotel adjacent the conference centre feasible? Ask the private sector and banking sector who currently have no intentions of investing in such a project. That advice is free, and just as valid as yet another money wasting study.

A more suitable study might be what can be done with the conference centre to eliminate the $1,000,000 per year burden it is on taxpayers of Nanaimo. I would also like to see the original study which shows this conference centre being anything but a huge drain on taxpayer resources.

I would be even more interested in seeing the study which was done on the feasibility of Millennium and company of being able to deliver on the $3,000,000 we paid them for a hotel which never materialized. Also a study showing the assets that Millennium was putting up to secure their performance end of the agreement with the city would make for interesting reading.

Will taxes ever actually quit going up? Bike lanes to nowhere and pointless studies are one clear way of insuring taxes will also have to keep going up. It is about one year to the next election, now is the time to start paying attention to what YOUR city councilors really stand for and whether or not they deserve your support next year. Deciding on who to vote for by only paying attention to what is said at election time, results in pretty poor choices being made. Paying attention to how councilors and mayors spend your money AFTER being elected is the only way to make a truly informed decision at the ballot box.

We need to all do our part to make democracy work. It will NOT work if the electorate at large does not take a continuing active role in the process between election campaigns. The future of our city is far too important to be left to the politicians and city staff alone.