The following message appears on the Centre Stage Facebook page:
“C.V.I. Centre for the Arts – Nanaimo will not accept a 3-year Licence of Use and fixed funding of $11,350 for managing Nanaimo Centre Stage at 25 Victoria Road, Nanaimo”
C.V.I. Centre for the Arts – Nanaimo is prepared to manage the building and the theatre within, until June 30, 2014, to honour the bookings already confirmed.
Good News For Nanaimo Taxpayers
With this recent announcement by Nanaimo Centre Stage that they will no longer manage the building at 25 Victoria Road, perhaps now city hall will do the only sensible thing and get Nanaimo Taxpayers out of this Money Pit!
It is only a few months ago this council opted to blow 200,000 tax dollars replacing loose stucco on one end wall of this albatross of an 'asset' the taxpayers should never have been saddled with in the first place. Any councilor who supported that waste should be remembered come this fall when we head to the polls.
It makes no difference what the end use of this building was; it is simply not worth anything like the $800,000 or so we have thrown into it. In fact staff and council should be held accountable somehow for ever throwing this kind of money into that old building. The building has an assessed value of less than $300,000 on the last tax assessment.
Looks like the hobby-lobbyists huffed-and-puffed but council finally, and I mean finally called their bluff and said NO MORE MONEY!
ReplyDeleteWe should remember in 2008 Camilla Tang was President of Centre for the Arts Nanaimo and also President of the Downtown Nanaimo Partnership Society when she and Councillor Brennan, also on the DNPS board at the time, snagged $100,000 from the BIA and convinced the city to throw in another $360,000 to buy the 120 year old dilapidated church.
In the last six years taxpayers have contributed management fees and about $300,000 to pay for broken pipes and exterior work – with $100,000s and $100,000s more on the list to bring the “garbage” building, as one councilor called it, up to par.
With Centre for the Arts demanding and demanding, but repeatedly not willing to do much in the way of fundraising, or perhaps running the rentals a little better - taxpayers wish them – GOOD RIDDENCE!
It is time now for the City of Nanaimo to sell the building, never give-in to blackmail from any group ever again, and put whatever money it can back into taxpayer’s pockets.
Don't let the door hit you guys on the way out!
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