The Editor,
Re. "Fire hall on front burner after controversial vote" (The Tri-City News, May 6).
I would like to express my outrage at the way Port Moody city council has handled the Number 1 fire hall replacement issue. I was one of many who refused to participate in the recent referendum as I perceived it to be a shirking of one of the main responsibilities of a civic council: to provide essential municipal services to a community through efficient, long-term planning and fiscal responsibility.
The need for a replacement for the fire hall has been known for a long, long time. Rather than plan and budget for this accordingly (a job for which council is paid), Port Moody council chose to allot finances elsewhere on numerous pet projects.
When it became apparent the city did not have sufficient funds allocated for the fire hall replacement, council chose to defer the difficult decision of funding to the taxpayer through a referendum, a politically more palatable approach so council could then say that the borrowing of the funds was at the wishes of the people.
Once council did not get the resounding positive response it had hoped for, the referendum became, effectively, an opinion poll and council demonstrated a complete disregard of the intent and purpose of the referendum process. Shameful.
More recently, Mayor Joe Trasolini stated that the fire hall design on which the referendum was based is now considered to be unnecessarily large and that a smaller design should be looked at and examined by a newly struck committee. If council had got a resounding "Yes" vote, would it not have proceeded with borrowing the money on this design? Why were the citizens of Port Moody asked to vote on a design plan that is only a few weeks later considered to be too much? This shows a complete lack of competency on the part of council.
As this is an election year, it appears Port Moody council was afraid to make the difficult and potentially unpopular decision to borrow money for the fire hall an election issue. Instead, it chose the more expensive option of conducting the referendum prior to the election rather than the more financially prudent approach, which would have been to conduct the referendum as part of the regular election process. Well, Mayor Trasolini and council, it has become an election issue, and I will remember in November how council has bungled this issue from the start.
To Port Moody's firefighters, I would like to express how much we as a community appreciate and value your work and understand your needs. It is a shame the same cannot be said of the city council
D. Hall, Port Moody
