Lear-ing At The New "Signature" Little River Bridge

Whew, good thing it was the Chair, Councillor Budget, in charge of that arena steering committee session that increased the cost of the East End arena by only $3.7 million (plus interest too). Can you imagine what it would have been like if some of those free-spenders on Council were in charge.

But then of course some may think that this amount is rather high considering that Council did not help out Brentwood--bad precedent you know with all of those other charities since it could open the floodgates for requests but spending taxpayer cash for a private company is OK--and had to spend hours listening about the Capitol Theatre bail-out.

Some silly people were also concerned that we did not have enough money for the emergency rent bank. Why no need to be concerned, we just took it from the community children's fund that is used for school breakfast and snack programs! Let them eat cake!

And the slow-down in the economy and the high unemployment rate with the increased demands on City social services...pshaw, we have a new CEO of the Development Commission about to be named and those new 500 IT jobs that Gord talked about this morning. I wonder in whose building downtown they are locating in? Joe's perhaps or in Chuck's former building?

After all, as Councillor Budget said "We want a premier facility in this city" [It's too bad, Councillor Valentinis, that we are not better friends with the Premier the way the folks in Lasalle seem to be. They got a $3.8M provincial gift!] You know THINK BIG and all that.

I am relieved though. Don Sadler said that "This budget has got a 95 per cent accuracy," Mind you, he wasn't too accurate on the Farhi site and his X-ray eyes weren't working too well at the Peace Beacon lands. I sure hope he is accurate on the fact that "There are no environmental issues" at the Lear site. Again, I hope the plant work they did there is not the same as was done at the Lear plant in Walker, Michigan where there was a major environmental issue. Otherwise more millions to spend.

Speaking of the Little River Bridge, I hear that the City has a BIG budget for the McHugh extension. They want to spend a lot of dollars for a "signature" bridge over the Little River to reflect the new arena and "new Spitfires". Costs go up a few more million.

Just to help out, I offer up a picture of an example that can be used. There is a Windsor "connection" if someone at City Hall wants the name of a person to call about it.

One more random thought. The Heavy Construction Association really should have sued the City over the Purchasing By-law brouhaha. If a considerable amount of capital works spending is tied up in the arena, it must mean almost no significant road or sewer work will be bid out until 2010 at least when the arena is supposedly paid off. I wonder how many City projects are on "indefinite lay-off." Is it any wonder that I am hearing that City staffers are pretty upset as well.

Remember what my mole told me that Eddie said at the Association's dinner around this time last year [[BLOG: Where's the $300 Million Already Feb 24, 2006]:

• "It was the perfect lead-in for Eddie to tell the contractors that the city has increased the capital works budget this year and will be for the next few years in order to get the "city needed" projects done now before all this infrastructure work comes to them. He told them he doesn't want them to be tied down with small city projects so that they miss out on all the big money projects."

Is he invited back this year to speak? If so, it should be fascinating to hear what he says now!

After the news about the increase in arena costs, I wanted to let my friends at the Ministry of the Environment know. I wanted to make it as easy as possible for them to do the math so they could find that more than $3.5M was to be spent so as to trigger the EA. The letter follows:

• To: Ministry of the Environment
  
  Further to my letter dated February 5 and our recent telephone call, I understood that the Ministry was going to wait until February 19 when the City was going to provide figures for the arena cost.
  
  I am sure that you have read the Windsor Star this morning about the increased arena costs in the amount of $3.7 million.
  
  The breakdown given was:
  
  Base construction costs: $47,920,000
  Site servicing costs: $6,299,145
  Contingency on site servicing: $629,915
  Fit-up costs: $4,429,200
  Contingency on fit-up: $442,920
  Building permits: $396,900
  Bonding fee: $500,000
  Architectural advisory: $200,000
  Land purchase: $1,400,000
  Land cost, excavation of rubble: $300,000
  Closing and land transfer fee: $70,000
  Financing during construction: $2,700,000
  Financing post construction: $1,500,000
  Financing contingency: $800,000
  Overall project contingency: $2,000,000
  
  As you can clearly tell, the costs already exceed by far the $3.5 million set out in the Regulations.
  
  Accordingly, please advise when you will require the City to comply with the Act and undertake the statutorily required environmental assessment.
  
  Yours truly,