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By Bob Bratina (anonymous) | Posted November 07, 2010 at 10:11:46
The new Dr. Davey School was to be built on the City's preperty at Beasley Park, with the old school then demolished and the land cleared for open space. When the City determined there was contamination in the park that would have to clean up at the City's expense, the required land swap with the Board of Education was turned down. Contamination included things like arsenic and lead, and in some cases above maximum acceptable concentrations.
When the proposal for an $8 million dollar pedestrian bridge across the QEW came forward in 2007 I argued that according to staff a simple bridge could be built for $1 million, or an accessible bridge for $3 million. We could save $5 million dollars which could be applied to other infrastructure spending such as helping to clean up contamination from this inner City Park. This was not recommend by staff.
In 2008 we had a facilitated meeting to determine how to apportion $8 million dollars that became available for public works. Council unanimously approved my proposal to apply a Provincial brownfield grant to clean Beasley Park and build a new Community Centre. This high-needs inner City neighbourhood was served by a windowless concrete block building about the size of two storage lockers.
The design and construction was done in consultation with the Board of Education, which enabled us to maximize the limited available space and allow for convenient access to certain areas of the Centre and the school. This is in fact a model that the Province is promoting to achieve stronger cooperation between municipalities and school boards.
The Provincial grant enabled the City to pay for the cost of remediating contaminated materials removed during excavation for the school and community centre, in the amount of $97,000 dollars.
This is one example of many showing how we as a Council were able to work collectively to produce a very positive outcome for a high needs neighbourhood and the taxpayers of the City.
Statements made here and elsewhere about how we as a Council function are misleading and measurably untrue. The voting records clearly show this.
Bob Bratina
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