Comment 32171

By M. Desnoyers (anonymous) | Posted June 27, 2009 at 08:09:25

The sad reality of this recent decision to invest more taxpayer funds in HIA is that it affirms the old adage that " A fool and his money are easily parted". With these two new investments it brings the total new capital injected by the City of Hamilton since the Tradeport agreement was signed to $30 Million. In the spectator article yesterday it was stated by Mr. McCabe that it is a requirement of the lease that Hamilton buy the lands for the purpose of runway expansion. This is in fact true but virtually all of the residents of this city wouldn't know that because the full and complete text of the agreement has never been publicly released. The lands which were purchased by Council last year for the purpose of the "fuel farm" were outside of the lease agreement but taxpayers were asked to foot the bill. Councillor Mitchell has on numerous occassions publicly stated that he has fought for this fuel farm on the basis that a pipeline would be built and huge amounts of truck traffic would be removed from the roads. We now find out that the pipeline won't be built because it is not economically feasable so the trucks will remain. We as a community have been duped.

During the worst recession in arguably seven decades council has seen fit to invest in an industry that is reported to lose over $10 Billion this year on the heels of almost $9 Billion in 2008. Who knows what the total taxpayer investment has been in HIA when you consider Federal and Provincial monies as well. The "economic engine" of HIA has DIRECTLY netted city coffers approximately $600 thousand dollars and in the same period the operations of HIA has netted the shareholders of Tradeport over $9 Million.

When will this madness stop.

Michael Desnoyers
Co-Chair
HOD

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