Is that the right decision?
The intent of this letter is to reach out to Kings County property taxpayers regarding the recent decision Kings County Council made in not awarding the contract to Roscoe Construction for the new municipal building located in Coldbrook.
One has to keep in mind the past two councils supported moving forward in having our new Kings County Rural Municipal Building paid for by Kings County rural property taxpayers to be located in the county, instead of building a new Kings County Rural Municipal Building paid for by Kings County property taxpayers located within in the Town of Kentville.
The other consideration is Kings County property taxpayers have already paid more than $1.5 million for land, engineering, site designs and land development on the Coldbrook site. These were all decisions made by our previous council.
The provincial government has purchased the existing municipal building in Kentville for $4.2 million. Their plan is to renovate the existing municipal building into a Justice Centre. Their original plan was to build new with costs estimated at $25-30 million in 2010. It is estimated that more than $15 million provincial taxpayers money was saved by this renovation project instead of building a new justice centre, as well as millions of dollars in future savings to Kings County municipal property taxpayers.
There were seven tenders for this Coldbrook site with one local company - Roscoe Construction winning the contract for $5.6 million. Roscoe’s bid was $1 million below budget and the nearest bidder. All other bidders were from outside Kings County. Roscoe would be using local Kings County tradespeople, supervisors and would be buying their materials locally here in Kings County.
This was a shovel ready project but the new council decided not to honour the contract due to lack of public engagement and staff issues. It should be noted here there have been numerous public meetings to get citizens engaged in this eight year planning project. Most meetings were held in the existing municipal complex as well as two public meetings in Kingston and one in Avonport as well staff have been involved since the beginning in 2009 leaving the reason for not approving this contract very questionable. New Mayor Muttart and some new inexperienced councillors, along with the Kings Coalition group, seem to want to promote the location of the building within the Town of Kentville.
Should Kings County property taxpayers have their property tax dollars spent on a new Kings County rural municipal building within the Town of Kentville instead of the Coldbrook location which is located within Kings County to whom Kings County property taxpayers pay their property taxes to?
In my opinion the answer to this question is very obvious but it seems this new council has become obsessed with the Town of Kentville instead of supporting its own Kings County businesses and residents located in the municipality whom they are supposed to represent. In the meantime and in addition to, hundreds of thousands of Kings County property taxes are be also being spent or wasted in delaying this project.
Seems that this Kings County Council has developed a misled urban mindset mixed up with philosophical academia and topped off with the lack of common sense on this issue. This misled obsession with the Town of Kentville could send over $8 million of Kings County’s hard earned property tax dollars to the Town of Kentville instead of investing in our own rural municipality.
Hopefully, Kings County property taxpayers will speak out and voice their opinions on the construction and preferred location of our new Kings County Municipal Complex.
Phone, e-mail, Twitter or Facebook your mayor and Kings County councillors and speak up against locating the new Kings County Municipal building in the Town of Kentville.
Dick Killam Halls Harbour