Build performing arts centre, not new pool, downtown

I’d like to respond to both letters to the editor in the Saturday, March 3 edition of The Citizen.

The performance space at Vanier Hall served this town well 40 years ago but definitely does not fit now as W.D.M. Barteluk did a great job of explaining.

The city has just purchased the perfect suitable location for a performing arts centre at the Days Inn location. This lot is large enough to encompass an extralarge performing arts centre with underground parking built in. Also this would complement the Civic Centre, the museum and the downtown core of businesses.

My thoughts on the Four Seasons Leisure Pool would be to repair and do a complete reno. Then you still have a pool that will have decades more use for our expanding city population. You don’t knock your house down and build a new one if your house is structurally, electrically and mechanically sound. The Four Season Pool fits this criteria based on a city report published in September of 2016 .

As for what can we do to push this forward, we need to gather more support from the community. A properly-developed petition is maybe our quickest path forward to success on this matter.

Also there are a lot of citizens here that should be making the time to support and complement these ideas. This is time sensitive material so I’m encouraging everyone to be proactive and write The Citizen or phone Mayor Lynn Hall and voice your disapproval of this going to a referendum without an offer made to the YMCA.

Twice that I know of in our illustrious past the YMCA has put forward proposals to the city for a pool to be built at their location.

They lost out to the aquatic centre location but now the next location should be built at the YMCA.

Responding now to Svend Serup’s letter, “Referendum was no mandate for a new pool,” I can’t agree with you enough that there can be no mandate especially when they gave no obvious choices. Also I did not say that there should be two choices only every conceivable option should be on the referendum question. And they omitted the obvious choice of a partnership with the YMCA.

A win-win for both sides and we the users get the best bang for our loonies and toonies.

The information they gave you, Svend, on the $20 million the city would save with their involvement is only a entry figure as they have a lot more to gain from a pool there than the costs for their involvement in running the operation with their own people.

The city has wiggle room for a better deal. After all, it’s our cost to build which they can’t afford, so royalties would have to be figured into membership increases and usage giving the city higher returns year after year.

You’re absolutely right, Svend, that a nine per cent of eligible voters turn out is another good reason to void this referendum vote completely.

More reasons that this referendum is unacceptable and should be done again at this fall’s civic elections where there will be a higher number of voters casting ballots. Miles Thomas Prince George