SUSPICIOUS STADIUM FIGURES

I am a resident of HRM's District 7 and am writing to offer an opinion on the proposal for the sports stadium in Shannon Park.

Regarding the proposal itself, I have reviewed the document that is posted on the Halifax website and in particular, Section C which deals with the cost estimate. My area of experience and expertise is in project development and execution.

I want to highlight that the estimate being presented is extremely preliminary, and although it is broken down into some detail and looks well-developed on the surface, the numbers themselves are given as an “order of magnitude.”

Therefore, the numbers are not even at a Class 3 level and, in addition, the proponent has only included six per cent construction and six per cent design contingencies. I'd expect to have contingencies in the 20 per cent range with an "order of magnitude" estimate, and this leaves me suspicious about what else is missing within these numbers. The point is that council should regard these numbers with great care — it would not surprise me to see them grow hugely if this proposal proceeded any further.

There should be no public money for such an enterprise. There are enough real-life examples of how high the risk would be and it is a scary prospect to see references in the proposal to the public providing loan guarantees.

We have so much more to do in this wonderful city to improve our quality of living, and squandering public money on such an enterprise is not one of them. And I am sure that city staff have identified a very large body of work that we need to pursue to meet climate change targets and which will require very significant resources. This type of thing needs to be our top priority.

In short, I am vehemently opposed to Halifax providing any financial support to the proponent, whether it is in the form of direct cash investment, time payments, deferred taxes, etc.

Ian Tillard, P.Eng, Halifax