North Cariboo residents will be asked for permission to borrow up to 8 million dollars to renovate the swimming pool at the Quesnel Rec Centre.
The North Cariboo Joint Planning Committee is also applying for 18 million dollars to the Canada/BC Infrastructure program, and the total cost of the project is expected to be in the 20 to 25 million dollar range.
The vote wasn’t quite unanimous however.
Jim Glassford is the CRD Director for Area I…
“We just went to the people four years ago, asking for a 26 dollar increase on their taxes for the arena. Well the arena is just barely getting started and now we’re going to go right back to them and ask them for 30 dollars.”
Glassford says at some point you have to put a cap on it.
City Councillor Ron Paull, on the other hand, felt that they couldn’t say no…
“My thought process is that I’ve got warm feet on this issue, not hot, not cold, but warm feet. We’ve just come off a referendum for both the new arena and the public works facility, but I think we’ve got to be sure we don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. If we’ve got an opportunity to get 25 cent dollars on a grant for a major pool renovation as opposed to facing 100 percent of renovation costs which are inevitable, that building is coming up to 40 years old, I think that we owe it to the taxpayers to determine whether or not we can go to referendum, and the only way that we can go to referendum is to pass first reading on a borrowing bylaw at the regional board in Williams Lake.”
In the end Paull says it’s the taxpayers who will decide anyways.
The deadline to apply for the funding is January 23rd.