Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Brew
What do you mean by bolded part? The citizens are wealthy or is there a civic reserve of some type waiting to be used?
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The City as a corporation is wealthy, multi-pronged taxing regime that has the populance and business tax base in the City of Calgary to do many things and does do many things. It's not a judgement, but more of an observation.
I have been told by the city they have 65 lawyers on staff. Which tells me they may not do so many things well, but thats 10-15 million a year in in-staff legal, not to mention they have Bennett Jones on contract for litigation. Probably another 10 million a year. Just in lawyers alone that's a new field house every ten years.
The reality is the land is contaminated and owned by the City, so the cleanup has to occur. It's a legitimate expense and the liability exposure for not doing so is huge as areas across the river have tested positive.
Then there has to be a budget and a plan to activate or purpose use this cleaned up grade A land to create more tax revenue for the city. Whether they sell the land, rent the land, use portions of the land to sell to be developed, it makes a lot of sense for the municipality to do this if the cleanup is a necessity.