Quote:
Originally Posted by morgin
This just feels so poorly handled from a media/optics perspective at this point. I guess who am I to say what will result in the best deal for everyone, but to me, this is a totally unnecessary one-sided public negotiation where they appear completely out of touch with current public perspective. Why are they even talking about best offers and plan A and plan B at this point? The communication bungles are why this project feels like a total rush job, which is insane given how long they've purportedly been working on it.
If you want public funding, don't treat the public like morons. Treat them like stakeholders and make them privy to your information. Are there legitimately no other sites that work? Do you know exact total project costs including contamination cleanup? Do you have a good idea of what sort of infrastructure improvements will be necessary? Do you know costs of those? Public funding means this entire project should have its books opened up as it would be for any other funding partner. If you want to do this by only releasing select information that is deemed palatable for the public, then self-fund it. No other investor would think of handing money over without disclosure, why should the public be any different if tax money is being asked for at the same level that the owners are willing to contribute.
Ridiculous. There was no reason for them to have gone down this combative sales pitch route making veiled references to there being no future with the status quo and "seeing what that would mean" when we haven't even received a clear sense from them WTF makes this site so good and what exactly they want us to build aside from some overtures of it being cutting edge next gen [insert more superlatives from KK]
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I agree with everything quoted. Frankly the whole situation is starting to remind me of the last provincial election. Ken King is doing exactly what Jim Prentice did: just keep telling people over and over that there's no other real choice economically so shut up about the details and just do what I say. The longer this "negotiation" takes the more likely it is that I think we'll see the same public reaction as in the election too: the public decides to do anything other than what is being touted as "the only real option."