When I started this blog, it was in response to what I perceived a lack of concern by the local media to report the local news. I made a promise to the editor of the York Regional Media group to cease my blog as soon as I saw an improvement in the amount of information and discourse provided to the public.
My opinion about the soccer club bail out is the same as many of you. I have kept my opinion to myself because of the hard work done by many others through social media that have done an excellent job at raising concerns publicly.
Understandably, the Thursday edition of the Era had very few facts about the soccer club bail out because the news was so recent and the meeting that decided on the bail out was held in secret. I was looking forward to reading if more details would be published on Sunday's edition. Unfortunately, this was not the case.
Seemingly unrelated to the soccer club bail out, the Sunday edition of the Era included a column entitled "Town can't let cost of fight deter it from Glenway battle." I use the words "seemingly unrelated" because I think these two issues are about to intersect in a big way at Newmarket Town Hall.
In a nutshell, that is the rub for the five members of Newmarket Council who voted in favour of the soccer bail out - because coincidently, their number includes the most hawkish members of the Glenway battle. Now that these five have committed $2.8 million to appease 2,700 families (and yes, that is the correct number. The 4,000 number that I've seen elsewhere is a wild exaggeration), so that they can play soccer, how much will they contribute the 700 households who are facing significant financial losses through a reduction in property value if the Marrianeville project proceeds?
Jeff Brown has long been calling for the Town of Newmarket to provide compensation to homeowners affected by the new development. Fair is fair but it begs the question: if these Council members bailed out soccer to the tune of $2.8 million, how much of a bail out will they provide to the Glenway homeowners?
Councillor Emanuel, who promised on September 5th to blog about the soccer club bail out but hasn't yet done so, would be wise to explain to his constituents what this massive commitment of public resources towards soccer could mean for their battle? Should they be buoyed by his vote or seriously worried that he spent the money that the town could have used to helped them?
The other question that I would like an answer to comes from Van Bynen's blog on the soccer club bail out. In his writing, he says the soccer club owed $2.5 million for the Newpark Soccer facility. Yet, the Town provided a bail out of $2.8 million. I'm not sure if that is a simple typo or if there is more to the numbers that aren't being made public.
I'm hearing its the latter. Important facets of the deal remain secret. I'm hearing that the Newmakret Soccer Club owed significant amounts of money to multiple parties. The more than $1,000,000 in registration fees that the club collected this spring did not pay for soccer related expenses. Those expenses remain unpaid. Instead, the $1,000,000+ was misspent by the current board. At very least, the Mayor needs to protect public money by pushing for a complete accounting of the debts of the Newmarket Soccer and how registration fees were spent in 2013.
As a humorous aside, recently the Mayor (or whomever is tweeting on his behalf) had this to say:
Tony Van Bynen rocknrollcroll Please see my Blog: vanbynen.ca. You may wish to ask Councillor Di Muccio who paid for her recent Ad.
Personally, I thought Councillor Di Muccio was very forthright in how she paid for her ad in an interview with the Era. As far as I can tell, there isn't any controversy.
I checked on the Newmarket website to find out how much she paid but that figure isn't yet available. What I did find is that Councillor Sponga paid just over $1,000 for a full page ad in the Era in 2011. Let's assume that the Era wouldn't charge different rates to different council members and that realistically, a half page ad would be in the range of $600.
Contrast that estimated $600 amount to the more than $4,000 this Mayor has publicly expensed on "gas and car washes" over the past two-and-a-half years and taxpayers can see the irony in the Mayor's tweet.
No comments:
Post a Comment