Value for tax dollars.
It has been a Barrie council strategic priority for years.
But it’s a goal Barrie needs to remember throughout the year, not just at budget time when council is trying to sell a tax increase.
This weekend is the start of the summer festival and patio season in Barrie and we need only look along Dunlop Street to see an example of a poor decision by the city: the Mady Centre for the Performing Arts.
The theatre cost taxpayers about $5 million and for the honour of putting his family name on the building for 22 years, developer Chuck Mady pledged to pay Barrie $500,000. He didn’t make good on his deal and pro-rating what he paid, Barrie plans to take his name off the building at the end of the year.
(One option could be to put “Your” or “City” in the four-letter space left vacant by “Mady”, since taxpayers paid the majority of the costs.)
But undoubtedly the city is working on finding another sponsor.
But before we jump into the sponsorship game, let’s look at the city’s sportsplex in Midhurst. Anyone know the name of the 1500-seat stadium where the Baycats play? According to the Baycats, it’s the Coates Stadium, while the city’s website calls it the Schmidt and Shaw Stadium. The city’s webmaster can’t keep up with the name that keeps on changing.
And again, the sports complex comes with its own debt that city taxpayers dealt with several years ago as community fundraising efforts fell short.
On the flipside where taxpayers fork out cash for a promise of a good to come, the city’s track record is not much better.
About seven years ago, Barrie gave Georgian College $5 million towards its health and wellness building, on a promise from the college that it would have one of its faculties, most likely the fine arts, move downtown. The $68-million project, which garnered $48 million in federal and provincial cash, opened almost five years ago and still there is not a speck of the college’s fine arts ink downtown.
Now Barrie is committing another $5 million to the college’s next upgrade.
As well, Barrie is spending $5.2 million on creating a festival spot in the heart of downtown – Memorial Square, sorry, Meridian Place – with a promise of $750,000 over a decade from the credit union. It’s a cheap advertising deal that has taxpayers extending a line of credit to the Meridian Credit Union, which likely has the cash now, if not later, and can well afford to pay.
Barrie would tell you that getting money upfront isn’t how sponsorships work.
But you’d think the city would have learned it shouldn’t be taking chances with taxpayers’ money or it shouldn’t be having taxpayers step up to the plate to pinch-hit when fundraising falls flat.
