posting
03-06-2007, 01:51 PM
Jamie Swift, the author of the followings article provides an alternative view of the LVEC development.
-- Kingston Electors
A revolting development: Big Rink boosters steam-roll over all objections to get it built
Independent Voice - progressive independent community press
By Jamie Swift, March 2007
http://www.independentvoice.ca/images/2007/03/RStephen_LVECSite.jpg
Information about the Big Rink’s cost overruns
was deliberately kept secret until after the
municipal election. (Photo by Renée Stephen)
Once upon a time, during the run-up to an election, a notorious politician got into a quagmire that would eventually drive him from office. Something happened during that 1972 campaign, but the voters didn’t discover it until later.
When the citizens and opposition politicians did learn the truth, even a desperate series of lies and deceptions couldn’t keep the man from having to resign, his integrity shredded. One of his political allies asked the fundamental question. “What did the president know?” demanded one Republican, famously, “And when did he know it?”
The president was Richard Nixon. And the scandal, of course, was Watergate. It was a disgrace of such magnitude that others are routinely labelled with the ominous suffix “-gate.” (Jean Chretien’s Shawinigan shenanigans got the tag Shawinigate.)
Now Kingston has its own mess, with the citizens bitterly divided over how to react to “LVECgate.”
Last month, members of the recently-elected City Council learned that, in the early days of the civic-election campaign, the City received an independent auditor’s report indicating that the LVEC (a.k.a. the Big Rink) was in some trouble. The KPMG report said that the project budget was incomplete and inconsistent with actual commitments, and that the City had insufficient capacity to manage the project. It was an eerie flashback to the same auditor’s similar assessment of the Grand Theatre project earlier last year.
The damning report on the Big Rink arrived at City Hall almost two months before the November election. The crucial information was available to some people before the final contract with Ellis Don was rushed through, before construction on an undersized lot at King and Barrack began.
Instead of letting the voters — who paid for the auditor’s report — know about the crucial fact that the project was already over-budget before anything more than the infamous shovel was in the ground, a person or persons unknown chose to keep it from us. What’s more, it took two months of persistent requests by our current elected representatives, along with the news of a $4.3 million cost overrun to surfacing, to learn of the report.
The question before us is the same one that bedevilled Richard Nixon: What did mayor Harvey Rosen know . . . and when did he know it?
Only Rosen and Glen Laubenstein, the man he hired to run the civil service, can answer that question.
* * *
In the immediate aftermath of this news, the political firestorm over the Big Rink was immediately re-ignited. While many citizens worked themselves into a lather about the possibility that the Big Rink might get killed, others were wondering whether Rosen will eventually go down in history as the Richard Nixon of local politics.
The Build It Now! crowd got into high gear when rookie councillor Vicki Schmolka, worried that Rink costs will escalate further, put forward a motion to cancel it. Schmolka was backed by Bill Glover; both were elected in districts previously represented by Big Rink backers.
As soon as this motion was made, the boosters began a frenzied clamour. I got a flavour of the debate when I listened to a radio broadcast aired on a pop-music station — owned by prominent downtown businessman John Wright, who also owns property adjacent to the Big Rink — that has for years been ridiculing anyone critical of the looming white elephant. (A complaint has finally been filed with the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).) Schmolka was discussing the issue with Ken Wong, a longtime Big Rink backer who had served on Rosen’s original quickie task-force that got the project rolling.
(Readers will recall that group of local worthies. They claimed that the Rink could be built for under $30 million if only we sold off the Memorial Centre to developers and dedicated the tax take on the former green-space to building the Rink on the waterfront. Even the former, developer-friendly Council was forced to back away from that scheme, but instead of rethinking the locale they voted to jam it into its current spot to keep its downtown business backers happy. The cost is now $46 million . . . and climbing.)
The debate between Schmolka and Wong was lively. Schmolka, who was labelled an environmental activist by local media and shunned by business interests during the election campaign, argued that the Rink’s spiralling costs will raise taxes. Wong, a business professor who maintained that he already pays more than his share of taxes, disagreed.
“Taxes are not the issue,” he said. “The issue is, frankly, quality of life. This is not a family-friendly place.”
The professor, who hasn’t often been seen at local anti-poverty events, also said that Schmolka’s ideas were “a perfect formula for a cycle of continued poverty” — this in response to her insisting that Kingston needs to concentrate tax dollars on making Kingston a greener place that would attract twenty-first century “Creative Class” jobs [see sidebar].
Schmolka countered by pointing out that, instead of badmouthing Kingston — the business elite still maintains its shopworn line that this is a place that just can’t get anything done — the Big Rink boosters should put their money where their mouths are. They could underwrite the Pentagon-style cost overruns themselves rather than dumping the extra load onto beleaguered citizens.
She suggested that the Springer interests, owners of much downtown property and the local Ontario Hockey Association (OHA) franchise that signed a sweetheart deal with the City as principal Big Rink tenants before the last election, could give up some of the benefits under that contract to help the City manage the costs. The Springers’ response to the renewed controversy was to threaten to take the Frontenacs out of town if their Rink doesn’t get built.
According to Wong, the “problem is management.” He insisted, correctly, that it was unfair to expect an overworked City civil service to manage a complex project on top of all its other responsibilities.
“It’s not a management problem,” responded Schmolka. “It’s an honesty problem,” — this in apparent reference to the Nixonian tactics employed in the run-up to the election. Wong did acknowledge that Kingston now faces a “trust issue.”
* * *
Honesty. Management. Trust. Surely important issues. But the fundamental issue here is politics past, present, and future.
The previous Council was beholden to local developers and big property owners. (Rosen’s contributor list is due to be released by the end of this month.) It managed to ram the Big Rink through at meetings where the boosters showed up in “Build It Now!” T-shirts. We’re about to pay for the rush job.
The Rink — badly located, poorly planned, and shakily financed — will no doubt go ahead despite Schmolka’s motion. People figure the thing is too far along to kill. But interest charges will rise and so will taxes. Parking costs will also jump, menacing the broader downtown. At the time of writing, the design is not even complete and there’s neither site plan approval nor a building permit. No one can guarantee what the final cost will be.
Kingston’s citizens will end up paying even more for a facility that will benefit a favoured few. Boosters like Wong figure that it will be a development catalyst even though more sophisticated urban analysts know that arenas do no such thing. [See sidebar.] So we’re going to be stuck with the thing.
Kingston’s current Council has been handed a poisoned chalice in the form of the Big Rink. It will now be harder for them to find tax dollars for what we really need. Basic infrastructure, both physical (sewers and sidewalks) and social (affordable housing) will get short shrift. Creative green projects that save energy and really do make a community more attractive to investors will be harder to fund. This is unfortunate at best, tragic at worst.
Cities are perfect laboratories for tackling the really important issues. We could be following the example of Utah’s capital, where retiring mayor Rocky Anderson has just completed Salt Lake City Green. The community had aimed to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions 21 percent below 2001 levels by 2012 — the equivalent of Kyoto. It’s exceeded that goal, six years early. That city is at 148 percent of its goal — a 31 percent reduction below 2001 levels.
So it’s all the more reason for people to start asking Harvey Rosen: What did you know and when did you know it?
Jamie Swift is a regular contributor to Independent Voice.
Sidebar: Stadium economics
During the recent election, Harvey Rosen spoke favourably of the work of urban-affairs theorist Richard Florida. One wonders just how familiar he is with Florida’s work . . .
At a time when genuine political will seems difficult to muster for virtually anything, city after city across the country can generate the political capital to underwrite hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in professional sports stadiums . . . The most recent studies show that stadiums do not generate economic wealth and actually reduce local incomes. And ponder, for a moment, the opportunity costs of these facilities. Imagine what could be accomplished if the hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on university research or other things that actually generate economic wealth — or even the fine-grained neighborhood improvements and lifestyle amenities that attract and retain talented people . . . Why are most civic leaders unable even to imagine devoting those kinds of resources or political will to pursue the things that really matter to their economic future or to people?
— Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class (http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0465024777?ie=UTF8&tag=indepvoice-20&linkCode=as2&camp=15121&creative=330641&creativeASIN=0465024777)
Preferred citation: Jamie Swift, “A revolting development” in Independent Voice, volume XVI, number 2, March 2007. Damian T. Lloyd, editor. Kingston, ON, Canada: PiC Press, 2007
-- Kingston Electors
A revolting development: Big Rink boosters steam-roll over all objections to get it built
Independent Voice - progressive independent community press
By Jamie Swift, March 2007
http://www.independentvoice.ca/images/2007/03/RStephen_LVECSite.jpg
Information about the Big Rink’s cost overruns
was deliberately kept secret until after the
municipal election. (Photo by Renée Stephen)
Once upon a time, during the run-up to an election, a notorious politician got into a quagmire that would eventually drive him from office. Something happened during that 1972 campaign, but the voters didn’t discover it until later.
When the citizens and opposition politicians did learn the truth, even a desperate series of lies and deceptions couldn’t keep the man from having to resign, his integrity shredded. One of his political allies asked the fundamental question. “What did the president know?” demanded one Republican, famously, “And when did he know it?”
The president was Richard Nixon. And the scandal, of course, was Watergate. It was a disgrace of such magnitude that others are routinely labelled with the ominous suffix “-gate.” (Jean Chretien’s Shawinigan shenanigans got the tag Shawinigate.)
Now Kingston has its own mess, with the citizens bitterly divided over how to react to “LVECgate.”
Last month, members of the recently-elected City Council learned that, in the early days of the civic-election campaign, the City received an independent auditor’s report indicating that the LVEC (a.k.a. the Big Rink) was in some trouble. The KPMG report said that the project budget was incomplete and inconsistent with actual commitments, and that the City had insufficient capacity to manage the project. It was an eerie flashback to the same auditor’s similar assessment of the Grand Theatre project earlier last year.
The damning report on the Big Rink arrived at City Hall almost two months before the November election. The crucial information was available to some people before the final contract with Ellis Don was rushed through, before construction on an undersized lot at King and Barrack began.
Instead of letting the voters — who paid for the auditor’s report — know about the crucial fact that the project was already over-budget before anything more than the infamous shovel was in the ground, a person or persons unknown chose to keep it from us. What’s more, it took two months of persistent requests by our current elected representatives, along with the news of a $4.3 million cost overrun to surfacing, to learn of the report.
The question before us is the same one that bedevilled Richard Nixon: What did mayor Harvey Rosen know . . . and when did he know it?
Only Rosen and Glen Laubenstein, the man he hired to run the civil service, can answer that question.
* * *
In the immediate aftermath of this news, the political firestorm over the Big Rink was immediately re-ignited. While many citizens worked themselves into a lather about the possibility that the Big Rink might get killed, others were wondering whether Rosen will eventually go down in history as the Richard Nixon of local politics.
The Build It Now! crowd got into high gear when rookie councillor Vicki Schmolka, worried that Rink costs will escalate further, put forward a motion to cancel it. Schmolka was backed by Bill Glover; both were elected in districts previously represented by Big Rink backers.
As soon as this motion was made, the boosters began a frenzied clamour. I got a flavour of the debate when I listened to a radio broadcast aired on a pop-music station — owned by prominent downtown businessman John Wright, who also owns property adjacent to the Big Rink — that has for years been ridiculing anyone critical of the looming white elephant. (A complaint has finally been filed with the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).) Schmolka was discussing the issue with Ken Wong, a longtime Big Rink backer who had served on Rosen’s original quickie task-force that got the project rolling.
(Readers will recall that group of local worthies. They claimed that the Rink could be built for under $30 million if only we sold off the Memorial Centre to developers and dedicated the tax take on the former green-space to building the Rink on the waterfront. Even the former, developer-friendly Council was forced to back away from that scheme, but instead of rethinking the locale they voted to jam it into its current spot to keep its downtown business backers happy. The cost is now $46 million . . . and climbing.)
The debate between Schmolka and Wong was lively. Schmolka, who was labelled an environmental activist by local media and shunned by business interests during the election campaign, argued that the Rink’s spiralling costs will raise taxes. Wong, a business professor who maintained that he already pays more than his share of taxes, disagreed.
“Taxes are not the issue,” he said. “The issue is, frankly, quality of life. This is not a family-friendly place.”
The professor, who hasn’t often been seen at local anti-poverty events, also said that Schmolka’s ideas were “a perfect formula for a cycle of continued poverty” — this in response to her insisting that Kingston needs to concentrate tax dollars on making Kingston a greener place that would attract twenty-first century “Creative Class” jobs [see sidebar].
Schmolka countered by pointing out that, instead of badmouthing Kingston — the business elite still maintains its shopworn line that this is a place that just can’t get anything done — the Big Rink boosters should put their money where their mouths are. They could underwrite the Pentagon-style cost overruns themselves rather than dumping the extra load onto beleaguered citizens.
She suggested that the Springer interests, owners of much downtown property and the local Ontario Hockey Association (OHA) franchise that signed a sweetheart deal with the City as principal Big Rink tenants before the last election, could give up some of the benefits under that contract to help the City manage the costs. The Springers’ response to the renewed controversy was to threaten to take the Frontenacs out of town if their Rink doesn’t get built.
According to Wong, the “problem is management.” He insisted, correctly, that it was unfair to expect an overworked City civil service to manage a complex project on top of all its other responsibilities.
“It’s not a management problem,” responded Schmolka. “It’s an honesty problem,” — this in apparent reference to the Nixonian tactics employed in the run-up to the election. Wong did acknowledge that Kingston now faces a “trust issue.”
* * *
Honesty. Management. Trust. Surely important issues. But the fundamental issue here is politics past, present, and future.
The previous Council was beholden to local developers and big property owners. (Rosen’s contributor list is due to be released by the end of this month.) It managed to ram the Big Rink through at meetings where the boosters showed up in “Build It Now!” T-shirts. We’re about to pay for the rush job.
The Rink — badly located, poorly planned, and shakily financed — will no doubt go ahead despite Schmolka’s motion. People figure the thing is too far along to kill. But interest charges will rise and so will taxes. Parking costs will also jump, menacing the broader downtown. At the time of writing, the design is not even complete and there’s neither site plan approval nor a building permit. No one can guarantee what the final cost will be.
Kingston’s citizens will end up paying even more for a facility that will benefit a favoured few. Boosters like Wong figure that it will be a development catalyst even though more sophisticated urban analysts know that arenas do no such thing. [See sidebar.] So we’re going to be stuck with the thing.
Kingston’s current Council has been handed a poisoned chalice in the form of the Big Rink. It will now be harder for them to find tax dollars for what we really need. Basic infrastructure, both physical (sewers and sidewalks) and social (affordable housing) will get short shrift. Creative green projects that save energy and really do make a community more attractive to investors will be harder to fund. This is unfortunate at best, tragic at worst.
Cities are perfect laboratories for tackling the really important issues. We could be following the example of Utah’s capital, where retiring mayor Rocky Anderson has just completed Salt Lake City Green. The community had aimed to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions 21 percent below 2001 levels by 2012 — the equivalent of Kyoto. It’s exceeded that goal, six years early. That city is at 148 percent of its goal — a 31 percent reduction below 2001 levels.
So it’s all the more reason for people to start asking Harvey Rosen: What did you know and when did you know it?
Jamie Swift is a regular contributor to Independent Voice.
Sidebar: Stadium economics
During the recent election, Harvey Rosen spoke favourably of the work of urban-affairs theorist Richard Florida. One wonders just how familiar he is with Florida’s work . . .
At a time when genuine political will seems difficult to muster for virtually anything, city after city across the country can generate the political capital to underwrite hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in professional sports stadiums . . . The most recent studies show that stadiums do not generate economic wealth and actually reduce local incomes. And ponder, for a moment, the opportunity costs of these facilities. Imagine what could be accomplished if the hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on university research or other things that actually generate economic wealth — or even the fine-grained neighborhood improvements and lifestyle amenities that attract and retain talented people . . . Why are most civic leaders unable even to imagine devoting those kinds of resources or political will to pursue the things that really matter to their economic future or to people?
— Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class (http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0465024777?ie=UTF8&tag=indepvoice-20&linkCode=as2&camp=15121&creative=330641&creativeASIN=0465024777)
Preferred citation: Jamie Swift, “A revolting development” in Independent Voice, volume XVI, number 2, March 2007. Damian T. Lloyd, editor. Kingston, ON, Canada: PiC Press, 2007