FISCAL CONCERNS
I am a firm believer in common-sense priority-setting and using the dollars taxpayers entrust to Council in the wisest and best manner possible.  In this context, the “Downtown Trail” (see Alternatives) would be supportable, whereas the Millennium Trail extension was not. 

I believe we need to focus, over the next several years, on doing the $65.7 million in water/sewer and road infrastucture work which our engineers told us, in the fall of 2004, was in need of IMMEDIATE attention.  With this need so keen and pressing, and so important to every single member of our community (we ALL use the roads, we ALL pump our waste into the sewer system, we ALL draw upon the water system), that is where my focus is. 

That is the fiscally responsible thing to do:  It costs us more the longer this work is left undone.  Consultants told us, in January 2005, that the longer our roads continue to deteriorate, the more it will cost the taxpayers in the long run.  More and more roads, every year, are passing the point of no return – where no longer can we just repair or rehabilitate them.  They need instead, because they have been neglected for too long, to be reconstructed, at a cost of four to five times more.   If we cannot afford to properly maintain the pavement we have now, how can we justify constructing new infrastructure that will also need to be maintained – and will only be used for a portion of the year?

Also: One-third of the City is still on combined sewers.  When those back-up into people's homes, they get a basement full of raw sewage.  Some people who experienced repeated backups can't even get insurance coverage now.  A gentleman who had experienced sewage back-up into his basement after a heavy rain emailed to remind Council, in the context of the Millennium Trail debate, of how pressing is the need to separate our combined sewers – to prevent what happened to him from happening again to local residents.  He was one of many I heard from, throughout the City, who wanted their tax money to go into roadwork or sewer separation, rather than into trail-building. 

Many people, City-wide, expressed concerns about wisdom in fiscal spending, and questioned the need for trail-building in the face of more pressing needs.  Since these were the same needs for which I had been long advocating, I understood.  It is only good common, and good fiscal, sense to defer non-priority items until the pressing maintenance needs of the infrastructure we have already is carried out for the benefit all of the community.

Although doing the desperately-needed roads and sewers and water works is paramount to trail-building in my books, I am not unreceptive to accommodating other needs in our community. With all other proposed capital expenditures, however, I'm looking for multiple benefits – such as what the "Downtown Trail" (please see Alternatives) would offer.