Questionable ideas from council chambers

In May eleven citizens were entrusted with leading our city and fixing past missteps to make Saint John a better place. In the months that have followed some good things have come out of council: the skateboard park was finally completed and the city decided to facilitate a great waterfront project by agreeing to the Lantic Sugar site to Irving Oil so that they can build a LEED standard headquarters on Long Wharf.

Still some bad ideas are floating around council.

One west side councilor is pushing to micro-manage economic development by moving Enterprise Saint John funding away from regional economic development and business attraction and focusing it on bringing business to particular neighbourhoods. Peter McGuire thinks we should have move an economic development officer to focus on bringing business to priority neighbourhoods, instead of working on more broad based economic development. I'm not always a fan of the actions and ideas of Enterprise Saint John; I was offended by their support of closing UNB Saint John in favour of a business-centric training school. Still, I think ESJ does more good than bad. Economic Development consultant David W. Campbell blogged about this issue pointing out that regional economic development is more successful than trying to force business opportunities in specific areas that might not be right.

Meanwhile, I heard the mayor on the news defending the escalating costs of the police station development at Peel Plaza. Mayor Ivan Court suggested that the increasing costs are normal for a project like this, particularly one that has been altered to address community concerns. I concede that costs can rise. Still, I can't see how one could defend the escalating costs when the land acquisitions for the project are clearly out of control. If building costs are going up we have to make sure the public is still being bettered by the project. But if the reason costs are creeping higher is that land is being purchased at unreasonable prices, the city needs to reign the spending in.