What did Joe know?

Last Updated: May 30, 2021By alanclegg

With the revelation of the secret Memorandum of Understanding we have the appearance of the the Economic Development Officer (Andrew McNeil) and Brian Smith attempting to create an agreement with Gateway to build a multi-storey parking garage on the beachfront, as an incentive to locate the Casino on the bloated beachfront.

Why is this so bad? The fact is they did this without the knowledge of Council. It was a secret. Worse, they had Aird and Berlis, the law firm that McNeil’s sister works at, draw up the documents. Again, without anyone knowing. It’s one thing to have an idea, present it to Council, then Council instructs staff to work on it. It’s another for someone to apparently siphon funds into a secret project. That simply isn’t right.

If the idea made any sense financially perhaps this twisted way of working would be forgiven but look at the figures. We as a town were committed to spending almost $40 million dollars to build a 400-space parking structure, one that would provide free parking for the casino visitors. For this $40 million investment we would receive $120,000 in rent every year. That’s it. I note there is a suggested carrying cost of some $2 million a year. … I’ll let that sink in. A gift of 1.88 million dollars to gateway every year for the pleasure of them being on the beachfront. This is out of your taxes. Now admittedly we will get a cut of profits, but this will be in the order of a few hundred thousand. I note Gateway would kick in 1.2 million towards this but take away all the taxes because the town was giving them a ten-year tax holiday. What a toxic deal for the town!

The last mayor was so desperate to pad the beachfront he would have taken the town to the edge of bankruptcy to get the casino there. That’s a big meatball for me to put out, but let’s look at the figures again. There is a limit to how much could be mortgaged and remember his commitment to finance the Downtown hub. This would wipe out any reserves the town had and sink us to the hilt in mortgages. Our taxes would inevitably have shot up and services for Wasaga Beach would have taken a hit.

Aside from the financial custard pie in the face, how would this have even worked? With all of the proposed residential in the area, and a casino parkade for hundreds of cars, where would the tourists park? Plus the issue of ensuring that tourists didn’t go to the free parking rather than the expensive Wasaga Beach parking. This additional reduction in parking on top of the proposed residential would have collapsed our tourism like a wet paper bag.

We can be certain having seen how quickly they moved to draw up the agreement with FRAM (5-2), that this dirty little secret would have become law at the prompting of puppet master Smith had the election gone the other way.

The sleazy way it was created was never meant to see the light of day. Only a new council would sift through the metaphorical shredding bin to find this evidence. What else is tied to this? Was the sudden “retirement” of George V, our CAO done because he would never have allowed this travesty to go through? Let’s ask Bonnie. Let’s ask Ron, let’s ask the old Council as they shuffle around this town whining about transparency. We cannot alas ask Brian. He has become a phantom since his loss. That just leaves Joe Belanger.

Ask him what he knew. Ask him why this was never shown to the larger Council for their approval. He surely was a part of the effort to bring the casino to the beach. We have seen his recent tirade about forcing Gateway to use the beachfront by threatening to remove all the other options. How could he not have been aware of the “solution” to one of the big problems of parking in the area? Sheep or wolf?

If this plan had gone through, if we had built the Hub and the parkade. We would as a town be on the edge of insolvency. Carrying huge debt with dry reserves. By revisiting this plan, the new Council can have an arena and library using the profits from selling the beachfront to private developers. We can have the additional income from profit sharing with the casino at the west end of town, a location that will bring more income than on the beach, together with the enhanced development of the commercial properties that will spring up around the casino.

This is how important your vote is. The difference between a healthy town and a town carrying the tapeworm of debt is the quality of our leaders. This is just one of many scandals that are floating to the surface after the election. I wonder how much of this was down to the last Council that was so self-assured they didn’t run the shredders 24-7?

This is the first, but not the last of the S@#$t to hit the fan.

https://www.wasagabeach.com/Shared%20Documents/20190131%20COWAgenda.pdf