Nanaimo-Info-blog: City Hall Logic Confusing At Best

Following some of the logic city hall uses to support their decisions can be challenging to say the least. A few recent examples spring to mind.

Water Filtration Plant

Nanaimo has been drinking water from our current supply for 150 years without incident and with only the need for a few boil water advisories in all that time. Yet, we are told that we must add a new level of protection in the form of a $75 million water filtration plant even though our water is said to be of the same quality as bottled water which has been subjected to seven levels of treatment before being sold. This is the reasoning behind removing bottled water from civic facilities and making people drink water right from the tap.
So, if our water is currently so safe, and has 150 years of history which support that claim, why is the city spending at least $75 million to filter our water??

Colliery Park Dams

In Sept. 2010 apparently an engineering report claims the colliery dams could fail in an earthquake. It has not been made public what level of earthquake may cause such a failure just that it ‘could’ fail in the event of an earthquake. Apparently the concern of such a failure was not urgent or pressing enough to do anything about it for two years, and even now we are told the dams are safe and we don’t need to vacate all the homes in Harewood which might be affected.

City Hall Annex

The old city hall annex which the city has been operating out of for years and years was apparently found to no longer be safe and that even ‘the slightest’ shake could cause failure of the building. At least that was the reason the public was given by city staff who were so concerned about public and their own safety that they had to spend $16 million to build a shiny new office to avoid the future disaster should an earthquake hit.
Of course, the part that does not pass the smirk test, is the fact that staff continued to operate out of this building for at least two years after getting the report declaring the building such a hazard.

Ignoring Water, Sewer & Roads

In spite of receiving a staff report back in Nov. 2010 which indicates the city is currently underfunding water, sewer and roads by over $12,000,000.00 each year, city manager Mr. Kenning has been advising council to ignore the matter until after 2013. Why 2013?? Could it be because of the number of city staff who will qualify for retirement on full pensions after 2013 and will then not have to deal with the issue?

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