OPINION: Waterfront Plan has Millions in 'Unknown' costs

By Neal McNamara, North Bay

There has been a lot of talk recently about North Bay’s new Strategic Plan and the Downtown Waterfront (DW) Master Plan, both good and bad. We’ve heard from the consultants, the Mayor and Council, and a few members of the public and groups. These two plans have been marketed as North Bay’s shining hope to revitalize a stagnant local economy and a declining population.

Others have spoken of the high costs and negative benefits associated with this plan, and around the related Kings Landing replacement over a much less expensive repair job that was not properly costed or looked into. Over the last few months I’ve read and reviewed the Strategic Framework Concept (24 pages), the Strategic Plan (15 pages), and the DW Master Plan (120 pages) and numerous other reports and documents. There is a mix of good, bad, and ugly throughout.... but something has been missing.

I think most people can get behind a splash pad and a skating trail and increased lighting for safety, but other items have brought up strong feelings for and against the plans implementation such as whether or not to repair or replace Kings Landing and whether or not to sink tens of millions of dollars into the downtown.

The Strategic plan sets some great goals and is a bright and colourful document with lots of neat catchphrases and nice sounding words but in reality does very little to address North Bay’s challenges concerning population growth, fiscal sustainability, or economic prosperity. In fact not only does it do very little to address these challenges but there is also a noticeable disconnect between the Strategic Plan and the DW Master Plan that has the potential to do a lot more harm to our city then good.

There are two items from my review that particularly stand out and that haven’t been appropriately addressed yet. Firstly, the DW Master Plan hasn’t been properly costed and is missing a lot of key information and numbers that have not been properly disclosed to council or the public. The master plan is full of “unknown” costs that I came across in the footnotes. Good thing I read the footnotes.

Now I don’t like the unknown so I did some math to get a better idea of the final/total project costs and what I’ve learned is that this spending plan is a lot more expensive than it has been presented by the consultants to the city and council. The DW Master Plan has a conservatively estimated final price tag of $54-$82 million and could result in property tax increases of 66% – 130 % over the next 10 years to pay for it.... and that’s not including the multi-million dollar King’s Landing replacement proposal.

The other item of note that resulted from this analysis is that there are (at least) 5 members of Council who have a direct conflict of interest with the DW Master Plan, possibly more. I’ve waited and took the time to read all the reports and articles, watched the council meetings, and listened to all sides of this debate. Now it’s time for a new and different perspective on this situation so I am going to be sharing the results of my independent review (including observations and recommendations) with the Mayor and Council Tuesday night.