Editor:
I am writing to try to dispel the misconception of costs related to the George Hotel and Residences and who is to blame. Your Sept. 1 article quoting Mayor Rowe’s concerns over the legal costs to the Town, because of lawsuits and FOI requests, is only the partial story. This statement is misleading because it is incomplete.
Firstly, I cannot believe this rhetoric that is being perpetrated on our community. When a government blatantly ignores concerned citizens and our OCP, the environment and the remediation of a toxic site sitting on top of our drinking water, what else can a citizen do but file FOIs and go to the courts? It would have been far easier and less costly to everyone if the Town would have listened to its electorate, negotiated a smaller hotel and remediated these very real issues.
Secondly, if the mayor and town officials want to have a real conversation and an accurate accounting of the costs to the town, then they will have to be upfront about all the costs, not just the costs that help them politically. Let’s look at the hours staff has been spending on this project since the get go and all the extra time and legal advice getting this thing to pass. Let’s add in the hours and months of work on the spot zoning and legal advice on each and every step of the way. Then there are the engineering peer reviews as well as risk assessments for our aquifer. Then let’s add in for good measure the giveaway of Winn Road to the developer, a waterfront piece of real estate valued, I would guess at today’s prices, at over $1 million. Do not forget to add in the giveaway of a waterfront lease in front of the hotel and then we have to add in redoing Winegarden Park, for which we only received $100,000 from the developer and have probably spent most of that on establishing a park advisory committee and employing experts to design and spend money we do not have. Also did I mention that the developer gets to wreck this park and use it for all the construction machinery, “rent free,” for the duration of the project? Oh yes, then there is the issue of prime road parking spaces being given to the developer in exchange for some obscure spaces in the underground parking that no one will know about.
Let’s get a true and accurate accounting of the costs of the George Hotel and Residences to the Town of Gibsons.
Judith Bonkoff, Gibsons
