Quote:
Originally Posted by sailor734
If Saint John continues to get it's fiscal house in order you may see an increased willingness by the bedroom communities in engage in more regional cooperation with less acrimony.
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I wouldn’t hold your breath. Valley residents use Saint John recreation facilities a lot as is, especially the rinks, but they haven’t ponied up to actually help pay for the maintenance of those rinks, let alone cooperate on financing a new multi ice surface facility. At least not beyond the utter pittance that the bedroom communities contribute to the SJ city budget each year.
Saint John chickened out actually going through with the recreation cards out of town residents using SJ rinks. It wasn’t until the last minute when the Saint John hotel association, led by a Quispamsis resident, Paulette Hicks, offered up $60,000 million to avoid valley residents being subjected to recreation fees, to give the constituent communities of the region more time to work out a deal for financing rink costs. She then went on to become the first CEO of Envision Saint John, and seemingly did nothing to bring about that cooperation to finance a regional rinks strategy… and the $60,000 has been more than used up.
If the bedroom communities won’t even be willing to contribute to regional financing for rinks, snow clearing, and city road maintenance, (things they use or impacts them directly) I highly doubt they’ll suddenly be willing to cooperate simply because Saint John’s fiscal situation has improved. I don’t think they’ll ever cooperate, unless they’re forced to by the province.
We already have a bunch of half measures like the Fundy Regional Service Commission, Envision SJ, among others… it just takes one provincial government with the balls and motivation do the right thing economically and enact full scale regional amalgamation. Hopefully within our lifetime.