City council considers new authority for downtown development
Posted Jul 6, 2010 04:27:39 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
More than half of the downtown’s vacant land is owned by government.
Urban planner Andy Fillmore says the city’s downtown is underperforming and in the end is costing taxpayers money.
Councillor Debbie Hum says the city needs to stop dragging its feet.
“Overall we need to move forward on that,” she said. “We need to make sure that happens. We can approve strategies and plans all we want, but if we don’t see things happen like that we’re standing back here and saying ‘Okay, what else can we do?'”
The plan calls for a new urban decision making authority that includes all three levels of government and various groups.
Councillor Steve Streach asked the mayor if that would end up wasting money.
“During our budget process council was looking for ways to slim ourselves down, indeed to reduce redundancy, and it almost sounds as though maybe we’re creating more redundancy,” he said. “Then to hear that we’re now talking about creating another department just to look after the downtown, I just need you to explain the rationale.”
Fillmore says the new authority would not be redundant and is needed to make decisions efficiently.”
