If you have found this page you probably are aware of the Quinte Cultural
Centre fiasco. After close to six years of hard work, nearly $2 million donated,
and plans produced for what could be one of the best arts, performing arts
centres in all of eastern Ontario, without warning in a special budget meeting
April 16, 2003 our council reneged on its previous commitments
by voting 8 to 1 to refuse bridge financing, thereby killing
the project. The only councilor that has been fully and consistently supportive
of the project is Councilor Parker.
What
was the QCC all about?
At a subsequent evening session of council on Apr 28, 2003 to reconsider the decision the vote this time was 6 to 3 with councilor Beer and mayor Zegouras also supporting. However this was easy to do at this point because it would have taken 6 votes for to overturn the previous decision. Clearly this meeting was just for appearances sake.
One way or another the QCC has been on the agenda of every council meeting since and the council stubbornly sticks to its position.
Meanwhile the anger and letters to the editor just won't stop. After
5 months the council has never really attempted to answer why the decision
was made. They claim to be proceeding post haste on the stand-alone library
but unless they sweeten the pot considerably over the $3 million they were
prepared to put into the QCC and/or provide bridge financing for that project
we will not have a new library for a long, long time. Certainly it will
be well outside the time frame of the existing council. It seems to me the
big push is on to get the BCIVS building demolished.
Rumors persist about secret deals with developers that perhaps fell
through (some of the links below seem to indicate this) but perhaps we will
never know.
There is good reason why the supporters find it hard to let this issue
go. In fact there are millions of reasons.
In lost grants and donations and pledges the city is throwing away
something like $9 million! This doesn't even count the value of the BCIVS
building. The value of the restored building was evaluated at $28 million.
As you can see, killing this project, when there was very little risk the
cost would ever exceed that of a stand-alone library, is hardly petty
crime.
See the links
page for some more background. I will try to update reasonably frequently.
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