Councillor Jordan Bateman on his website langleypolitics.com when commenting on the Richter motion tonight regarding reeling in out of control Township spending, like the gold plated Grandstand project, forgets to mention he is indeed the Councillor that put forward initially the motion in late December to go over the Grandstand budget by $800,000.00 to $1,000,000.00. His comments seem to have earned a rare comment on his same posting by Councillor Kim Richter (one of LFP's contributing columnists) herself, clarifing what her motion is.
Of interest is Bateman saying that "Mayor Alberts calls it a service improvement". Obviously Bateman has been speaking to Alberts behind the scene and this would appear to us to be the newest previously unheard of yet history rewrite spin being floated. Remember the last rewrite attempt was to say it was always budgeted at $5.7 million not $3 or $4 million! If that is correct does it mean that Councillor Bateman moved the motion in late December as a service improvement only! Did he know that at the time? Great priorities on spending!
To be fair to Councillor Bateman, is it possible that when Bateman moved the motion in late December, remember he was only on Council for less than 30 days, perhaps he was for some reason unknowingly snookered to move the motion? Or did he just feel, get on with the project? But why then did he not try to make any attempt to keep the cost to the originally approved budget? He always talked of the right fiscal priorities during the Municipal election campaign. Perplexing. To see the true whole history on the Grandstand fiasco go to the original breaking story here , here and here.
From our point of view this is a bad cost overrun like the fast ferries was. Or it was always planned to be over $5 million but never truly revealed? Which do you think?
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