Op-Ed: THE TARNISHED JEWEL
If the mayor and council had heeded the 2014 Ontario Ministry Beach Tourism Statistics (based on 6.5 million beach visitors), or the 2018 Bruce County Tourism Study (Saugeen Shores annual $70 million tourist income) or the 2019 Bruce County Economic Impact
Report ($75 million tourist increase) or our own Strategic Plan (the beach is our number one drawing card), or, shockingly, the 2019 Saugeen Shores Beach Development Survey (95% of community voices said no to a huge commercial beach plan), would they have still approved the 50 year failed commercial development on our main beach?
Knowing these facts were ignored or never presented to council, should incumbents be given the benefit of the doubt during this election year?
1) Council agreed that a 27 year successful, generational, the only one in Canada, tourist phenomena, the Train, had to be eliminated. Unfortunately not one word was said while nasty tactics hurried termination.
2) Despite lease violations with the beach development progress, the mayor and council propped the developers up for seven years. Included, just last year, allowing the developer another year to find financial backing.
3) Cost: a legal tangle with Saugeen Conservation Authority, two other legal disputes (Charter Rights and Surplus challenge) and lastly the developer challenging the lease termination. In total, tens of thousands of legal expense dollars courtesy of us, the tax payer. Add staff hours.
4) The error in common sense cannot be ignored. Despite rapid growth in our community (16% per year) and tourist industry growth (325,00 non resident current summer visitors), the beach is never going to grow! Instead of properly maintaining the limited space at hand, the mayor and council signed a 50 lease to shrink usable beach space even more despite aggressive population expansion. E.g. Just the 18,000 square foot banquet hall has been estimated to cost local businesses over one quarter of a billion dollars because of the permanent loss in parking space over the lease length.
5) The most controversial decision was illegally declaring our public beach “surplus” meaning the mayor and council no longer wanted responsibility for the priceless real estate that directly/indirectly affects 98% of every Saugeen Shores business. A natural phenomena, the BEACH, will always be the hub of this comminity’s dominant industry. Most imperative for the community’s future is to rescind the “surplus” mistake.
Provocatively, the constant use of ‘in camera’ council meetings has erased the public’s right to judge councillor’s opinions. A Municipal Act and Saugeen Shores Code of Conduct requirement, ’transparency’, has been diluted to extreme. What has changed from the openness of past councils?
Benefit of the doubt? Seems crystal clear!
This is the perfect and necessary time for ’new’ candidates.’
Wayne Mc Grath
Port Elgin
