By Miller Reynolds
[1]BELLEVILLE, Ont. (11/10/12) Councillor Jackie Denyes (right) speaks with task force member Bill Glisky (left) at Tuesday's city council meeting about the Campbell Street re-development project.
Communications between Belleville city council and the mayor’s downtown task force needs to improve, says a member of the task force.
“There was a significant breakdown in communication between the task force and council,” Bill Glisky said in an interview Wednesday.
Council decided to defer the downtown Campbell Street re-development project until 2013 due to confusion over the final cost, and some of the design aspects.
Questions were voiced as to why the final cost was now going to surpass the original $750,000 budget, and if the construction plan should include changes to the library’s steps.
Glisky said the confusion about this proposal might be due to the fact that the task force is a newly formed group.
“I don’t think it was intentional, I just think this is a relatively new task force, it’s been in existence only two years, so we’re sort of learning as we go along, how much to present and when to present it.”
The mayor’s task force on downtown Belleville was put together two years ago in order to re-develop the downtown core. The task force proposed a major overhaul of Campbell Street including a change to the steps of the library that would make the building more accessible to the proposed new streetscape.
The council and the task force are divided on whether to include the changes to the steps of the library.
“I don’t think anybody right now can say with 100% certainty, this is the way it’s going to go, or even that this is the best way to go,” Glisky said.
Coun. Pat Culhane said in an interview after the council meeting the uncertainty is due to a lack of detail.
“I don’t fault any of the councillors for asking questions,” she said. “I need more detail, I need to see a better picture than what was given to me, we all do, before we can say let’s tear the steps off a $12 million building.”
With questions still unanswered, the deferral was a necessary decision, said Culhane.
“We need to put it off, we need to be reasonable, downtown has been flagging behind for 30 years, we can’t fix it in 30 days.”
Despite the setback, Culhane said she wants to see the project move forward.
“I want to see downtown come back to life, it won’t be the same as it was before, but it can be vital and busy again,” she said.
Coun. Jackie Denyes supports the projects, but said communications is still the root of the problem.
“The task force may know what’s going on, but they need to communicate that a little more clearly to council when it gets to this stage, because we’re the ultimate decision makers regarding these projects,” she said. “We need to know what’s going on.”