Airing concerns

Dear editor:
Since when is it the mandate of town council to be in the business of developing, buying, and selling residential lots.
Shouldn’t that be the domain of the private sector, with council providing services to lots developed by private interests?
Did they not learn their lesson with the Front Street condo fiasco? In my opinion, council’s mandate is to provide infrastructure services to the citizens; not be in the real estate business.
How can they justify spending money on the Huffman project when council has no firm buyers yet—and then wanting to buy the former tourist information centre when they paid Resolute back $1.8 million in property taxes and will be short that amount each year going forward.
Even lowering the price for the lots at Huffman, and lengthening the build time, probably won’t hook a lot of buyers.
Council stated after the condo fiasco they would never get involved in developing lots again. Did they forget?
In my opinion, it’s time council faced a few facts:
(1). The mill is on its last legs and Resolute has no intention of re-purposing the mill.
(2). Resolute can’t be trusted to give council the truth of what their plans are.
(3). Even though the results of the mining exploration sounds promising, if the price of precious metals drops too far, there won’t be any mine (there are places where the mining companies have been doing exploration drilling for 25-plus years and still there is no mine yet).
(4). As soon as school is out, lots a young families are going to have to move west for jobs because there are no jobs left here and it’s going to get worse.
(5). With all the houses for sale in town, we don’t need more.
I wonder who gains by all this; it’s not the working people or pensioners who can barely afford to pay their bills.
Thanks for letting me air my concerns in your paper.
Sincerely,
Wendell Stevens
Fort Frances, Ont.