BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following is a response to news story published Monday, titled 'Barrie raises concerns around Innisfil development expansion'.
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Our city’s objection to the expansion of Innsifil’s Strategic Settlement Employment Area entirely misses the point that a few more jobs and businesses on either side of the community boundary creates shared tax revenue and mutual opportunities.
People will settle where they will and this will increase prosperity. The mayor’s warning about probable traffic problems on regional highways and roads is redundant since both Barrie’s and Innisfil’s populations will grow considerably by 2050. Council needs to prepare for that, but it should also play fair.
Barrie's had its own expansion that annexed parts of Innisfil not so long ago.
Mayor Lehman’s reference to the vast sums the city spent on servicing Barrie’s south employment lands is interesting if taken in the context of an audit by the firm Deloitte. According to an audit of our services, Barrie mismanages public funding of special events, municipal buildings, and costly venues.
Our city bleeds money and its only profit-making cash cow is the marina, which Deloitte heartily recommends we capitalize on. Better we eliminate profit-losing venues like the Dorian Parker building and infrastructure like the Barrie-Collingwood Railway to reduce the city debt restore a surplus.
Christopher Mansour
Barrie
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