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Rationale behind lot sale puzzling

"I find it difficult to understand the rationale of Trail City Council to sell one of two open lots between East Trail and Bear Creek."

I find it difficult to understand the rationale of Trail City Council to sell one of two open lots between East Trail and Bear Creek.

I do not know of any other property between East Trail and Beaver Park , that is available for public access.

Over many years, Council has acquired all the private properties along the river side of Riverside Ave. with the desire for it to be open space.

Council has also acquired all but one house from the Old Bridge along Riverside Avenue towards downtown.

Presently there is no access between the down river  end of  East Trail to Rock Island as there is private property that must be trespassed.

There is certainly a valid argument that the two remaining pieces of property in the Glenmerry area are not great access to the river, but when there is no other access available regardless of the condition of the present accesses they are the best that is available.

If it is council’s desire is to reduce the operating costs for parks in the city I am certain that residents would not object to extending the grass cutting cycle in all the parks  from  once every seven days to once every 10 days.

Park watering is very excessive and could be reduced. This may result in substantial savings.

Council generously approves $125,000 per year for the Communities in Bloom budget. Also to be added is the hundreds and hundreds of hours of volunteer labour to beautify and green the city. The removal of this green space seems to be counterproductive to Council’s efforts to beautify the city.

I am very concerned with council’s liability, having commission the Geotech report that approved the construction of building on an old landfill that contains fill material from many years of dumping in the 1960. It is my understanding that buildings should not be constructed on land fill sites as stability may be an issue.

I personally know of six old  land fill dump sites that exist in the city and  none of these have any structures on them. When these sites were considered for subdivisions in 1982, the Ministry of Health was contacted and they recommended against building on these properties as there was a potential of gas leakage in the future.

Regardless of the technicalities, once this piece of property transfers to private hands it will never again be returned for public use.

The future will certainly view this sale as a tragedy.

With the city having squirreled away millions of dollars in reserve accounts I am certain a hundred thousand dollars revenue from this site in park reserves, is not a make or break situation in the present budget review.

I urge the citizens of Trail to seek out the petition, signed their names to urge council to stop the present potential sale of one of only two open lots along the river.

Let’s all leave something for our children in the future.

Norman GabanaTrail