The subject of what to do about our old bridge has generated much interest of late and prompted the City of Trail to send out a survey.
No. 4 on the survey lists some other projects on the to-do list so I am curious as where our civic leaders are going to find all this money? Was there some left over from the Violin Lake recreation project or did we again sell the old Irly Bird land again?
More than one person has said that Kelowna has one bridge for 10 times the people and Nelson gets by with one bridge as well so why do we need another bridge? The only answer I can come up with is that we are the only city with a Teck-owned smelter and an oxygen plant in the middle of it.
I am confident that all safeguards are met and that the town is safe. They also thought they were safe in Bopal, India (Union Carbide), Three Mile Island, etc.
If every City of Trail taxpayer has equal use of the bridge why is the cost not shared equally?
No. 6 on the survey asks if you are a City of Trail taxpayer. That question implies that this survey was sent to non-taxpayers in the city. What has a non-resident got to do with the subject of the old bridge?
The question has also been asked about fixing to old bridge and the simple answer to that is, by the time it is repaired to a point where an engineer will put his OK on it for use, it would have been cheaper to build a new one.
Don’t expect a dime from the B.C. government
1) B.C.s debt is $53 billion
2) We are in a NDP riding
3) We are in the wrong end of an NDP riding.
As City of Trail taxpayers, we already pay for a road that most of us never use, that being the road between the Warfield and Trail plants.
We have all watched as Celgar played the tax game with the City of Castlegar, I have no doubt in my mind that Teck will seek the same.
Like every other city is faced with, we have many expenses and another bridge is something we haven’t $20 million to spend on.
Our RCMP costs will also rise because they will have to have road blocks on two bridges instead of one to catch the criminals that had two glasses of wine with dinner someplace.
Bryan DeFerro
Trail