Press Release
 

Lister Block renovation a waste of $30 million, says McCarthy

Hamilton Council’s decision to sink $30 million into helping renovate a building owned by the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) is a “colossal waste of taxpayers’ dollars that we don’t even have,” said Ward 15 Councillor Margaret McCarthy.

“We just seem to be finding new ways to spend money and this time, it’s not even on ourselves,” she added.

McCarthy was just one of three dissenting votes when the Lister Block proposal came to Council on May 9, the others being West Flamborough Councillor Dave Braden and Glanbrook Councillor Dave Mitchell.

The 15-year lease with LIUNA will see the city lease 60,000 square feet in the to-be-renovated Lister Block building, owned by LIUNA, at nearly double the going rate for downtown rentals. That means, McCarthy said, that we helping fund LIUNA to fix their own building.

At the same meeting, Hamilton council also decided to sink $38 million to renovating Hamilton City Hall and pledged to build a second City Hall tower at a cost of $65 million by 2018. That second tower will ring up some $30 million in debt charges for the city.

“I can understand the importance of downtown revitalization as well as the next person but when the taxes continue to rise in Flamborough, my residents are continually telling me that they are tired of footing the bill for downtown. An initiative like this one, whereby we are playing Santa Claus to a developer, doesn’t do much to dispel that notion from the minds of Ward 15 ratepayers,” she said. “Developers are supposed to pay us; we’re not suppose to pay them. Paying twice the going rate to rent this space is an indefensible waste of taxpayers’ money.”

 For more information, call McCarthy at 905-546-2713.