Advocates for an additional hockey arena in the city weren't given a fair chance by city council on Monday night, according to Prince George Recreational Hockey League president Al Hines.
The mayor's decision to bring the motions in favour of building a new arena for reconsideration -and ruling against allowing amendments to those motions -stacked the deck against the creation of a new arena, Hines said.
"It's a terrible miscarriage of democracy. It was set up to fail from the beginning," Hines said. "Given a democratic change, we'd be planning how to build a new arena today."
Hines said he has little hope the process put in place on Monday to review a possible additional ice surface in the city will deliver results.
"What a complete and total waste of time. If [council] doesn't have the willpower to get this thing in place when they have the $16.5 million in play, then it won't happen in my lifetime," he said. "If another arena gets built, it'll be on the back of the arena user groups or the Kinsmen or a group like that."
However, Hines said, arena user groups are still prepared to work with the city to make the best of Monday night's decision.
"What I hope is they will talk to all the user groups now," he said. "The arena user groups are a great group of people who will work together on this."
While Kin 1 is out of operation, user groups will work with the city to manage the reduction in available ice time, he said.
"At the end of the day, we'll find a way to continue operating," Hines said. "There is a great group of people at the arena management level."
Coun. Shari Green, who spearheaded the motion to approve a stand-alone arena, said she was surprised by councillors Debora Munoz and Garth Frizzell changing their votes.
"I'm surprised at my colleges that changed their minds. I thought there was really strong support for this," Green said.
Coun. Brian Skakun said the mayor's reconsideration motion has "pulled the carpet out from under the working group."
Council held a meeting on June 20 to discuss the work the group would undertake to find cost savings for the proposed project, Skakun said.
"We had a good discussion of what we were going to do," he said.
The working group should have been allowed to undertake the work it was mandated to do, Skakun added.
