It's time for opponents of the new RCMP building to throw in the towel or risk committing the same sin they're attempting to denounce - namely, wasting taxpayers' money.
The public has spoken very loudly when asked, only two per cent said the stated need is unacceptable and the stated cost is unacceptable.
This is a bitter pill for primary opponent Eric Allen. He might have felt emboldened by his perceived success in gathering a local cloud around the HST issue, so he went after another pet peeve.
But with the construction of the police building, he faced an entirely different foe.
His anti-HST position was greatly enhanced by a partisan swell of NDPers who wanted to take political advantage of the tax debate, but there was no such gas to throw on his RCMP/City Hall fire.
More than a decade of municipal tail-chasing has cost the local taxpayer millions of dollars, but that does not mean today's project isn't the right thing to do.
It is, and the sooner the better. If only 1,100-odd local people sign up against a $39 million bill, that is democracy's voice speaking loudly with its silence. Can Eric Allen hear it? Or is he wearing his new political party's earmuffs?
Allen recently disclosed that he is now a top organizer for the BC First Party in the northern region.
At this point in this project's evolution, opposing it would smack of either a political agenda or faulty perception. It is hard to imagine that Allen, with all his explorations into this issue, has anything wrong with his perception.
His attempts to rally opposition to the new detachment got 100 fewer signatures in our city of 70,000 residents than did a similar petition against a new detachment held last fall in Summerland, which has a population of 11,000 - and local opponents were actually given an extra 15 days to do collect those signatures.
Allen's protests about a flawed system are frankly silly. Anyone who wanted to could have gotten their name on that petition with hardly a wince of inconvenience. They have done so before in petitions and causes of all sorts, including the Alternate Approval Process used in this case.
Furthermore, with all the local media coverage the RCMP building issue got, not to mention a thick layer of word-of-mouth, it is ridiculous to pout now about people not understanding or people not having their chance.
In the anti-HST petition Allen had the comfort of political rhetoric that went inexplicably unopposed. The provincial government said little to retort and the private sector companies that might have explained the province-wide benefits of the HST were even more mute.
Not so the proponents of the RCMP building. Explanations about the money and the social implications of this project more than matched the nay-sayers.
When Brian Skakun muttered on Monday night that a groundswell of non-subscribers to the petition didn't necessarily mean big support for the RCMP building, it begged the question "Really? Then where is this brick wall?"
The truth is, the brick wall is literal and long overdue; it should have been built years ago. Yes, now the cost is huge, but it is all too easy to see how much bigger the alternatives (do nothing, do a patchwork renovation, skimp on the construction features, continue to explore options) would cost.
In this city we have already seen the price tags for Duchess Park Secondary School, the Northern Sports Centre, the senior's complex in the Gateway, the Friendship Lodge social recovery house, the Cameron Street Bridge, the Northern Cancer Centre, Boundary Road extension, the proposed Performing Arts Centre and the list goes on. People no longer have sticker shock over the realities of modern construction.
Not everything about this file has been transparent, but enough of it has been scrutinized and rehashed in public that the general trustworthiness of the project has been established. And not to worry, sharp eyes will still be set on what we anticipate will be a drawn out building process.
