Dear Mayor Hall and councillors of our fair city, I ask you to reconsider your idea for a new park downtown.
I think one drug addled prostitution park downtown is quite enough, don't you?
Don't believe the description?
I dare every councillor, the park designers, and the Mayor himself to sit in Millennium Park for one hour alone with the residents, any day of the week.
What you will find and see may or may not shock you, depending on your delusions of what downtown is really like.
Though, to my understanding, Millennium Park is no more, as the worker who did clean up, refused to do it anymore, because it was unsafe, and quite frankly, pointless.
Plants were ripped out daily, expensive in-ground irrigation systems picked out of the ground and trashed, needles buried in garden beds, just waiting to stab the caretaker should they kneel down or dig in those god-forsaken beds.
Is a this park worth the health risk?
No.
Yet you are proposing on spending seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which, let's call it a million dollars, (because we all know these things go over budget), on another one of these attempts to "clean up downtown"?
I understand that you are trying to clean up the downtown, but covering up the real problem with a very temporary "Band-Aid" like a pretty park, (which will only stay pretty for a short while) is a poor attempt. Looking at the real reason for the state downtown is in delves a little deeper than scenery. Parks should happen after the "solution" to downtown problems.
One Councillor was heard to say that "safety is definitely a concern, but we will not be intimidated." OK, so we're not intimidated, but what are the actual numbers on increased police presence around a single park, a city worker's wages to look after the park (in an attempt to hide the park's true residents behavior from Ramada visitors) and the countless fixes for the inevitable acts of vandalism?
This is the time to ask, is this worth it? If you are going to pour a million dollars pocket change into parks, here are a few suggestions: Rainbow Park could use a new playground, Fort George could use a replacement picnic shelter, or the Hart could really use a playground, skateboard park or something.
Margret Arlene
Prince George
