Dear editor:
As Cochrane grows faster than ever, we are about to find ourselves gridlocked in a traffic crisis.
At the same time, the mayor and council have decided to go full steam ahead with a massive aquatic/curling centre.
Cochrane absolutely needs a new pool. What council has decided to build is far beyond a regular pool. We should be very concerned at the size and scope of this project. If the project goes forward as planned, Cochrane will be at 95 per cent of its municipal debt limit in 2019, without any solid plan to fix traffic.
Rather than taking responsibility for the roads, the problem is continually blamed on the provincial government. While it is true that the province owns the two major roads where most of our traffic bottlenecks, there is another story to be told.
The reality is that the mayor and council have the responsibility to make sure traffic flows through town. One major project to help with this is the second bridge across the river.
Increasing costs of construction continue to be the reason that we are told we must go ahead with the aquatic/curling facility this year. Yet this argument has yet to be applied to the bridge and all other major roads projects. The truth is that we really don’t know exactly how much the bridge would be today or in the future. Actually, we don’t really know how much money it would take for us to deal with any serious traffic issue in town.
That is why council approved $250,000 for a Transportation Master Plan. Unfortunately, we are moving ahead with aquatic/curling loan before hearing the results of that study. With the proposed 500 per cent increase in our debt, we won’t have any room for new road plans. If we go ahead with this proposed $19 million loan for the project, and then the study recommends major additional road projects, council would not have any means to finance the road construction that Cochrane needs.
Cochrane’s drivers and taxpayers should all take this risk as a very serious concern.
Morgan Nagel, Cochrane councillor
