Editor:
Re: White Rock prepares for $1m gateway, March 14; Archway to be redesigned, June 6.
It was with bewildered bemusement that I read the PAN article regarding the $1 million earmarked for the White Rock archway and the committee struck to select its design.
In last Friday’s PAN, the White Rock property-tax payment due notice was published in a city advertisement. Assuming an average property tax of $7,500 for residents, 133 land owning citizens of White Rock must be delighted to know that their tax remittances will not go to things like infrastructure, sidewalk repair or improved services, but to an edifice that will, in all likelihood, be a monument to wrongheaded politicians’ misuse of public funds and a breach of their fiduciary duties.
I chuckled at the reference to the “brainstorming session.” If the brains in the room could not understand how completely inane it was to even entertain the notion of paying $1 million for two pillars and an arch, then referring to it as that seems a gross misnomer.
Staying within their professed desire for perhaps a more nautical theme, I suggest the pillars be supplanted by lighthouses so that those poor lost souls on the committee can find their way to a safe harbour of sanity when considering how to spend civic funds.
In the U.K. such edifices are known as follies… for good reason.
I am happy to build it for $500,000. Let me know.
Paul G. Kent-Snowsell, Surrey
