Sir: In response to Mayor Hope’s comments in the Jan. 8 Chatham Voice, “Hope says C-K has bright future,” I believe his thinking is impractical.
Regardless who was mayor, criticism is inevitable. A solid formula creating an economy requires more than surface thinking and has to be based on circumstances, that is, current business/recreational and general investment market, all of which is dependent on and are influenced by global, national and local economy.
The mayor touts new investment as the best way to offset taxes. It’s one way, depending on the circumstances. A comparable is increasing immigration to a country that has lost its natural growth and sustainability. Adding more bodies, regardless of where they are from, more often than not can only add to a financial burden. Immigration can be wonderful but only in a growing self-sustaining nation, where each new body can become an ingredient to increase a municipal or national net product, based on our ability to produce within our nation and advantage a level of international and global trade.
Chatham-Kent is not a growing community, but it can be. We have lost about 9,000 in population and a proportionate loss of industry, retail business and subsequently consumer purchasing strength. Our income per single parent household is only $26,000 annually.
Spending the time, resources and money to go out after new business, especially with every other community competing and having many things to offer, is not impossible but highly impractical when placed first over creating a less-expensive community that subsequently would increase our local disposable income to subsequently feed our local retailers, creating a stronger retail environment which creates jobs producing community growth.
Waiting for the sudden influx of new revenues to be pulled out of the hat is a gamble, while, in the meantime taxes and C-K municipal costs keep rising with services being cut. We’re losing more income than we can replace through our wishful investment thinking. Our operational and financial landscape is not attractive to investors.
Qualified investors, as our company always did, looked at a pattern of growth and operational sustainability before investing. C-K simply falls too short to attract the new investment money so badly needed.
Focusing on our in-house spending and investment prioritization is key. Preparing to and spending up to $100 million allows us to never get our heads above the water line. New assessment is coming from tax increases. Increasing our per capita value that would increase disposable income that would support our retail growth is imperative. C-K was prepared to build a $50-million OHL arena. We invested $20 million in an industrial park, $12 million in a convention centre, $4 million to $6 million since 2006 in a CSX rail line, $20 million in a master trails plan (although some provincial money was involved there); losing about $4.2 million annually with Riverview Gardens; $1.2 million donation to St. Clair College without sureties; $3 million overall Tecumseh Park upgrade. All borrowed with high annual interest costs.
Most of these pie-in-the-sky investments, had we not invested, we would be able to come in with zero tax increases with money remaining for reserves for infrastructure.
Political thinking seems to be about ego and building personal portfolios. Such thinking is not a good investment.
As far as C-K’s bright future, someone forgot to pay their high electricity bill.
John Cryderman
Chatham
While I appreciate Mr. Cryderman's passion and acknowledge his persistence, I would certainly hope that the publishers of any newspaper would fact-check any figures quoted in a third party editorial published under its masthead. I question several of them as a faithful and knowledgeable reader.
Mr Cryderman's arguments are compelling but the drama of only using single parent household income detracts from otherwise cogent points. It begs the questions, what % of the population of CK are single parent homes? What is the average income of households in CK? Does he use this particular number to be dramatic?