Editor:
Last time I sent a letter in it was when the fools in charge decided Nakiska could be a ski area.
It still isn’t. It is a golf course with a bit of a slant. That costs taxpayers $6 million a year each and every year.
This year they gave away passes at $200 because as a government subsidy they can do anything they want. They do not have to have a bottom line-oriented business model.
I am compelled to write in again as the fools in charge are once again flushing our money down the toilet.
I am a fan of big ideas and even considered how a gondola around town might sound like one.
For about 30 seconds, until you think of the massive costs, $10-plus million, borne by those who will never ride it.
Oh ya, and the question of how you rescue tourists from a broken down gondola that hangs over a big river.
That would make the news. Question solved. Send me my cheque for $70,000 because I have determined that it is not feasible. Like any sane Banffite would.
Now Parks is offering a $120,000 term position job to someone who can come up with new ideas for fun in the park.
The staff in place apparently have no ideas of their own. Easy, we need a zipline, a big one. We also need a longboard park. Our own version of the X-Games would be easy to pull off and sell at high dollars to TV.
All this is easy because we have lots of talented people in town with skills and ideas. Only thing is that none of them work at Town Hall or in the Parks Canada castle. Why are you paying people to come up with them when they could not be move obvious? Send me my cheque.
Lastly, the question needs to be asked why all of these big idea costs are being borne by your average taxpayer?
As a tourist town, all of these costs should be on the federal and provincial governments as well as big business.
Why should those who can afford it the least pay for parking lots they don’t use when the big company in town has been given a sweetheart deal to build staff housing without parking? Senseless and counterintuitive.
Why is big business not funding the required parkade and other needed big ideas as a precondition to sucking millions of dollars out of Banff?
This has become a corporate tourist town where all the decisions being made subsidize their profit at the expense of the poorest. No problem for the children of Canada’s ultra rich who have circumvented need to reside clauses with money. More of a problem for ski instructors making $15 an hour while the resorts bill the clients hundreds and the big hotels bring in outsiders willing to slave for less at menial jobs.
Both business models mentioned are failures to the citizens.
Tim Shore,
Banff
