The Leisure Centre started – as I remember – with a 50% underestimate of how much it would cost to enlarge it from the original building, as put forward in the original proposal presented to the taxpayers of Mission. I think it was estimated to cost $14 million, and it turned out to be $21 million.
Now the Mission Association for Seniors Housing has grossly underestimated the amount of parking space the residents need, presumably because they didn’t take into account their relative’s cars and those of staff. In terms of numbers, clearly, the Leisure Centre has greater use than the Boswyk Centre, but nowadays the pretense is to consider the elderly before younger people. It is a pretense; look at what happened to the people in care homes in the early days of the pandemic.
I can speak with authority about this; I’m in my late 80s, as well as being a Mission taxpayer.
About two years ago, my wife – as my driver – received a parking ticket relating to an address that we had never heard of – or so we thought. It turned out to be the Leisure Centre. We could not understand when our car was stopped (not parked) in front of the main doors, we had received a ticket when school buses and delivery trucks were often really parked in the same place for quite long periods. My wife made a presentation to Council in which she pointed out that I have vision and locomotion issues, which received a sympathetic hearing, but nothing changed, and it seemed then that it was left to the Parking Warden to decide, entirely on his own initiative, whether to ticket a car or not. This is grossly unfair and is made worse by the shortage of parking stalls.
Ralph Smith
Mission