Woodlands County council wants to publicly clarify its position regarding the tentative agreement they made with both the town and county of Barrhead regarding the Barrhead aquatic centre.
On Thursday, June 4, Woodlands County issued a press release stating the figures published by various media outlets, including the Barrhead Leader, were inaccurate.
For a number of months the Town of Barrhead has publically stated during the town’s regular council meetings that Woodlands County Council offered $1.5 million towards the construction of the facility and another 10 per cent towards the operating budget once construction was complete. Numbers the Barrhead Leader published as part of ongoing coverage of town council meetings.
In an interview with Woodlands County mayor Jim Rennie about the press release, he said council decided to issue the release after they saw the Town of Barrhead’s full page advertisement in the June 2 issue of the Leader.
“It was a direct result in the town taking out the ad. We didn’t think it was fair for one side to attack the other because we couldn’t come to an agreement,” he said.
Rennie said it was true that they had offered to contribute $1.5 million towards the capital costs of the new aquatic centre, but the figure was the top limit of a sliding scale based on the estimated number of Woodlands residents who would use the facility.
“That worked out to about 10 per cent,” he said, adding that percentage would be applied to both the construction and operational budget.
For example, Rennie said if the construction cost of the pool was $9 million, Woodlands County would contribute $900,000.
“It was 10 per cent of the construction costs to a maximum of $1.5 million. If the construction costs came down then so would have the amount we put into the project,” he said, adding the amount Woodlands County would have contributed towards the operating budget would have been dependent on a separate agreement, but it would have been based on the same 10 per cent figure.
However, he said the amount Woodlands would have contributed is moot.
On May 5, Woodlands County council voted unanimously to rescind their conditional approval due to the three municipalities inability to come to an operational budget cost sharing agreement.
“Our purpose for the press release was to make sure our motion was understood by all our residents and that the reason why we were not able to get there was because all of our partners weren’t able to provide us with what we asked for,” Rennie said, adding that the county hasn’t ruled out working with the town or county of Barrhead on other projects.
“I still hope that going forward all three groups can continue to work together on this and other projects,” Rennie said.
The Barrhead County reeve and mayor were unavailable for comment before press deadline.
