Should we desire Paterson Park to stay as a park, and I believe the vast majority do, then there's really only one logical buyer.
Unfortunately, that buyer doesn't seem all that interested.
It's been about a year since Kwantlen Polytechnic University announced it would be putting its half of the prime piece of Ladner real estate up for sale.
Kwantlen, which had held the property for almost two decades in the hopes of building a Delta campus, has now officially given up on that dream.
It's been stated here, and in many other places, that the municipality would be the natural purchaser, given it's the one that provides us with parks and the fact it owns the other half of the property at the entrance to town.
An advocacy group, Paterson Park for Deltans, certainly feels that way and is lobbying municipal hall with a 1,200name petition. All it got out of Delta earlier this month was a commitment to join with Kwantlen and the province to explore all options related to keeping the site in public hands and used for public purposes.
I suppose such an approach could bear fruit, but it's a far cry from the municipality stepping up to the plate and signing on the dotted line to ensure the site stays in public hands in perpetuity.
Delta is balking at the potential cost, pointing to an assessment of $11 million as being too rich for our collective blood. It's steep, there's no doubt about that, but I get the impression the apprehension to move forward is as much about civic policy as it is with price tag.
The mayor and her council are proud, and rightly so, of the results of their pay-as-you-go policy toward capital projects that has been in place for the last decade or so. It has prevented Delta from accumulating new debt and will have reduced the municipality's overall debt to a relatively miniscule $2.6 million by year's end.
However, this aversion to incurring any more debt means opportunities to spend with the future in mind could be passed over, including the chance now before us to own Paterson Park in its entirety.
If we didn't incur some amount of debt, most of us would never own a home, so the idea of avoiding it at all costs isn't necessarily the soundest strategy. That kind of debt can actually be beneficial in the long run.
I'm certainly not advocating piling it up today to burden the generations of tomorrow, but not spending it now has the ability to shortchange them in other ways.
