Despite a recommendation from Town staff to hire a consultant at approximately $10,300 to come up with ways to revitalize Lions Lookout and Memorial Park while getting public input on the same, Huntsville Council voted in favour of doing most, if not all, of that work in-house – especially since the municipality already paid for a study of that area in 2011.
Town staff was asked to dust off the study and provide council with an update and synopsis of the 2011 study at its next General Committee meeting in August.
“When we discussed this at General Committee, I think it was Deputy Mayor Terziano who suggested ‘why are we going and using a consultant again? We already have the 2011 Memorial Park Master Plan in place’, and so subsequent to that meeting, I did actually read the plan,” Huntsville Councillor Nancy Alcock told council at its July 24 meeting. She also said the community was consulted when the 2011 plan was put together. “I went out to the site today, just for the hell of it and drove around and thought there were a number of recommendations made in that plan that we haven’t implemented yet,” she added. “A couple have been implemented like the veteran’s war memorial, which is lovely but again it sits there and it’s not connected to Lions Lookout or to the beach.”
Alcock noted that the report does have some great recommendations. “So it seemed to me before we go back out to the public once again, I would just love it if staff could come to our next General Committee and do a highlight of what is in that plan and say these are the things that were done, these are the things that were recommended, this is the concept plan and perhaps committee might choose to follow up on that plan or we might say let’s go out to the public and we can indeed host that and not pay a consultant $10,000,” she said.
Huntsville Councillor Brian Thompson said one of the most contentious issues in that area was the loss of the public boat launch. He asked if that was addressed in the 2011 plan, Alcock confirmed it was.
You can find that plan here and Doppler’s related story and comments here.
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