April 2014
| Business World Magazine | 129
cally saying you have to do it, and we’re put-
ting together the best plan to lessen the bur-
den, lessen the hurt as much as we can, but
still keeping on target for doing the work. If
we don’t have that provincial legislation be-
hind us to hammer that message home, we
probably don’t succeed.”
That’s the precise battle that those seek-
ing monies for improvements on things to
which the provincial mandate doesn’t ap-
ply – roads, street lights, sidewalks, bridges
and retaining walls among them – have to
fight, against citizens and politicians who are
sometimes looking to fund more eye-catch-
ing projects that aren’t based on need.
“It’s not that I don’t want to see arenas
and pools or what not,” Elliott said. “It’s that
battle of need vs. want that the public and
the politicians will often go for the so-called
sexy projects. Nobody wants to say ‘Hey, we
fixed the sanitary sewer.’ It’s all great stuff,
but when it’s done at a harm to funding some
of the basic infrastructure that a city needs,
it really puts us in a bind.
“I need to have lunch, but I want to go
and rent a Jet Ski and go down the river. So
what do you do? You go down and Jet Ski
and you go hungry for a while.”
