Demolish the RCMP building and put up a parking lot
Dear Editor:
The city of Kamloops staff have convinced city council to bash down the existing Battle Street RCMP building and replace the 32-year-old 40,000 sq. ft building, that is fully paid for, with a new 120,700 sq. ft. RCMP Building at a construction and financing cost of approximately $286 million.
My proposal is to retain and renovate the existing 40,000 sq. ft structure and add an 80,000 sq. ft new structure on site to achieve the square footage required.
The design and construction costs for the new building are approximately $1000 per sq. ft.
Reducing the size of the new structure by 40,000 sq. ft at $1000 per sq. ft would reduce construction costs by $40 million. When adding finance costs the taxpayers would save approximately $75 to $80 million. The demolition budget of $1.3 million would go towards renovations of the existing building.
Staff’s Report to Council included the following reasons to bash down the existing building:
1) Building needs expensive seismic upgrades to meet the new code.
Rebuttal: excerpt from a national building code publication — “there is no universal requirement to upgrade existing buildings to the latest seismic code.”
2) Renovations will severely disrupt RCMP operations.
Rebuttal: the new building should be built first and as it is twice the size of the existing building, it should allow whole departments to move to the new building and allow for organized renovation of the existing building.
3) Concern that the new building built to match the existing, would be subject to flooding
Rebuttal: Potential flooding was not a concern when the original was built, and the city has spent millions on dikes since. Also, the private sector has not stopped building in the downtown.
4) Ceilings and floor heights might not match
Rebuttal: There are steps and ramps
It is a travesty that the only remaining way citizens can express their thoughts, in an impactful way, regarding the expenditure of major sums of their tax money is to organize an uprising to attack the Alternate Approval System. In the past we could talk about the project in a civilized way, make presentations to council, then simply go and cast a vote Yes or No.
Yes, it maybe time for Kamloops to provide additional space for local RCMP staff but let’s do it in a fiscally responsible manner.
As Joni says, “You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.” Whether it is a building, tax money, or basic rights as a citizen.
— Stephen Cousins
Kamloops
We should be embracing renewable energy not pipelines
Dear Editor,
Some politicians are obsessed with pipelines. They are hoping Canadians will forget that building more pipelines means extracting more oil (bitumen), which means more climate-warming GHG emissions are emitted when the refined oil is burned. Then Canadians can expect more devastating wildfires and unhealthy smoke, more floods, and more drought.
These politicians are hoping folks won’t notice that most countries in the world are rapidly shifting towards renewable energy and electrification. This includes developing countries like Pakistan and oil-rich nations such as Saudi Arabia. And of course China is leading the way, installing twice as much solar capacity in 2025 as the rest of the world combined.
But never mind if there might not be much of a market for Canadian oil once another pipeline is built. No worries. We the taxpayers can pay for another pipeline, even though it may become a stranded asset. After all, taxpayers just paid about 34 billion for the TMX pipeline.
And, of course, certain political leaders are hoping to build another pipeline through northern BC to the Coast, despite opposition from Indigenous peoples who have the right to free, prior, informed consent. They are hoping Canadians will forget about the importance of protecting the water and lands through which this pipeline would travel. And most of all, they hope we will forget why the North Coast Oil Tanker Moratorium Act was enacted by Parliament in 2019.
These politicians are hoping Canadians won’t realize we are missing out on the economic benefits of the global renewable energy revolution taking place right now. We could be building more solar and wind energy capacity, more public transportation, including high speed trains, and strengthening our electrical grid. Now THAT would be nation-building.
— Patricia Spencer
Kamloops