“Pizzuto said city staff were capable of dealing with hockey operations.”

My ten year old niece is capable of dealing with hockey operations – as long as she too is given a blank cheque by the city.

The question is not whether council and staff are capable of dealing with hockey operations but whether they are capable of doing so with competence.

Pizzuto said funding the hockey team is different than coming up with money for roads or the Matsqui pool. “Closing Matsqui would save an operational expense every year,” he (Pizzuto) said.

Let me get this straight, we close Matsqui pool to save a $100,000 operational expense every year but we pay $275,000 of the Heat’s operating expenses plus however many additional hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to operate the arena for the Heat every year.

Matsqui pool yearly operational expenses Bad; the considerably higher Heat/Complex yearly operation expenses Good.

City council and staff’s attempts/threats to close Matsqui pool have become a yearly ritual with never a whisper about the plus side for the community of the pool and “it is in the City’s best interest not to fund those operational expenses”; on the other hand council and staff have demonstrated the determination of lemmings to have the Arena open for business with a hockey team as a tenant – so one hears a mighty chorus from city hall about all the wonderful benefits for the city of the arena operations and it does not matter how many $millions$ operational expenses cost the taxpayers.

The truth, the reality, of the agreement between the City and the Heat lies in Mr. Pizzuto’s statement “This is what it took to have a team in Abbotsford,”

As beleaguered taxpayers recall, at the time Abbotsford’s city council began its mad scramble to put a hockey team into the arena citizens with an understanding of basic financial reality raised the point that Abbotsford City Council had to have the discipline and willpower to leave the arena without a hockey team, if the financial numbers said that was the action in the best financial interest of Abbotsford’s impoverished taxpayers.

Given city council and staff’s demonstrated reckless adventurism when it comes to the finances of Abbotsford any reasonably astute taxpayer has reason to be concerned on that point.

Council was urged to make the decision on whether to sign an agreement with any hockey team (or to leave the arena totally dark) on the basis of the financial numbers – not on the basis of saving council from embarrassment by signing an agreement based on ‘a team at any cost’.

And what kind of agreement did the Abbotsford enter into with the Heat?

“This is what it took to have a team in Abbotsford”

An agreement that will have the taxpayers of Abbotsford out of pocket a city estimated $275,000 this year plus the additional $hundreds of thousands$ of dollars spent to operate the Complex for the Heat to use.

An agreement where it is the taxpayers of Abbotsford that have assumed all the financial risks involved with the operation of the Heat while it is the Heat ownership that will reap all the rewards if the team is successful.

With the agreement the City entered into with the Heat, the City would have been better off to purchase the Heat themselves. Taxpayers are already on the hook to pay for the team if it fails and ownership would have allowed the City to reap the rewards for this risky venture should the team somehow succeed.

“This is what it took to have a team in Abbotsford”

The agreement that city councillors have committed the taxpayers of Abbotsford to, with all the financial risk taxpayers are now on the hook for, was not about sound financial decision making or about the best interests of the citizens of Abbotsford.

It was and is about having a team in the arena to permit council to save face by offering more false promises of profit, at some point in the future if everything goes unrealistically well.

Unlike council I do not favour decision making based on vague promises, although there is always the chance that with the Heat in the building something could go wrong with the ice surface and in making repairs city workers could hit oil and the arena cease to be an millstone dragging taxpayers down into poverty.

As the front page of The Province screamed this agreement is a Hockey Nightmare in Abbotsford because the agreement was signed not because it was good for Abbotsford, but because council was determined to have a hockey team at any cost and

“This is what it took to have a team in Abbotsford.”