Over the years many people have compliment me on my willpower for my dedication in swimming 5 – 6 days a week. The truth is that it is not so much willpower or dedication as it is being highly motivated.
As the years have accumulated all the contact sports, injuries etc have come home to roost with a vengeance. To maximize, to maintain, mobility and minimize pain I need to swim those 5 -6 days a week.
Which is why the sizable surcharge imposed on the users of the Abbotsford Recreation Centre (and the City’s other facilities) to pay the multi-million dollar subsidy for a professional hockey team and a multi-million dollar subsidy to the well connected members of the Heat ownership group is so painful both as a citizen of Abbotsford and physically.
The surcharges have pushed the cost of a pass for ARC from affordable (with planning and frugality) to out of reach for the best part of Abbotsford’s citizens – as well as propelling the cost of using public facilities well past the cost of using private facilities. Only in Abbotsford would you end up with the public facilities affordable only for the well-to-do and the private facilities affordable to the general public.
The reason I have not followed so many others to the private recreation facilities is that I am a length swimmer and it is only the public facilities that permit 25 metre lengths.
The limitations on swimming imposed by being able to afford to swim only during toonie swim times means that since pool fees moved into the stratosphere my mobility has been decreasing and my pain levels have been increasing.
Struggling stiffly, slowly and painfully up to start the day serves as a daily reminder of city council’s practice of serving the needs of council’s egos rather than the needs of the taxpayers – with the notable exception of well connected taxpayers.
Adding insult to the injury of the usurious surcharge is the decision to abuse perfectly fine walls with paint to caricature a mural – as opposed to using the money frittered away on the mural to keep the cost of admission less extortionate.
A mural that seems to have a great deal in common with a Rorschach inkblot adds yet another layer of insult. Filling balloons with paint and having patrons throw them at the walls would have gotten much the same look, at a negligible cost.
Council, in typical council fashion, painted murals in a building where the cost of painting the murals pushes the admission cost up leaving people unable to afford to use the facility and see the murals.
The purpose of public facilities is not to fritter away money on murals or to provide funds to provide multi-million dollar subsidies to/for a facility for a professional hockey team or to provide multi-million dollar subsidies for an ownership group to buy themselves (themselves – not the city that is paying the subsidies) a professional hockey team.
The purpose of public recreation facilities is to provide amenities that all citizens can afford to access.
