Reading Mr Pizzutto’s comments on the AESC loss brought to mind the words Barack Obama used at a fundraiser:

“They’re counting on that you all forgot. They think that they can run the okey-doke on you. Bamboozle you.”

Mr Pizzuto stated “the city always envisioned having to pay around $2 million to operate the AESC…” Either Mt Pizzuto has failed to do his homework, or he is attempting to re-write history vis-a-vis City Council and Staff and the preposterous $100+ million dollar construction costs, the never-ending multi-million dollar subsidies to operate the AESC and the millions of dollars of taxpayer monies subsidizing the purchase of a profession hockey team.

A subsidy for the favoured few who stepped forward to enable Council and Staff to ‘save face’ by avoiding having built a hockey arena with no team and no hockey. I suppose that measured against the loss of $30+ million of funding from senior levels of government through city halls ineptitude, a $2 – $3 million dollar yearly cost for Council and Staff’s ego project seems paltry.

At least to a City Hall whose lack of financial and mathematical ability prevents the use of simple multiplication to see that 10 (years) times $3 million equals another $30 million dollar ‘ineptitude’ tax bill for taxpayers?

Nor will taxpayers be “you all forgot” that in the real world, as opposed to Mr Pizzuto’s revisionist history fantasy world, there was no mention to the voters that “The city always envisioned having to pay around $2 million annually to operate the AESC……” when Plan A was being sold to the public.

Council and Staff sold the AESC to the public with promise that the AESC would earn $1+ million a year and reduce, not increase, taxes. Indeed, Council and Staff issued guarantees of profits after those pesky naysayers dared to suggest AESC would require yearly subsidies by taxpayers in the neighbourhood of $2.5 million.

And Mr Pizzuto, those $1+ million dollar a year profits were guaranteed without a hockey team. A hockey team was suppose to increase the million dollar profits of AESC, not require millions of dollars in yearly subsidies to lure a money loosing franchise to Abbotsford.

But hey, a few millions of dollar losses per year instead of a $1+ million dollar profit is no big deal – at least to Council and Staff.

“The operating shortfall…… in 2011 has been finalized at $2.83 million…….” ” That figure is a $410,000 improvement over the projections made by the city in March……”

Why not a $820,000 ‘improvement’? All that would have required is for Council and Staff to have projected an operating shortfall of $3.650. Better yet, Council and Staff could have ‘improved’ the operating shortfall by 50% if they had the projected operating loss at $5.66 million.

“the city always envisioned having to pay around $2 million to operate the AESC…”

Of course as it turned out there were millions of dollars worth of costs and expenses that Council and Staff were aware of and felt the public did not need to know. After all one would not want to give the public who pays the bills information that would cause them to come to a rational, therefore different, conclusion than Council and Staff desire.

In Abbotsford Council and Staff ‘consult’ with the public by giving the public only the information that supports Council and Staff, deeming contrary information ‘not needed for the public to know’ and dismissing any points raised by concerned citizens  that Council and Staff cannot refute as naysaying.

Whether AESC, subsidizing professional hockey or a water processing system were the problem is storage to meet peek demand, not the ability of the system to process enough water – consultation for Council and Staff is not about facts and good decision making but about hiring consultants to put together a sales campaign to sell councils wants to the public.

And any facts that might have a negative effect on public support of council and staff’s wants are facts that would only confuse the public and therefore the public does not need to know.

At least until it is time to Bamboozle the public about the expensive consequences of Council and Staff”s behaviours. Then suddenly those guaranteed $!+ million profits become “the city always envisioned having to pay around $2 million to operate the AESC…”