You want to build a house. You have no money but can get it.

You have a guesstimate of what it will cost when it is done.

You send out a tender for the basement, you take the best price and start digging a hole.

While the basement is being built, you send out a tender for the framing. The tender prices come back and while they are a little higher than your initial guesstimate, you still go ahead and accept the best price.

Now you send out a tender for the next phase. It comes back much higher than the initial guesstimates, but you have invested alot of money already . What do you do?

Do you cancel the project and walk away, or do you bite the bullet, pay the money, and keep building at any cost. The companies you are tendering with know that you can’t turn back now, you have too much money invested .

At every step along the way the prices will go up higher than the guesstimates and their is nothing you can do about it.

Would you believe this is the way the tendering process works for the Portage Multiplex? There will be no idea what the final cost will be until there is already site development underway.

If you wanted to build a house with no final cost and had to borrow every dollar from the bank to do so, would you get any money? With no business plans? With no idea how much it will cost to operate?

They would laugh you out of the building.

But this is the way the City of Portage la Prairie and the RM of Portage La Prairie will look after the money that they receive from the taxpayers .

Based on responses to questions asked by councilors at the RM Council meeting on June 24, this is the process that the Multiplex will use. I applaud some of the Rural councilors who at least asked questions of the Stantec representative. With the recent announcement of the downsizing and costing issues I would of expected every person on council to have concerns but most remained silent.

The 45 Rural residents squeezed into the council chambers had many concerns, but Reeve Toby Trimble made it clear that he would not allow any one to speak to council on such short notice.

So the resolution was passed in less than 5 minutes.

Isn’t democracy a great system?

As a taxpayer, are you as “proud” of this fiasco in the making as our elected officials are?

Or do you get choked up every time you think about how badly this entire project has been mishandled?

Sound Off In The Comments !

.