 _ Whig 2007-02-26(Updated: 2007.02.26 02:25:16 PM) |
Segal urges federal action
Wants expiring city leases dealt with
The Whig Standard
Local News - Monday, February 26, 2007 Updated @ 11:34:37 PM
By Brock Harrison
Whig Standard Staff Writer
Kingston Senator Hugh Segal has turned up the political heat on Ottawa to move on the fate of several local properties, including the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes.
In a letter to his Senate colleague, Public Works Minister Michael Fortier, Segal has asked that a senior government negotiator be assigned as the government’s point man in talks with the city about what will happen to about a dozen federally owned properties when various lease agreements between the two levels of government expire.
Segal notes the Marine Museum as the most pressing land matter that needs resolution. The 30-year lease agreement expires on Nov. 30 and the museum’s future remains uncertain.
As Segal explains in the letter, having one government official to handle all land deals between Ottawa and Kingston, rather than a piecemeal approach, would streamline and speed up the negotiating process.
“The existing policy … does fail to recognize that municipal taxpayers in Kingston are also federal taxpayers and have every right to have their overall federal land issues addressed on a fair and comprehensive way,” Segal writes.
Negotiations over federal properties in Kingston have have been characterized by delays and slow progress over the years. The city has been haggling for an extension on the lease but has not received an answer from Ottawa.
“Nothing would help more than replacing a property-by-property, decade-after-decade stalemate that is neither in Kingston’s interest or that of the federal government, with an ‘all in’ rapid negotiation,” Segal writes.
Since 1977, Kingston has leased the property, at 55 Ontario St., from the federal Public Works Department for $1, and then sublets it to the museum for the same price.
Ottawa has deemed that property surplus and has stated its desire to either sell it or lease it at market value. It is estimated a market value lease at the Marine Museum would be more than $100,000 a year.
Senior city manager Cynthia Beach, Kingston’s lead negotiator on the federal properties file, says she’s pleased Segal has joined the push to get Ottawa to move on the properties.
“If the government doesn’t have someone who can put it all together, we’re going to spend all that time and get nothing resolved,” Beach said. “We want some consistency in dealing with these issues.”
The Marine Museum is Canada’s only museum solely dedicated to the preservation of history relating to the Great Lakes.
Its collections include 3,000 artifacts – relics of Kingston-area wrecks, 10,000 books, 40,000 ships plans, 15,000 photographs and paintings and 3,000-feet of shelved archives. It attracts 12,000 visitors a year.
Segal’s letter, dated Feb. 14, came three weeks after city council threw their political weight behind keeping the Marine Museum in Kingston. Councillors directed city staff to urge Segal and Kingston’s MP Peter Milliken to press Ottawa for a resolution.
“This is fantastic news,” said Councillor Bill Glover, responding to Segal’s letter to Fortier. “It’s a great step forward and a very positive development.”
Segal also included the Lasalle Causeway on the list of properties in his letter. The causeway, built in 1916, has been a longtime bone of contention between Kingston and Ottawa.
The federal government eagerly wants to unload it but Kingston has rejected multiple offers, including one in 1991 which would have seen the city take on the causeway in exchange for $11.3 million and ownership of the Marine Museum lands.
The causeway is too old and in need of too many repairs for the city to consider now, Beach says, unless the federal government were to sweeten the deal with other properties.
That is why Segal’s list includes so many properties, she says.
“We’re trying to keep our options open,” she said. “If the city took on the causeway, there would have to be significant compensation with it.”