Save Our North Gym (S.O.N.G.)

I have set up a new blog for Save Our North Gym (S.O.N.G.). Please see http://saveournorthgym.blogspot.com/. Also, check out the nifty tag cloud, which I found here.

Saving the Pen-Hi gym and auditorium

Congratulations to me. With this post, I am officially no longer a one-topic blogger!
Submitted to the Herald as a letter:

What if, as Dodi Morrison asks in a recent column, Penticton cannot afford a new performing arts center? What if the $17M cost overrun for the South Okanagan Event Centre and increased spending for critical infrastructure (water, sewers) mean that the City of Penticton is unable to come up with its one-third share of a new $25M facility (even if the provincial governments agrees to foot the rest of the bill)? The decision for the local performing arts community then becomes whether to throw its support behind efforts to save the Pen-Hi auditorium or risk being left with no facility (other than the much-maligned Cleland Theatre). Little suspension of disbelief is required to imagine a three-act tragedy in which City Hall continues to make encouraging noises about a new performing arts centre, local arts groups stand by as bulldozers flatten the Pen-Hi auditorium, and, for one reason or another, City Hall’s vague commitment to a new facility never materializes in its capital budgets. Given the near certainty of continued pressure on the city’s financial resources, the performing arts community might want to consider hanging on to the Pen-Hi auditorium as a hedge against being left empty handed.

As some have already pointed out, a commitment to save the auditorium then raises the issue of Pen-Hi’s north gym. A good chunk of the estimated cost of converting the auditorium to a community facility arises from the need to sever its heating, water, and other services from the centralized facilities of the soon-to-be demolished school. Since the auditorium and gym are connected, the additional cost of including the gym in the conversion would be relatively small. The two buildings can thus be thought of as a package deal. Faced with the possibility of a bargain, the question is whether the auditorium and gym would create enough value in the community to justify the city’s costs of acquisition and conversion.

In the absence of rock-solid commitments by both city and provincial governments to a new performing arts facility, the community value of the Pen-Hi auditorium is bound to be high. The case for the gym, however, is less clear. Some in the community have a sentimental attachment to the gym. Others are less sentimental but think it is short-sighted and foolish to knock over a perfectly good building to make room for a parking lot, especially given the replacement cost of the building in question. The problem is that, to this point, no strong, unified voice in favor of saving the gym has emerged. The rebuilt Pen-Hi will include a massive new gym, so the school district cannot be expected to champion anything beyond its educational mandate. And additional gym space—bargain or no bargain—does not currently rank high on the City’s lists of capital spending priorities. However, we should recognize that fragmented support within the community is not the same as no support. Many small, diverse groups could benefit from community ownership of the gym. Perhaps, for example, adult basketball leagues would return to Penticton if more gym time was available in the evenings. And what about floor hockey, badminton, archery, martial arts, gymnastics, dance, and so on? It may be that these many small groups are, in aggregate, large enough to get the attention of local politicians.

The risk is that we might never find out. City Hall appears to have little time or stomach for the inter-jurisdictional negotiations required to bring an auditorium/gym proposal forward for a full public dialog. This is troubling since artistic and recreational facilities involve subtle tradeoffs between hard, tangible costs and soft, intangible benefits. It is not clear how a high-quality decision can be made without the full involvement of the community. In the worst case, the deadline for action on the gym will pass without careful and open consideration of its potential. All the important decisions will then be made by the driver of a bulldozer.

The importance of good trade-offs

(submitted to the Penticton Herald as a letter to the editor)

If one takes letters to the editor in the local paper as a barometer of public opinion, then we can conclude that Pentictonites are strongly in favor of three things: low-density, controlled development; protection of agricultural land against urban sprawl; and affordable housing. The problem is that we cannot have all three, especially given that people outside of our community want to live here. Constrained supply and strong demand for housing inevitably leads to increasing prices. If we really want affordable housing, we will have to accept either higher density or increased sprawl. The only way to sidestep this economic reality is to impose a non-market solution like, for example, Banff, which has capped its population at 10,000 and requires residents to apply to live there. The downside, of course, is that by outlawing growth, Banff has become the town that time forgot.

This pattern of tradeoffs, in which only two-of-three desirable objectives are achievable, seems common in city politics. Consider the South Okanagan Events Centre. The rule of thumb in project management is that a project can be on time, on budget, or be fully functional, but it cannot be all three. This implies that project managers must pick two of these objectives and accept slippages on the third. Apparently, we have decided to let the budget for the events centre slip. I have always believed that the events centre would become a white elephant; however, like many others, I was under the impression that it would be free white elephant (at least as far as capital costs are concerned). Recent revelations about mixups and misunderstandings—I have to be careful here, because I do not want to say anything actionable—mean that the event centre is actually going to cost Penticton taxpayers (er, I mean water and electricity users) a fair chunk of money.

It may be the case, as both Giffels and City Hall contend, that costs have increased dramatically since the referendum. But if this is so, why are we so willing to let the budget slip instead of making other tradeoffs? A smaller, cheaper facility is one possibility. However, many long-time residents warn against scaling back the functionality of the project (as we apparently did, but should not have done, with the Community Centre in the 1980s). What about letting the schedule slip instead? Do we really need to undertake a major project during a period of unprecedented inflation in construction costs? If, as Giffels claims, costs are spiraling upwards due to an Olympic building boom, why not wait out the boom? We know when it will end. And Giffels might be happy to have some post-boom projects on the books.

Delaying the project would certainly involve costs and unpleasantries. We would not, for example, have the centre completed in time for our centennial year. Imagine the civic shame. And delay would mean missing the Olympic-related spillovers that we have heard so much about, such as having (say) the Belarusian hockey team train for a couple of weeks on our ice. Yet, we are talking about a lot of money: for $17M, we could fly all of Penticton to the Olympics for the real thing. To frame the tradeoff differently, consider the following question: Would you, as a resident of Penticton, prefer Package A or Package B given that both packages cost the same? Package A consists of an event centre delivered in our centennial year and a couple of weeks of pre-Olympic activity. Package B consists of the same event centre delivered in 2011, no Belarusians, and a new wave pool (or a new community arts centre, or some other major project built with the money saved by timing the events centre better). If the Olympic boom is the true cause of the event centre’s cost overruns, then Package B is a real alternative.

The problem, as a recent editorial pointed out, is that we seem to be guilty of escalating commitment to the event centre. But this does not mean that we are powerless to make changes. In the same way that George W. might want to fully reconsider his options in Iraq, the City of Penticton might want to fully reconsider its options in our own little quagmire.