Another site with another budget.

That was the conclusion of an online poll that fielded more than 1,300 responses from readers concerned for the future of Orillia’s recreation complex.

In an effort to gauge public opinion on the long-delayed and wildly controversial project, Orillia’s community newspaper recently turned to you for input.

An online poll that ran over several weeks featured three questions that focused on the site, as well as the estimated $63-million budget associated with the project.

Just 17 per cent of 200 votes cast in the first poll supported building on the contaminated West Street site, while 82 per cent opposed it.

One per cent said they were unsure.

Coun. Michael Fogarty called the poll “a good, quick gauge of public sentiment.

“Is it scientific? Certainly not, but it is a quick snapshot of public opinion,” he added.

Fogarty said the results reflect much of what he has heard from constituents concerned with the rising cost and uncertainty surrounding the polluted property.

“The community wants and deserves a recreation centre,” he added. “To put one there is going to mean a further substantial delay at an extremely high cost. That is what I have heard from people.”

Readers who participated in the poll overwhelmingly opposed the current budget, with 96 per cent of the 179 responses to the second question cast in the negative.

Three per cent supported the budget and one per cent said they were unsure.

The final question drew the most significant response.

Of 937 votes cast, 69 per cent said the project should be moved to a clean site.

Thirty per cent disagreed, and one per cent was unsure.

Coun. Don Evans recently recommended the city undertake a similar survey, a suggestion that generated little interest around the table.

Evans applauded the paper for conducting a survey of its own.

“It is a perfectly legitimate way for Orillia Today to have operated, and for council similarly to operate,” he said.

The poll was “a very good thing for Orillia Today to undertake in the absence of the city doing so itself,” Evans said. “Council should take (the results) as an indication of the public mood and proceed to conduct further surveys, however they are undertaken.”

That close to a third of those who participated in the final survey question opposed moving the project to a clean site is telling, Evans said.

“A number of citizens are still not convinced as to the danger in what lingers under ground,” he said.

“There are people who argue that, after all, their parents and grandparents worked in that vicinity and didn’t seem to have suffered any consequences. On the other hand, we seem to have experts who indicate it is a dangerous and unsuitable site.”

Coun. Tim Lauer said he wasn’t surprised to learn the majority of poll respondents objected to the project’s more-than-$60-million price tag.

“If you are a taxpayer who is going to invest $65 million, you wouldn’t want a cloud hanging over the property,” he said.

It was at Lauer’s request that council recently struck an ad hoc committee that will attempt to answer questions surrounding the project and explore potential backup plans.

“Hopefully we can bring some alternatives, that if the site is unworkable, then that ball is already rolling,” he said. “If the cost is too high, we have already got that ball rolling.”

Cost will be one of several issues the committee will explore.

“I’ve been yabbering about that since this process started,” he added.

As for the results of the poll, Lauer said he prefers face-to-face interaction with residents to measure the public’s pulse.

“I get my feedback everywhere and anywhere,” he said. “Work, grocery stores – to me that is most reliable. Anybody who is listening these days knows there is a lot of concern from the public about the cost and the site.”

Mayor Ron Stevens argues that survey respondents might not have all the facts necessary to give well-informed answers.

“How do I gauge that?” he said of the results. “That is the problem with surveys – unless you lay everything out there, the answers can be convoluted.”

Stevens said the project’s future hinges on the environment ministry approving a twice-rejected risk assessment, the document consultants are again revising after it was bumped back for more work.

“If (the province) comes back and says very clearly this is not going to work, then we are moving on,” he added. “If they say it can work, then that is another story.”

Asked to clarify his comments, Stevens said that, “We have to be looking at alternatives, if there are any,” should the site be deemed unusable.

He is not, however, discounting the possibility that additional risk assessments may be undertaken.

Just how many council would be willing to stomach before abandoning the site “will become self-evident as time goes on,” Stevens said.

If (the third assessment) comes back (and the ministry says) that it is just beyond the level of rationale of doing it, that could be it,” he said.

In the same breath, Stevens said that Orillia has little available land to accommodate a project of the scope envisioned under the current plan.

Some have suggested a farm property earmarked for Lakehead University’s permanent campus as a suitable alternative for the recreation complex.

Stevens, however, questioned whether the rural property is “geographically right” for the city.

“If you put it at the far west end of the city, people at the east end have all that way to travel,” he said. “It is not as centrally located as it was intended to be.”

Coun. Wayne Gardy puts little stock in online polls.  

“If you can give me the names and addresses (of respondents) to say they were real people and they all lived in Orillia, that would be interesting,” he said.

In sharp contrast, Coun. Maurice McMillan views the poll results as a wake-up call.

“You’ve got to realize that you had better explain what you are doing and your justification, that you had really better get it right,” he said.

McMillan supported the consultants pursuing the third risk assessment but questioned the initial decision to accept the contaminated property from Molson Canada.

“I can’t believe that (a previous council) took it,” he said. “We should have had our own research done on the site.”

The city held a public forum on the MURF Tuesday evening.