Stay the course.

The phrase sounds suspiciously like the message favoured by a certain U.S. president in defending the case for a protracted and costly military effort.

The same message recently emerged from the mouths of local councillors who harbour high hopes for a protracted and costly effort of a different sort.

Stay the course and stick with an environmentally troubled property, proposed as the home of Orillia’s long-delayed recreation complex, a majority of members argued this week.

The MURF site is certainly no Iraq, but rather a minefield littered with the ugly remnants of the city’s industrial past.

Nobody can say whether Ontario’s environment ministry will approve a safety plan for the contaminated site, though according to city staff, the province is “cautiously optimistic.”

Tim Lauer isn’t holding his breath.

“Our dance partner is the (environment ministry) and they are calling the shots,” the visibly frustrated councillor remarked during a special meeting this week. “They are the lead.”

Only recently did council learn that three submissions of a risk assessment was considered average, a point consultants would have done well to mention earlier in the process, Lauer argues.

So the former sense of optimism reportedly expressed by the province over the twice-rejected risk assessment has since turned to cautious optimism.

Should the province give its all-important seal of approval, the plan would almost certainly be challenged at an environmental tribunal, an action that could add years to the process.

So where do we go from here?

The goal is admirable – recreation facilities are crucial to the well being of our growing community, and many have worked tirelessly to reach that end.

How Orillia best achieves that is the $63-million question.

“How much more money, how much more time are we prepared to devote to this exercise before ultimately we decide – if it turns out we must – to go elsewhere?” Don Evans asked.

It’s a valid concern, and one that deserves an answer.

Evans, who would ultimately support moving forward with the current risk assessment, recommended the city conduct a survey to determine support for the project in its current form.

He noted that this paper was doing just that with an online survey.

Council instead agreed to hold public consultations to gauge opinion, apparently under the assumption that somehow this will provide an answer on the matter.

It won’t.

As has happened in the past, some will stand up in support of the current site and others will oppose it.

Everyone will return home and, barring a sudden change of heart on either side of the argument, nothing will have changed.

Relying on a hands-in-the-air vote from whoever happens to be sitting in the audience on a particular evening no more presents a true picture of public sentiment than does a poll of coffee shop patrons.

What isn’t in dispute is that, as the owner of the former industrial property, Orillia is responsible for its security and every drop of vinyl chloride that leaches offsite.

The question is, how long is council willing to chase the dream of building a recreation complex there before taxpayers say enough is enough?

Many are already saying it.

More than 80 per cent of the 200 people who participated in an online poll conducted by Orillia Today oppose the West Street site.

City staff has offered alternatives, among them the potential for relocating the project to the Horne Farm, the rural property on which Lakehead University’s permanent campus will sit.

Abandoning the one-site concept in favour of multiple locations is also an option, staff said.

Those suggestions deserve serious consideration, if only to prove to taxpayers that the city has a Plan B in its back pocket, should the West Street site prove unworkable.

To date, discussion of those alternatives has been sadly lacking.

Proponents of the polluted site argue that its central location is key, noting its close proximity to the downtown and easy accessibility to most residents.

It is also, they say, part of a long-time vision that deserves pursuing.

“I want to realize the vision that the community put together, and it was a community effort, in spite of what people have said,” Joe Fecht added.

The downtown is an important consideration, but to suggest the city’s core is doomed without a MURF – as has been said repeatedly – amounts to needless fear mongering at a time when reason is most needed.

The government, meanwhile, is demanding municipalities build up rather than out by utilizing existing lands, yet the development of former industrial properties remains a boggling exercise in frustration for those brave enough to try.

“They are using us to make sure that their Ts are crossed and their Is are dotted, and unfortunately we have to pay the bill for it,” said Ralph Cipolla, an avid supporter of the site.

Orillia, by Cipolla’s estimation, is the guinea pig.

Given the polluted state of the site, the ministry is no doubt covering its bases to avoid embarrassing itself in future, should the proposed safety measures prove inadequate.

Meanwhile, consultants working on the city’s behalf and the environment ministry continue to point fingers at one another, we’re told.

The former is charging that the government is continually moving the goal posts in terms of what is expected from this safety plan; the latter says more work is needed.
 
“It really is a guessing game, and I am concerned that this is going to keep going,” project manager Lori Koughan told council this week.

Well said.