Well it has been a while since my last update on this blog. I thought I would watch to see how things unfolded. Let me be the first one to acknowledge that I never thought this sub would make it to Port Burwell. Well with a great deal of help from the municipality it has become a reality.
The one thing I find annoying with this whole process is that the tax payers were never supposed to be involved, the museum always maintained they had this project covered financially. Bayham gave the land to the museum and also acted as guarantor for $6 million. Now we are finding out the project is around $8 million and is $2 million over budget. The Municipality of Bayham has done more for this project than the Elgin Military Museum and it is quickly becoming a growing concern for the tax payers.
Bayham council needs to get real answers from the museum in terms of the business plan, how fund raising is going, how they are going to pay for this, how much more money is needed, what the next step is in terms of making the project viable as well as many other questions. The tax payers of Bayham deserve answers and if this project is ever going to work the museum needs to step up their game by being open and honest and giving an assessment of their financial position and realistic expectations of future costs and revenue for this project. Don't just throw out numbers an assume you are getting 100k paying people to tour the sub. A project like this needs to have lowered expectations so that when problems do arise you are prepared for it.
