Larry O’Brien has taken exception to Jim Watson’s promise to freeze sport facility rental fees.
If he is elected Mayor, Watson pledged that rental fees for sport fields, hockey rinks and community halls would be frozen for the next four years.
Watson criticized the current council for raising fees by almost 40 per cent for most of those facilities over the past term.
O’Brien responded by calling the pledge a “duplicitous” attempt to “curry voter favour” since Watson was part of the provincial government that approved the Harmonized Sales Tax, which added 13 per cent to those fees.
The remarks come a few days after Clive Doucet’s promise to reduce rental fees.
Though he would not put a precise value on the reduction, Doucet said money currently budgeted for Lansdowne Park and the Downtown Tunnel could easily cover the cost.
