Building an eight-stair staircase apparently isn't as easy or inexpensive as it sounds.
Etobicoke councillor Justin Di Ciano can't believe consultants will be hired prior to the city getting an actual quote on what the stairs might cost to install in Tom Riley park. "You look at our process...I mean...we do this type of stuff every day. We're building parks, we're renewing our parks every day all across the city and yet we're still going outside the city, with all the staff that we have, and we're hiring consultants which are taking up a huge chunk of the budget for these parks. Twenty-five to 35 per cent of the money we spend to renew a park goes to consultants."
The stairs have become an issue after a man who frequents the park installed his own staircase rather than people being forced to shimmy down an embankment while gripping a rope. It cost him $550.
Staff say the stairs aren't safe and need to be replaced. They estimate it will cost $65,000 to $150,000.
"What's certainly not going to happen under my watch is that we're not going to spend anywhere near $65,000 to $150,000 to build these stairs," Di Ciano vows.
He questions why the city doesn't hire its own engineers, once and for all. "Why are we continuously going out to these consultants, spending millions and millions of dollars on them each and every year when you could have 10 to 15 in-house engineers specifically focused on doing this type of work. Yet, we're going out all time and paying huge amounts of money to get consulting work that we could be doing very easily in-house."
It's frustrating. "There's talk that this staircase, if it's built properly, should have a landing and then it should be changing direction so that at the end of the staircase, if someone falls, they don't fall into the fence where the garden is at the base of the park....so that people don't fall into the garden. I'm thinking Oh. My. Gosh. We're trying to build a nanny state where we have to think of every little, possible thing so that people don't hurt themselves. For starters, we could easily just move the fence."