Kingston waterfront news for 2012

ALSO AT COUNCIL this week: $60,000 for the Kingston Inner Harbour Sediment Remediation Initiative.

The 2012 PRIORITY MATRIX is presented to Council on Tuesday's (February 21, 2012) meeting.

The matrix is presented in a new format this year, segmented in three exhibits. It's too bad the exhibits aren't properly labeled.

Exhibit A lists 49-items due for completion in 2012. We find nothing related to waterfront in Exhibit A. There's also nothing related to bike trails or parks unless by "park" you mean parking.

So don't hold your breath to see waterfront accessibility improvement this summer.

Exhibit B lists 42 initiatives for completion between 2012-2014. Those of waterfront interest:

• Item #1 is labeled "Study: Lakefront/waterfront plan" and has no due date or shows no comments.
• Item #38 is labeled "Visioning for Douglas R. Fluhrer Park" and has a compeletion date of Q1 2014 which is a ridiculously long timeline. You can tell there is no will to do this.

Exhibit C lists 33 all initiatives from the Corporate Work Plan in Kingston's Strategic Plan that are due for completion in 2013 and 2014. Just one item has a waterfront component:

• Item 14 is "Upgrade and complete construction of the Lake Ontario Park rejuvenation plan" and it's listed as Q4 2013.

That's it. Three items out of 124, and two of those are studies with either no due date or a ridiculously long horizon.

This is all very disheartening, of course. Kingston's relationship with waterfront continues to suck.

More importantly: Why aren't stages of the Great Cataraqui River Trail Project not listed as priorities by 2014?

SURPRISE! You would think that a winter with negligible snow accumulation would have negative impacts for Lake Ontario Water Levels come springtime.

The latest LAKE ONTARIO WATER LEVEL FORECAST predicts higher than normal water levels into the summer.

This makes little sense because the big lakes upstream are still well below long-term averages.