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START YOUR ENGINES?
Next Wednesday’s running of the TARGA road rally through the
streets of Clarenville sure seemed like an afterthought in the discussion
yesterday’s Council meeting. To be fair, this end of meeting
information item did turn into a 15 minute discussion that unfortunately, left me feeling more concerned than I should given the unequivocal
guarantees that Council said it was looking for before it finally approved the running of the Clarenville leg of the Targa race for 2012.
It was a discussion that heard Councillor Rodway
proclaim that “It’s is much more safe event (this year) and I
think that this group has a good control over that. It seems like Targa
has done a lot more work in training this year.” From there the
discussion was further peppered with talk of safety tape placement
and with words and phrases like “we’re getting”, “will be posted”, “I
think”, “hopefully”, “not official yet”, “don’t have the budget” &
“seems”. Let’s just say that after listening to the discussion, I was not instilled with a lot of confidence that the Town knows for certain that the event will run significantly
different, and safer, this year than in previous years.
The major argument in favor of Targa on Clarenville streets has always been the economic benefit derived from the running of the event. The lack of
communication between Targa and the Town (as demonstrated by the
uncertainty in the Council discussion – one week before the race), and
the lack of effective communication between Town and the potential Clarenville stage audience says to me that
the full potential of the economic benefit of running this race has not been achieved. So I conclude that we are assuming all of the risk for the bit of the reward we are extracting - it's a off-balance cost/benefit that has never been adequately questioned by townspeople and answered by the race organizers.
According to Councillor Picket and the Mayor, this will be the make-or-break year for Targa in Clarenville. Considering the level of uncertainty we are now prepared to accept to "make" the race, I fear to wonder what it would take to "break" it.
In the meantime, let's keep our fingers crossed behind multi-coloured tape line and hope that no one is hurt enough to “Break” the race.
POSTSCRIPT
At the end of the discussion the Town voted to spend $500 on
airing radio ads for the event – not to promote and support it but rather to
warn people of the danger of it. This action has undermined the economic rationale for the race and given added credence to the people who argue against the race on the basis that it is an accident waiting to happen.
If Council is still so worried about the issue of safety why are they allowing it to move forward?
If Council is still so worried about the issue of safety why are they allowing it to move forward?
LISTEN FOR YOURSELF
To hear the complete discussion of Council's discussion on
TARGA, visit the PACKET’s website and listen to the Sept 4 meeting beginning at
the 23:00 minute mark. CLICK HERE
ROUTE INFORMATION
thanks for the information.
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