Misdirection – the magician’s subtle art of pointing an audience’s attention towards one thing so it does not notice another.
In the corridors of Perth and Kinross Council, they must call this technique Thimblerow.
Fortunately however, the officers behind the latest plans for the long-awaited new Perth leisure centre are no David Copperfield.
Perhaps if they had been, it would have gone unnoticed that their new plans for PH2O are very similar to their old plans for PH2O.
The ones that were rejected in January.
They’ve just changed the location.
Facility must include ice and leisure swimming
At the start of this year, council officers put forward a proposal to build a new complex that did not include any leisure water or ice rink facilities.
The plans were met with instant, wide-ranging backlash, from the curling world, the swimming world and the public in general.
The message was clear – Perth’s leisure provision must include ice and leisure swimming.
It was a message received by councillors who told those officers to go back to the drawing board and come up with a solution that featured those facilities.
They gave them seven months to do it.
And yet, here we are, all those months down the line, presented with a plan that features neither.
But this plan is located at Thimblerow.
Ta-da!
Councillors left to try find a solution
The question needs to be asked, what were council officers thinking?
The officials have put forward a plan that was so clearly going to be deeply unpopular that both the Council Leader and the Provost felt the need to immediately try to amend it.
Councillor Grant Laing’s and Councillor Xander McDade’s solutions to the problem differ – differ dramatically it’s fair to say – but they both seem to have got the memo about ice and leisure water.
They’ve both found options that include them.
Elected members often take the heat for these reports – but in this case it’s those strolling the corridors of 2 High Street whose jobs don’t rely on the public vote that need to take a look at themselves.
Did they not listen to the public – or councillors – the first time round?
Or did they listen but decided they knew better?
Project seems like cost-cutting exercise
Now, the officers behind this report will no doubt say they have a bigger picture to look at – a whole city to plan.
Their proposal would see 250 homes built on Glover Street at the site of the current Perth Leisure Pool and Dewars Centre.
But that argument only holds so much water – water seeping out the sides at the rate of one leisure pool per second.
Homes are for people, and people want to live in a city with facilities, places they can take themselves and their children to be entertained and kept active – places like a swimming pool.
The proposal put forward by council officers is devoid of ambition and civic pride and, to be blunt, reads like a cost-cutting exercise.
There is £90million set aside in the capital budget for PH2O – this watered down version would only cost £61million.
Over the last seven months, council officers have badly let down the people of Perth.
And now they’ve left it to the politicians to try and pull a rabbit from the hat.
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