PICTOU – Closing the ship Hector was probably the most difficult decision Mayor Joe Hawes has had to make as a town councilor.
“I didn’t get a lot of sleep this week,” Hawes said. “We didn’t like doing this. It was a gut-wrenching decision.”
But it was a decision Pictou council made, announcing Tuesday morning to the 17 workers at the Hector Heritage Quay that the site will shut down. It comes down to a matter of dollars and cents, Hawes says.
“We can’t afford it,” he said simply.
“We can’t ask the taxpayers to subsidize the waterfront like that.”
The town has been footing the bill for the waterfront development for the past two decades, hoping to get a return on their investment. It never happened, he said, and council can no longer justify paying between $400,000 and $500,000 a year to run the site.
With a new sewer treatment plant, set to come online this spring, it would take a $0.50 to $0.60 increase in tax rates in order to maintain the status quo.
The town still owes approximately $200,000 on the original construction.
The Hector brings in about $7,000 a year. Council met with federal and provincial government officials in an attempt to secure $250,000 in funding to cover the operational costs of the facility, as well as the expense of taking the boat out of the water and moving it to Shelburne for repairs.
And, if the work isn’t completed by March 31, 2011, the Hector’s insurance coverage will lapse.
A meeting on Monday in Halifax, which Hawes believed was a last-ditched effort to save the ship, proved unsuccessful.
One final meeting is scheduled for today in Pictou, though Hawes doesn’t sound positive that the other levels of government will be pulling a rabbit out of their hat to save the ship.
“Maybe some government help will come through, you never know, but council had to make a hard decision,” he said. “We knew what we had to do, and we did this after due consideration.”
Right now, there are no plans for the ship itself beyond keeping the Quay closed this season.
Hawes is hoping that they’ll be able to raise the funds to send it to drydock in the fall, but beyond that, its fate is unknown.
