White horse rapidly becoming a white elephant?

Is it really a municipal election year? That doesn’t seem possible considering the Pierrefonds-Roxboro borough is pouring more time and money into an overpriced monument first unveiled six years ago.

Pierrefonds-Roxboro had spent $60,000 on a white horse horticultural display in 2003, a visual representation of the Cheval Blanc rapids. It was later put in storage due to the high cost of maintaining the flowers year to year, estimated to be about $50,000.

The original horse display was located in front of the borough hall on Pierrefonds Boulevard, just east of St. John’s Boulevard.

Today, the borough has decided to re-introduce the horse sculpture to the public in a new location.

The borough ordered its blue-collar employees to fill its skeletal frame, which cost $10,000 initially to build, with fibreglass and to place it on a white cement base. This time, the horse sculpture will be installed just off Riverdale Boulevard along Rivière des Prairies, which is a fitting location.

While borough officials couldn’t confirm how many paid employee hours have gone into the planned re-birth of the horse sculpture, one union worker estimated a total of 250 hours were spent working on the project.

OK, the borough probably isn’t going to spend $50,000 to fix the horse sculpture for permanent display since the work is being done in-house, so that is an improvement over what was decided last time. At least the borough has come to its senses and realized that spending $50,000 annually to maintain one horticultural display was not the right decision.

It could be argued that spending another $5,000 on the old white horse which cost $10,000 six years ago is still throwing good money at a bad idea, but at least it will be put back into use, recouping the initial start up spending.

It’s an election year in the municipal world for all West Islanders, whether you live in a reconstituted city or one of the two local City of Montreal boroughs, so it’s a good time to reflect on what your city councillors and mayor have done for you and to scrutinize what they promise during the fall campaign to do in the future.