Mount Pearl councillor Isabelle Fry says the City has more important needs than new signage for the downtown core. She voted against a motion Tuesday to install four new signs in the area. Photo courtesy of the City of Mount Pearl.
By Mark Squibb / July 14, 2023
Planning, Engineering and Development Committee co-chair councillor Isabelle Fry this week brought forward a recommendation from the committee but made it clear she was not in agreement with it and would be voting against the recommendation.
The motion in question was to ratify a July 4 e-mail vote of council to award the City Centre Gateway Signage contract to Mills & Wright Landscape Architecture for the bid amount of $140,505, HST included.
The signage is a part of the City’s ‘Find Your Centre’ city centre renewal plan, a campaign launched by council in 2020 to develop Mount Pearl’s core over the next three decades and will help outline the city centre parameters.
Four signs are set to be installed to mark the entry points to the city centre: at Commonwealth Avenue and Topsail Road, First Street at Ruth Avenue (on the northeast corner of St. David’s Park), Commonwealth Avenue and Smallwood, and Park Avenue at the T’Railway Crossing.
Fry said she was bringing forward the recommendation as a co-chair of the committee, but that she herself did not support it.
“While I support the City Centre, and think it’s a great project, I think there are many, many things right now we need more than signage,” said Fry. “So, I will bring it forward, and I will move it, but I just wanted to go on record and say that.”
Councillor Jim Locke threw his support behind the motion.
“We did bring in a detailed plan, Find Your City Centre, and it’s a 25-to-30-year vision of what our city centre will look like,” said Locke. “This council is focused on ‘city building.’ These four signs that councillor Fry outlined will demark or outline the entrances into the city centre as defined by our residents through a number of focus group activities, online surveys, and the like. We have many of these stages, or milestones, planned over the next 25 to 30 years to bring this plan to fruition.”
Councillors Bill Antle and Mark Rice both said they understood Fry’s objections, but would be supporting the motion.
Fry then clarified that she does support the plan, it’s just this particular motion that she does not support.
“Just to be clear, the thing that I’m not supporting at this time is spending $140,000 to put up four signs, when we don’t have a Splash Pad, and when there are so many other things that I would like to see,” said Fry. “I would like to see (these signs) maybe next year, or the year after. But I do respect the will of coucnil. But for my own purposes, I just had to go on the record to say that I don’t support $140,000 for four signs.”
Fry was the lone member to vote against the motion.
Following the vote, Mayor Dave Aker, addressing Fry’s point about Mount Pearl not having a splash pad, noted the city centre plan does include plans for a splash pad.
As for Fry, it wasn’t her first time voicing disagreement with the cost of the city centre signage.
Back in March of 2022, council voted to award the signage design contract to Mills & Wright in the amount of $13,345, plus HST.
“Personally, I don’t see the need for these signs,” said Fry during that meeting back in 2022. “To spend $13,345 to design signs, and then to have the cost of the sign on top of that seems like an awful lot of money in a year where we’re trying to be fiscally (responsible). We did so much penny pinching and cuts to try and balance our budget and to spend tens of thousands on signs, right now, I just don’t see it, I don’t agree with it. I understand the concept, I just don’t think this is a good spend at this time.”
