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Last month's session of City Council revealed how little most of our councillors care about preserving our heritage.

A motion presented by Councillor Peter Milczyn to list the Carleton Village Public School, where Toronto Police Services will relocate their 11 division, was defeated 25 to 10. In vain, Councillor Adam Vaughan made a vigorous plea to save our 1914 school. The wishes of the community, the recommendations of the City Planning Division, and those of the Preservation Board meant nothing. Our elected representatives said no. They tried as best as they could to convince each other that there is no way Chief Bill Blair will build a police station if he has to preserve the two facades of the school, which he himself never said unequivocally.

What Chief Blair did say at City Council is worth repeating. He said that no plan had been designed yet and no architect was consulted. Nonetheless, he insisted that preserving the two main facades will raise the construction cost from 25 million dollars to the range of 32 to 35 million. He also stated, and in our point of view this is fundamental, that the total construction cost of 51 Division headquarters, housed in a former gas purification plant at Front and Parliament streets, was 24 million, which included "extra costs of $6 million for restoration". In other words, it will cost more to raze the CVPS and build a new station than it cost a few years ago to build 51 Division headquarters within the perimeter walls of an old building. And if the walls of CVPS are to be preserved too it will cost a lot more.

This is not the only difference. There are other figures Chief Blair could have quoted concerning the 51 Division station, but did not. For instance, the cost of decontaminating the soil, estimated at $1.4 to 1.5 million in a 2004 report of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, ended up in the area of 6 million dollars.

These expenses will not be encountered on the site of the Carleton Village Public School, which was never industrial. Those savings would add $6 million to the difference between the costs of the two stations, or to put it another way, had the soil conditions at Front and Parliament streets been identical to those of CVPS, the development cost would have been only $18 million.

No matter how you look at it, it seems a police station turns out twice as costly if it is built in the west end of the city instead of the east: $25 million compared to $12 million if preserving historical architecture is not an issue; and $32 to $35 million dollars compared to $18 million if historical architecture has to be preserved.

Carleton Village will lose a building of which the community is proud and which has been recognized worthy of preservation by all the experts consulted. It is unfortunate it is the price we have to pay for living in the west end. Perhaps that is what several councillors meant last week when they insisted that they really cared about preserving our heritage but it was not the time to do so.

Claude Bergeron, president

Carleton Village Residents' Association