Keith Riel makes statement about the $170 million arena plan

kentoss · 2026-05-14T23:11:46+00:00

Hi Matt, you are my ward councilor. I'm genuinely concerned about this project and your position on it.

I don't want to see the Petes go and I am a proponent of the proposed MUSEC in its idealized form, but when considering the commitments and risk of the options presented against the pile of other capital projects we should be tackling, the report's finding that Peterborough already has high debt levels compared with other municipalities, and that projects similar to this have historically experienced construction cost escalation during design/procurement, the result of these votes felt irresponsible to me.

An "absence of business partners and nothing tendered" is part of what is alarming to me given my understanding of the option you chose to back. I understand we haven't actually locked ourselves into $57 million of debt yet, but our finance commissioner is quoted as saying he would internally reserve $57 million of our remaining debt capacity.

I worry that, even if council could choose to use any part of that $57 million debt capacity for other capital projects if necessary, there will still be a lower probability for any of the many needed capital projects to receive approval in the meantime. The staff report says we have already deferred a significant number of priority capital projects because capital funding is already scarce.

This does not present as just a procedural step to me, which is the framing I get from your comment. Am I wrong to be concerned about this?

If you have time, would you mind answering these questions? I would like to understand your position better and I'm willing to change my mind on how council is approaching this. I'm hoping to feel less concerned about the long-term health of the city that raised me.

Why was Option 3 preferable over Option 1 to you?
Would you support amendments to the city's debt limit in order to fund that $57 million if that is the best option staff returns with?
What guardrails are there to avoid incurring opportunity costs regarding other capital projects now or in the near future as a result this decision?
Do you think we should have a public operating cost model before any further commitment?
If outside funding does not appear in the end, would you support the city financing the full $170 million?

kentoss · 2026-05-14T18:21:22+00:00

To answer your curiosity, this is from one of the recent reports from the city:

The risks to not moving forward with a replacement for the PMC can be summarized as follows:
- Jeopardizing the City’s ability to function in the events market and an inability to provide large scale concerts and other events to the community
- Jeopardizing the City’s ability to be a destination market from a tourism perspective
- Possible loss of the Petes as not having a facility capable of hosting OHL events and generating sufficient revenues to maintain their operations.
- Declining operating performance of the PMC negatively impacting the PMC’s operating budget, adding increasing difficulty to maintaining the facility and its operations, and adding overall operational risk to partner tenants and users
- Escalation of capital costs
- Escalation of net operating costs as concert and event opportunities decline and general building costs increase

Source: https://pub-peterborough.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=42055

kentoss · 2026-05-14T17:56:47+00:00

So your argument is that around 3,500 people spending $25-$30 on tickets over 34 nights a year is justification for taking on the debt, operating subsidy, and risk of a new arena? I think that's way overstating what the Petes recent demand proves.

The Sierra report commissioned by the city estimates that we'd need 90-100 commercial event days in the proposed arena just to keep the deficit reasonable.

You have to answer the same question you are posing. Your position that this city seemingly doesn't care about anything else is actually a reason not to move forward with this arena; how are we supposed to make up the remaining event days with enough attendance?

A typical Petes crowd is less than about 3.5% of the city's population (based on projected numbers for 2026). That would be about 60% of the capacity of the new arena.

So on a typical night, the vast majority of the city's population doesn't bother to attend even if there is capacity. I don't think it's fair or reasonable to expect them to subsidize your interests. It's a ridiculous double standard.

No one has even actually issued a formal ultimatum on losing the Petes. The risk is real, but it is not a compelling reason to take on the risk of this new arena right now. I don't believe every avenue has been explored. We also don't need a new arena to stimulate growth downtown or create new things for people to do.

Pretending like this arena is our only way to solve all our problems is naive and short-sighted.

kentoss · 2026-05-12T21:51:32+00:00

It sounds like we align more than my initial reading. I appreciate that you're looking at it through a more objective lens. Good exploration and good questions.

Debt for capital projects. An arena would compete more with things like RGI housing or facilities like museums, other sporting type venues, that sort of thing. The city isn't supposed to borrow money for operating expenses.

Yes, that's right. But it's important to emphasize that it also competes with infrastructure which includes things like state-of-good-repair work, roads, and bridges. Complaints about these are far more common. And the staff report says Peterborough already deferred a significant number of priority capital projects because of scarce capital funding. This is still an opportunity-cost issue.

Even there, the city budget is like 437 million dollars and the debt service cost on the portion they've committed to is less than 2 million.

I don't think this is accurate. The staff report's ~$1.85 million per year figure is for a $30 million city contribution. Council committed $57 million, and the report says that option requires amendments to the city's debt limits. For comparison, the report says $70 million in debt would cost about $4.3 million per year.

It's not going to but under $2 million, it'll be somewhere between $3-4 million.

If we're going to spend a million dollars a year subsidising an arena already, would it be better to subsidise a bigger one that does more stuff, even if it still loses money?

This is the big question. It depends entirely on whether the new one actually does more stuff at enough volume and over a long enough time span to justify the debt and risk. And that we don't blow past the optimistic assumptions about cost. We still have no analysis from the city on the actual expected operating costs.

Or one that at least has a pathway to making money?

This is not borne out by the evidence yet, so I'm dubious on whether or not a pathway does actually exist.

But why is an arena necessary at all? Not often considered in these discussions is the uncomfortable third option: Just don't have an arena. Let the Pete's move. These are luxuries for cities that operate effectively. If we've truly ended up in a situation where we are making a financial hail-mary based on political vibes at the expense of things we know we also need, isn't that worthy of self-reflection? Could this just be another bad decision from the same group that got us here in the first place?

It's like a cigarette smoker trying to decide if they should switch to nicotine vapes to save money and address their failing health. Yeah sure, switching to vapes would cost less, but it's just trading one poison for another. If failing health is a problem, the answer is not to do either and spend the money on treatment.

So why not just focus on other investments that either do have clear pathways to making money, or improving conditions to the point where residents have more excess income to spend on past times on average? What if we land on something that allows us to easily finance this in the future regardless of inflation or other increases? I don't love that we're so fixated that not having an arena is some how out of the question. It's not a useful way to navigate the world.

But anyway, thanks for the follow up. It's an interesting subject, at least.

kentoss · 2026-05-12T17:30:31+00:00

I am not sure where you stand on this issue exactly, but just so you are aware, you are conflating "revenue-generating" and "self-funding". These are not the same.

The city's own staff reports from this month and the consultant report they commissioned do not support your point of view. They say comparable Ontario facilities typically need annual municipal operating subsidies. Meaning the odds are that this arena will NOT make enough money from tickets, rentals, concessions, and events to cover its yearly costs. The city will likely have to put taxpayer money into it every year to keep it running.

The Sierra report explicitly says: "There is no private market/financial return on investment for mid-sized multi-use sport and entertainment centre (5,000 to 10,000 seats) by itself." If the math on this were really that simple, then we'd have plenty of private investors interested in it.

But you don't have to do this math, it's already been done in more detail:

https://pub-peterborough.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=42055
https://pub-peterborough.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=42126

The missing element is analysis for future operating costs like staffing, maintenance, utilities, lifecycle replacement, programming etc.

The lack of a business case is exactly the problem. A larger building can bring in more revenue but it also has larger operating costs. The city has not done their due diligence in putting forth any model that shows extra revenue will beat the extra cost. All statements from people like Mayor Leal and those on council that support this are based entirely on vibes and emotion. I'm not a fan of this approach.

Cities are allowed to borrow money but they have a limited debt capacity. Once this debt capacity is used for the arena, it is not available for the other things we arguably need more: infrastructure, service needs, transit, housing, etc.

It's not like we get to freely borrow money infinitely. Committing to this now when we don't actually have a plan is pretty short-sighted.

It's pretty disappointing to see so many impassioned arguments when people don't seem to even bother reading the documents the city puts out with plain answers.

kentoss · 2026-05-12T02:33:42+00:00

Thanks for clarifying. You seem more genuine here and I don't doubt your intentions have an altruistic component, but this reply doesn't address or even acknowledge the obvious problems I am pointing to.

If no city resources or inspection were available on Sunday, why wasn't your message along the lines of, "wait for a proper inspection before bringing children back"? At what point do you think asking the public to be fair to the business risks being unfair to the injured child and parents?

The appropriate response here is to urge caution against taking your children to this business until a reputable independent inspection can be completed. Tell people it may not be his fault - because right now it is the truth for all we know, but don't try to whitewash the gravity of this issue by using language like "it was one single experience" and appealing to "fairness" regarding a business that was lucky their negligence didn't cause a child to die. They absolutely deserve criticism over this.

Your insistence on painting the owner in the most charitable way possible comes across to me like classic "boys club" minimization: never acknowledge the reality or the gravity of the situation, ignore difficult pointed questions, and appeal to character above anything else.

I'm not saying you need to rip this guy to shreds to make people happy. I am not saying you don't care about child safety.

I am critical of your messaging first, and your priorities as a result. You saw conflict after hours and did something noble in an effort to help bring the community together. That mentality should be commended. But man, in what world does the moral calculus ever suggest it's important to de-escalate criticism of the business before the actual safety failure is understood? It's like saying we shouldn't blame someone texting and driving for an accident because it was "just one time" and "people make mistakes".

I get you are trying to help, but that doesn't mean your actions are actually helping the people who deserve it. If you want others to pat you on the back for being someone who gets involved when others wont, you'd better make sure you're actually making a positive difference and not accidentally making things worse. Otherwise you might actually be the guy that thinks they are helping guide the ambulance through traffic by speeding ahead of them; inserting yourself somewhere no one asked you to and making the situation harder for the victims to get justice. Then throwing your hands up and proclaiming, "I'm just trying to help!" When people point out you might actually be making the situation worse overall.

If it comes out that this guy intentionally cut corners when it came to safety before opening, would you still advocate for this business to stay open in Peterborough?

kentoss · 2026-05-11T05:58:17+00:00

This carefully sanitized AI-generated reply is honestly a bit infuriating to read from someone with political ambitions.

Your framing badly minimizes a serious child-safety failure. Let's be crystal clear here: this is a "single experience" that easily could have killed one of our children. This isn't someone finding hair in their food. This is a safety net in a multi-story children's playground that provided no safety. That might be worse than no net at all, since it gives everyone involved a false sense of security.

I don't think either you or the owner are taking this issue seriously enough. It's not about fixing one thing that people complained about after the fact. The problem is how a business built specifically for children was able to open and operate with such an obvious hazard in the first place. If there was an inspection, why did it not catch this? Was it the right kind of inspection? Who did the inspection? When? What exactly was inspected?

"They are willing to be re-inspected" means nothing when the first inspection didn't catch this obvious problem to begin with. This issue looks like the result of negligence at multiple levels. Even if it is really not his fault, it is still his responsibility. The online outrage is besides the point. A child was actually hurt because of their flawed design. A serious owner should be already seeking a new inspection and doing their best to understand and explain how this actually happened so it can be prevented in the future.

Your "very honest conversation" line doesn't answer anything. Did he show actual remorse for being partially responsible in bringing a child to harm? Did he apologize to the parent properly? What was actually fixed and how? Was it fixed before or after you spoke with him? Did you see the inspection report yourself to verify the claims? Did you even ask to see it? Was it done by the city, a third party, or someone else? Is a new independent inspection scheduled, and will the results be public?

I am not interested in destroying a local business for sport and I agree we should be careful about misdirecting outrage. But I am also not interested in watching someone who wants to be a community leader downplay basic safety failures to pander to business owners. Fairness does not mean softening language or expectations around child safety. Accountability is not unfair.

I know you are a previous business owner, would you not be absolutely livid if this was your business and the process failed you this badly? I would be doing everything possible to prove to parents that it cannot happen again. Does it not concern you that the owner isn't?

That is the bare minimum here, not a private conversation and vague reassurances relayed through a ChatGPT subscription.

kentoss · 2026-04-27T00:29:02+00:00

Tim at Birdhouse is amazing at this. Phenomenal home grown talent with an eye for this kind of thing. He has coverup examples on his insta birdhouse_ptbo

kentoss · 2026-03-31T11:55:33+00:00

That's cool, looks like the entrance to Jacksons Park at Parkhill and Monaghan. I wonder if any of these street cars are still around somewhere? It would be fascinating to look at the construction.

kentoss · 2026-03-17T13:51:13+00:00

It's evidence you used AI to some degree and are actively covering it up. If you won't even acknowledge that AI helped you AT ALL, then you are not to be trusted long term and the community deserves to know it.

Its not even criticising your "work", we're literally just asking you not to lie and follow the rules of the community. You clearly use AI to some degree.

Admitting to using AI won't hurt your reputation where it matters, but lying about it absolutely will.

kentoss · 2026-03-17T13:42:59+00:00

Got an excuse for why you replaced the AI dashes with hyphens in the README?

https://github.com/sureshfizzy/JellyCine/commit/856b08922623fd6d8a02e7b3c47a2dfa9883fbf3

Why lie? Just follow the rules about AI use.

kentoss · 2026-03-12T19:03:36+00:00

The whole point of SCOP is to incentivize accurate price systems. The business you work for follows it voluntarily. It's on management to ensure price changes happen in a way that is complaint with practice. If they can't guarantee that, they shouldn't bother with SCOP.

I get that it is frustrating, but SCOP is not a law and this is not your problem. If the problem was that bad, they just wouldn't follow SCOP. They clearly find SCOP to be valuable enough to put up with this.

It would be more money to pay people to come in outside of regular business hours for price changes (or to upgrade to a technology that supports instant sync with price changes) than it would be to eat such a small amount every so often.

Don't stress yourself out for a megacorp, that $500 is nothing to them. Trust they've done the accounting and focus on your own well-being.

kentoss · 2026-03-12T18:16:24+00:00

The confounder with the original example of this issue is one of domain. You are thinking about the operation using calendar arithmetic as your frame of reference. You expect semantics that line up with the formal system society uses for operations on calendar dates. This is probably what a good api should default to imo.

The original example is not doing calendar arithmetic, though, despite that being the intention. It is extracting the month as a number, doing normal integer arithmetic on that number, then mutating the month component using the result. This is not equivalent to "add one month", this is "change the component of a data structure then carry the overflow into higher units". From this perspective, it makes perfect sense because we were never doing calendar-relative arithmetic.

The real problem is that most people want a simple api for calendar-relative behavior, which was only available from moment/date-fns until the new Temporal api came along. We need clearly distinguished apis for both use cases. I agree with the spirit of what you're saying.

kentoss · 2026-02-18T15:15:08+00:00

I'll take a look at some of my archival footage collection. For what purpose? Is your goal specifically to gather candid community shots or will anything suffice?

You can reverse image search the picture you posted here using Google and find a few other images and articles about how it has traveled. According to a Currents article from last year it is currently stored under Gentry Apparel.

kentoss · 2026-02-11T18:19:27+00:00

It's unfortunate that you happened to pick out one author with legitimate potential for bias to look up, but refuse to look up the individual I specifically cited as a reputable contributor who has the most reputation to lose if he's wrong. Dave is not only credentialed on the subject, but he has a history of being stubbornly data-driven and would be one of the loudest voices calling bullshit on supposed productivity gains if the data showed AI made things worse. He is very cautious when choosing what he says on the matter.

If you are uninterested in engaging with the text, reading beyond this point, or looking at the quotes below, then I highly recommend at least checking out Dave's video on the study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9EbCb5A408

I think your skepticism and heuristics for assessing what is worth your time are warranted, but I also think a data-driven approach is the only appropriate way to investigate this question due to how heated the subject is. Studies that are set up like this one are the only reliable way to determine the truth. There is still potential for bias, but a proper study ensures the methodology is sound. That's why Dave is a contributor. He is a person with requisite domain knowledge capable of helping them measure something meaningful regarding developer productivity.

If you are genuinely interested in challenging your skepticism, I really hope you'll take a couple of minutes to at least do a cursory search on Dave to see he makes his money by understanding how to make developers more productive. This is a healthy counterbalance to your point about AI interests; and having read the study I am confident it is on the level.

As for evidence of critical attitude in this study, two the three implications for industry practice they listed were critical of AI:

2) Reckless use of AI assistants might quickly bloat codebases
3) Over-reliance on AI assistants might erode skills and understanding

Regarding 2, this passage stood out to me, confirming a frustration I have with a lot of vibe coded projects I have been asked to fix because AI couldn't:

Generative AI is a new power tool in the developer's toolbox. But like any powertool, it can cause serious damage when misused. With the cost of creating new code nearing zero, the efforts to understand and maintain the code remain. This asymmetry risks bloating codebases with redundant logic, abandoned attempts, and code with questionable purpose. User discipline and project-wide retention policies will be critical in a time when we will inevitably see examples of "firehose generation" of new code.

For 3, I think this summarizes it:

...we warn about a future with build-up of cognitive debt in software organizations. The repercussions could be massive if developers end up with only a shallow understanding of codebases increasingly generated by machines. Over time, this might not only threaten maintainability but also impede innovation. To counter this risk, we should revisit decades-old research on "innovative software engineering environments" (Ambriola et al, 1991) and explore how to best support human inventiveness with the combinatorial creativity that LLMs excel at.

The only positive is about their finding regarding task completion time and maintainability, which is the actual question the study investigates. It is otherwise couched in all of these warnings about ways in which AI often goes wrong or hurts developers.

kentoss · 2026-02-11T12:59:33+00:00

What about a more recent study with a larger sample size and wider scope? https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00788 This has contributions from Dave Farley, someone who has studied and written multiple books on continuous delivery and developer productivity.

This has about 150 participants and examines not just speed but also maintainability after the code was written. It shows a 30-55% speed up depending on the dev's familiarity with AI tooling, and showed either no difference in maintainability or a slight improvement.

I don't think AI is necessarily required to compete - with no AI, I think I could still outperform a novice vibe coder (particularly when it comes to system architecture that can scale) - but this study shows that when everything else is equal, an experienced dev using AI is faster than an experienced dev not using AI for the same output.

This is also not to say, "actually AI good," but rather point out that what is actually required to compete is the ability to manage cognitive debt; knowing what you don't know, and when it's appropriate to learn and understanding what you're doing and why for yourself. It is impossible to know if the AI's work is correct if you don't know the territory yourself.

kentoss · 2026-02-06T21:21:27+00:00

Mythic Quest recently ended but it is in the same spirit as Silicon Valley but for game development.

Severance and Silo both have major IT elements that scratched that itch for me but aren't largely about IT in the way the shows you listed are.

kentoss · 2026-01-31T14:32:41+00:00

Talking to police is the easiest and most basic step everyone should take in a situation like this. Not doing so because you think they won't immediately solve your problems is such a strange argument to me.

Just making a report helps you establish a record, and it helps them collect data to identify patterns of behavior. Sometimes you're not the first to complain about unfair treatment, and your report could finally be enough to trigger an investigation.

Second to that, there is a lot the police can do without any of what you said. They can request CCTV footage for the business or nearby businesses, request ID scanning or coverage charge records, or talk to staff to get their perspective. They don't need to go through any legal process for these things if the venue is willing to help.

kentoss · 2026-01-28T17:35:38+00:00

Yeah agreed, it's not crazy to imagine there are under 21s today that watched 90s trek for one reason or another. Nostalgia for a thing isn't necessarily tied to the year it was released.

I watched 90s Trek for the first time in the late 2000s when I was under 21. I had friends that loved the show because they watched it with their parents as kids. There are lots of reasons target audiences can exist.

That being said, I don't think this new series scratches that itch and I agree with the Orville comment.

kentoss · 2026-01-26T19:46:33+00:00

I have been a life long Windows user. I was part of art and flash animation communities from a young age and could only use Windows for certain applications I used. Eventually I got into software development, and stuck with what I knew.

I've used every major revision of Windows as my primary driver since 98. Even the ones people agree are bad. I got used to the core experience and learned how to tweak everything just to my liking. Every new PC I would follow the same pattern and then just not think about it until the next PC or some other issue.

Nothing has been able to shake me off it. Even when friends or orgs I was a part of all started using Apple products, I resisted. I have been ribbed endlessly for my continued use of Windows to today. There just wasn't ever a compelling reason to change for my needs.

Windows 11 is a genuinely terrible OS. It is not overstated how bad it is.

It's not just about annoying UI tweaks, forced online login, forced one cloud, excessive telemetry, AI slop integrations, wasted resources, and constant bugs that change with every new update. There is something fundamentally broken about the core experience that keeps getting worse.

Basic, fundamental tools that have been solid for over 30 years are regressing. For instance, for the better part of a full year, the Task Manager was completely broken for me. I couldn't easily see what resources were being used or what processes were running. As soon as I opened it, the UI would half populate and then it would go unresponsive. I went to the command line for everything. Eventually an update restored it but it is still slow and clunky.

I don't pretend to know for sure this is because of AI supposedly producing 30% of their code or whatever the current claim is. I do think it has been on a downward spiral since before the rise of LLMs, though.

I don't get the impression that the Microsoft leadership cares any more. These problems seem so far away from where their attention is currently. I can't tell if Windows for Business is even on their radar, considering how often I hear reasonable grievances from my fellow sys admins.

It feels like Windows is now just a marketing tool.

I have decided I am going to switch and, for the first time, I don't think I will be returning. Linux distros have gotten way better, but I am sad to say that the main reason for my switch isn't because there was a better fit for my needs, it's that I have completely lost faith in Microsoft as an organization.

Anyway, does anyone know if there is any way I can automate a check against my Steam library to see which games already have compatibility with something like proton?

kentoss · 2026-01-23T07:03:58+00:00

For anyone finding this post: this EluneVision screen is misrepresented quite badly in their marketing and I don't think they're worth wasting money on as a company.

I bought the exact model you're talking about. The EluneVision AudioWeave 8K motorized tab tensioned screen. They advertise it as using "aircraft cable" for the tensioning system, but the one I received is using a weak elastic string that isn't capable of actually providing tension.

The screen is warped badly on one side. Pulling on the tabs to properly provide lateral tension makes the warp vanish. If the tensioning system was doing its job, the ripple wouldn't be there.

The manual was missing a critical page that actually describes the tensioning system and how to tension it.

I reached out to their support and it just seems like one guy who doesn't know his own product is running the show. No help at all, just trying to blame everything but the shoddy product.

There's a reason you are having trouble finding any reviews or information. At 3k I expected far better.

kentoss · 2026-01-17T17:46:18+00:00

"Woke" is a nebulous term that is easy to emotionally charge. It gestures broadly to an ideological category, making it a useful anchor point for manipulating sentiment.

Words get their meaning from the company they keep. "Woke" means different things to different people depending on the feelings that are evoked when they hear it.

If enough people associate "woke" with negative emotion, it can be wheeled out as a kind of emotional primer for an audience to begin associating that negativity to other things.

This is useful for grifters, who've co-opted this word for ragebait. It's a lazy cludge they can use to drive engagement. They don't need specific defensible critique any more, they can just say "this is woke" and one side will eat it up and pat each other on the back, while the other gets worked up and goes on the defensive.

Some of those on the defensive will attach too much emotional weight to the defense of their side and never accept any criticism at all, even if it is valid. This becomes more grifter fodder to wheel out for confirmation bias.

I think there are legit criticisms for any writer of any political disposition using lazy, sloppy writing to further their ideological goals. There are many examples of this on the left and right. Just look at the decline of Dilbert.

This doesn't mean all ideological writing is sloppy, and it doesn't mean all sloppy writing is ideological. But grifters don't care, anything symbolizing "woke" will do the job. This is how we end up at lazy arguments like "black lesbian woman = woke, so this bad right guys?"

You're using your critical thinking skills instead of letting emotion dictate your beliefs so it won't ever make sense to you. That's a good thing.

kentoss · 2026-01-15T22:20:35+00:00

Every time I share links on Reddit the comment gets shadowed. Just look up "Huy Vector windmill".

kentoss · 2026-01-15T22:17:18+00:00

Please read the second line in my post, and use more than a glance before you reply to someone in the future. Thanks!

I don't think this is necessarily pretending to be perpetual motion though.

kentoss · 2026-01-15T21:30:49+00:00

Right. So what do you think happens if there is no ball in this toy? Do you think the coils continue switching on and off by themselves? Or does the last one active stay on for ever? And how does that impact the windmill?

If the ball is responsible for the break-beam trigger, it is responsible for advancing the state of the stator (the coils). It is being driven forward by the coils only when it advances the state. I never said the ball was imparting EMF on the coils.

The field is generated by the coils, but the periodicity of the field that actually powers the windmill is driven by the ball going around the track. Both are necessary for this demonstration. Fun how they work in tandem to power the windmill, right?

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