NNSL (Oct 01/97) - Days after the dairy was shut down, there are more questions than answers about the status of an agreement made three months ago between the city and dairy farmer Neil Myers.

In the controversial deal, the city wrote off over $200,000 in lease payments owed by Tuaro.

Myers agreed to pay the city $250,000 for the farm equipment and 2.4 hectares of the 5.3 the dairy was leasing from the city. He secured the deal with a $20,000 deposit, put toward a $50,000 side deal for the salvage of the old curling rink.

At the time, taxes were paid up on the property. But Mayor Dave Lovell said Monday the dairy will be three months behind on its taxes as of Sept. 30.

Under the agreement, Tuaro stopped making lease payments at the time the deal was signed.

Lovell said he believed the city would keep the $20,000 deposit, but senior administrator Doug Lagore said, later in the day, that had yet to be decided.

As far as the future of the property goes, Lovell said: "That would be for the new council to decide, but I suspect we will just send out a request for proposals on the property and see who comes up with what."

When the deal was made, it received the unanimous support of council, which defended it as a way of making the best of a bad situation. The alternative, argued aldermen and the mayor, was to bankrupt Tuaro.

"I guess it's too bad the community didn't support them," said alderman and mayoral candidate Vi Beck Monday.

"I know OK Economy went full bore into undercutting them, just to knock them out of business. It's too bad, because everybody could have worked together."