A Chatham councillor wants to know why nearly a half million dollars in international travel over the past seven years have yielded poor results. 

Doug Sulman asked Economic Development for a report, outlining the return on investment of foreign trips made by the Mayor and municipal staff.

“I was concerned about the money that was spent on the travels to try to get a fertilizer plant when the initial question should have been about zoning and can we do it,” Sulman explains. “The other issue is my concern about the results, you can’t really tie the results directly to the money that was spent, and the only results we heard about in the report were a school that hasn’t even been built yet and some jobs that aren’t there yet.”

The results show some job creation and a few dozen jobs coming in the near future, which Sulman says is simply too little from seven years’ worth of investment.