Millions of dollars in rent has been left unpaid by Government for the Hamilton Fire Station — five years after its lease with the Corporation of Hamilton expired.The facility’s King Street property is owned by the city, and its former “peppercorn” lease — in which Government paid a nominal fee of $1 a year — ended in November 2008.Hamilton mayor Graeme Outerbridge said the rent for the property should have been $700,000 a year.“As the lease was expiring, the management of the City of Hamilton negotiated with the Department of Public Works,” Mr Outerbridge added.“However, the Minister of the day did not sign it. The City continued to press for a signed lease, and to date it has not been forthcoming.”According to former mayor Charles Gosling, relations with the then-Minister Derrick Burgess were “extremely contentious”.Mr Burgess declined to comment on the lease when approached by The Royal Gazette.However, Mr Outerbridge said the Corporation had tried to break the impasse by offering “an alternative in-kind agreement — which has not been accepted”.The proposal in question would likely have been the same deal floated by the previous administration — in which the City offered Government the site rent-free, in return for receiving fire services free of charge.Added Mr Outerbridge: “At least two Government budgets showed a line item for the rental of the Fire Station.“As of today, no rent has been paid on the property. Although these negotiations have been ongoing for five years, we remain hopeful that a lease will be agreed and signed in the near future.”The 2011/12 Budget reserved $660,000 for rental of the King Street site, but the payment was never made.Asked about the status of the lease, and why Government hadn’t followed through on rent, a spokesman for Public Works said it was “an internal matter, and so no comment will be forthcoming”.“They refused to pay it,” Mr Gosling said. “My questions would be, where did that budgeted money go? It had been approved by Parliament for the rest of the fire station — obviously it went somewhere else.”Asked if the rental agreement had collapsed due to disputes over how much Government would pay, Mr Gosling said the Corporation under his administration had sought fair market value on the property — but had been “pragmatic enough to be willing to settle for an amount that covered the fire service charges”.He branded the Corporation’s continued payment for fire services within city boundaries as “double taxation”.Mr Gosling conceded the City had initially asked for roughly $1 million a year — but said the Corporation “would have gladly taken” the amount budgeted and approved by MPs in 2011.His administration, which was voted out in 2012, seldom shied from criticising Government’s takeover of wharf and port fees formerly paid to the municipalities.But Mr Gosling said the Corporation’s only recourse over the rent issue would have been “going public and increasing the temperature of the relationship”.“It would just have inflamed matters even more,” he said.“There was a strained relationship. They refused to acknowledge that there was any need to go into a lease arrangement.”