Committee refuses to rubber stamp Waverley underpass report

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This article was published 18/01/2016 (3586 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Councillors on a civic committee criticized senior administration Monday for failing to keep them up to date with the Waverley underpass project and refused to rubber stamp an administrative report that they were told had to be approved.

Couns. Devi Sharma, Cindy Gilroy and Shawn Dobson said they felt they were being rushed to approve a report that would have placed the $155-million project on the 2016 capital budget.

“This is a huge (project), with a big price tag,” Sharma (Old Kildonan) said. “Today, I don’t feel I had enough time to make a proper decision.”

The special meeting of the public works committee was called early Friday afternoon and details of the project were only released at that time.

In addition to including the underpass in the 2016 budget, the report called on the chief administrative officer to be given authority to award an untendered $12-million contract to a consulting firm to design and manage the project and for the CAO to be given authority to approve any over expenditures.

Council voted in March 2015 to make the Waverley underpass the city’s top priority to receive infrastructure funding from Ottawa and the province.

“Since then, as a council member I have heard nothing,” Dobson (St. Charles) told reporters following the meeting. “I think we should have heard something and the fact we didn’t and it comes up (today) and we’re supposed to pass it right away, I don’t think that’s fair to us.”

CAO Doug McNeil told the committee that if they failed to approve the project, it would be delayed for up to a year.

Committee chairwoman Coun. Janice Lukes told reporters she had been already briefed by both the administration and the consulting firm working on the project.

Lukes (South Winnipeg-St. Norbert) said she understood the councillors’ decision to take more time to consider the report.

“There’s a lot of information to go through and there’s a lot of questions and sometimes the answers are not in the documents,” Lukes said. “It’s difficult to access staff on the weekend to answer questions.”

Lukes said she believes there are opportunities to hold special meetings to ensure the report is approved to meet the administration’s schedule.

“I don’t know if it will be delayed a year,” Lukes said. “Hopefully we can speed up the process and not see that delay.”

Dobson and Gilroy supported a motion by Sharma to postpone any decision on the project for up to 60 days – to allow the administration to brief all of council on new developments within the project.

CAO Doug McNeil told the committee that there was no opportunity to brief councillors before Monday’s meeting, explaining that staff were busy preparing the report.

McNeil said council has to approve the report at its Jan. 27 meeting to ensure construction can start in 2017 and be completed by the fall of 2019.

McNeil said further complicating the project are the plans by the Reh-Fit Centre and the provincial government, which will relocate the Pan Am Clinic into a site of the expanded Taylor facility.

The committee was told that while the Reh-Fit Centre will begin work on its expansion later this year, the CN Rail lines that cross Waverley have to be detoured onto the vacant Reh-Fit property before the Reh-Fit Centre begins its construction work.

The councillors said they weren’t satisfied with McNeil’s explanation.

“There’s been a lot of work on this project but nobody bothered to tell us,” Dobson said.

Gilroy said she doubted other councillors were aware of the report’s significance. Gilroy and Sharma said once all of council is briefed on the project, special meetings of both the committee and council can be held to get the project back on track.

Sharma said she isn’t worried about the administrative-imposed deadline.

“That’s up to the CAO (McNeil),” Sharma said. “I’m sure he’ll come up with something.”

McNeil told the committee that the need for the Waverley underpass has not changed despite recent, high-profile developments – the end of the dispute between First Nations and Ottawa over the Kapyong Barracks and last week’s announcement of a special task force headed by former Quebec premier Jean Charest to examine the possibility of rail lines rationalization and relocation.

McNeil said Ottawa has kept city hall in the dark over the Kapyong property – which is key to any widening of Kenaston Boulevard – and any actions from the rail task force is likely years down the road.

 

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca