Browaty sounds alarm over consultant’s Portage and Main report

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This article was published 04/10/2017 (2958 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

North Kildonan Coun. Jeff Browaty said he’s concerned senior city officials will rewrite portions of a consultant’s report to justify reopening Portage and Main to pedestrians.

His concerns are based on comments from the Manitoba ombudsman’s investigation into his complaint over the city’s refusal to release an engineering study examining the effect on vehicle traffic if the intersection opened to pedestrians.

Browaty said the ombudsman explained that one of the reasons city officials cited for refusing to release the consultant’s report is because an administrative committee overseeing the project and the project manager were in a position to “accept, reject or make changes to the entire (consultant’s) report, including background, factual or technical information.”

Browaty said he’s troubled that senior civic officials are in a position to manipulate factual and technical information to support Mayor Brian Bowman’s public promise to reopen the intersection decades after it was closed to pedestrians.

“I’m concerned the integrity of the final report has been compromised based on the information that’s in the ombudsman’s report,” Browaty told reporters Wednesday. “The reasons the city used (for the delay), according to the ombudsman, were the fact they wanted to be able to change factual and technical information. This raises some really big question marks.”

The civic administration has been studying how best to reopen the iconic intersection and has commissioned two consultants for the project – the traffic study by Dillon Consulting and a planning report by a Vancouver architectural team proposing design possibilities.

Browaty said that when the administration brings the Portage and Main report to the Oct. 25 meeting of council, all versions of the Dillon report should be made public along with it.

“Let’s see what the original traffic engineers, the professionals had to say, not the changed facts that the city is saying.”

Browaty said he also believes it was his complaint to the ombudsman that eventually forced the city administration to bring the reports to council’s October meeting.

Browaty said the ombudsman’s report confirms that the final draft of the Dillon study had been completed by November 2016 but the administration refused to release it to him. He filed a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) application last January to get a copy of the report but the city refused to release it on the grounds it would be made public in 90 days. When the 90-day period passed, the civic administration then cited a section of the FIPPA that exempts documents considered advice to a public body from disclosure, saying the report falls into that category.

Browaty then filed a complaint to the Manitoba ombudsman in May, seeking release of the study. He distributed copies of the Manitoba ombudsman’s report to reporters Wednesday and is available online at: wfp.to/fQK

The ombudsman’s investigation found that Dillon had submitted three drafts of its study to city hall, the last two versions rewrites based on feedback from civic officials.

The ombudsman concluded it would not make the city release any of the versions because a report is going to council’s October meeting.

The ombudsman report noted that the content of all three versions of the Dillon report were similar but there had been “a number of discrete” changes made to the last version compared to the earlier versions.

“We determined that if all drafts were disclosed, a comparison of the drafts could identify changes that were made in some discrete portions of the report,” states the ombudsman. “This could allow inferences to be drawn about the advice that led to these changes.”

The ombudsman said that city hall has the discretion to withhold the release of any portion of the Dillon documents that are different from the final report that will be presented to city hall.

Browaty said he’s concerned that civic officials would make any changes to the Dillon report and is demanding that the administration release all versions of the documents along with the report to council.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca

Ombudsman’s Report