Public works department clashes with city councillors over contracts

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This article was published 27/02/2018 (3117 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Councillors clashed with senior staff in the public works department Tuesday over how best to approve a series of road contracts for this year.

While council’s policy is to require road contract approvals valued at $5 million or more to be approved by the committee, the department said it would be more expedient to let CAO Doug McNeil approve the award of all those contracts.

The administration repeatedly argued that complying with council’s rules for committee approvals is time consuming and could jeopardize the completion of more than a dozen road projects before the end of the construction season.

But in a 3-1 vote, the committee rejected the administration proposal and committed to hold special meetings when necessary to approve road contracts.

“It’s important that we respect prior council decisions,” Coun. Marty Morantz, chairman of the public works committee, said following the meeting.

The projects, which have a total value of $84.9 million, include completion of the downtown cycling network, and reconstruction work on McGregor Street, McPhillips Street, Empress Street, Chevrier Boulevard and Fermor Avenue.

Morantz (Charlewood-Tuxedo-Whyte Ridge) said council gave the CAO the authority to approve contracts valued at less than $5 million but required councillors on the committee to consider contracts valued at $5 million or more.

Brad Neirinck, manager of engineering in the public works department, told the councillors that previous committees had waived the approval process and what they were being asked to do wasn’t out of the ordinary.

The committee normally meets once a month but Neirinck said he was concerned that approvals wouldn’t be given quick enough even if the committee were to hold special meetings, telling reporters later he is waiting to see if council will eventually overturn the committee’s recommendation.

Coun. Janice Lukes, who is not a member of the committee, appeared as a delegation and said that while she appreciates the department being concerned about the work being done on time, she said McNeil had demonstrated poor judgment on several major projects and she didn’t trust him to do the proper review of the road contracts.

Lukes was supported on the committee by Couns. Devi Sharma and Jeff Browaty, who questioned the administration’s ability to do proper oversight on major projects.

When Neirinck boasted his department exercises proper oversight on its projects, he was quickly challenged by Sharma.

“There’s no secret that a lot of projects have been going sideways as of late, important projects and that can’t be disputed,” Sharma (Old Kildonan) said. “I really don’t feel comfortable with giving up authority at this committee level.”

Sharma said if time is an issue, then the committee could hold more meetings.

Sharma said Neirnick was exaggerating McNeil’s ability to find the time necessary to review the contracts, adding the committee members face the same time constraints as the CAO.

The lone vote against came from Coun. Mike Pagtakhan, who said the administration had laid out a sound procedure to ensure roads contracts are awarded on time and the work completed before the end of the year.

Pagtakhan (Point Douglas) said he didn’t share the other councillors’ concerns on giving away over-sight responsibilities, adding the road projects had already been subjected to a public consultation process and the projects and their budgets had been approved by council. All that was left to do, he said, was to accept the lowest bid and he was confident the CAO could do that job.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca