City election ensnares former parking boss

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This article was published 12/10/2010 (5832 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The former head of the Winnipeg Parking Authority has found himself in the middle of Winnipeg’s mayoral race, as Judy Wasylycia-Leis sought out Dave Hill’s policy advice while Sam Katz dismissed him as working for his opponent.

Hill, who left the City of Winnipeg last month to take a consulting job with the MMM Group, worked as chief operations officer for the parking authority since its inception as a special operating agency.

At the time of his departure, Wasylycia-Leis and Fort Rouge Coun. Jenny Gerbasi claimed the city suppressed a downtown parking strategy Hill prepared last spring. The WPA was supposed to help city council decide which parking amenities to build with the help of $23.6 million the city received after selling the Winnipeg Square Parkade in 2009.

Two drafts of this strategy, obtained by the Free Press, call for the parking authority to oversee the construction of new parkades with retail or residential components. It also calls for a reduction in the number of surface parking lots in downtown Winnipeg.

Wasylycia-Leis announced very similar plans at a Thursday campaign event. She said she consulted with Hill about her plans, which involve granting the parking authority developmental powers that may rival those of CentreVenture or The Forks-North Portage Partnership.

On Friday, Katz accused Hill of actively supporting his competitor, claiming the former city official had a Wasylycia-Leis election sign on his lawn.

The mayor also suggested Hill’s plans may have been too ambitious, complaining the Winnipeg Parking Authority occasionally kept council in the dark about some of the operating agency’s plans.

“Councillors have the right to know about local issues, such as meters being removed,” said Katz, claiming the parking authority did not thoroughly document all of its efforts in its annual business plan, which is approved by council’s alternate service delivery committee.

Hill was reached by phone last week but declined to comment.

Katz said he had never seen any draft of a downtown parking strategy prepared by Hill last May.

Alex Robinson, one of the city’s deputy chief administrative officers, said that draft included ambitious plans with no costs associated with them.

Robinson said he asked Hill to develop a more detailed financial analysis about the implications of a strategy that could include the construction of several city-owned facilities.

“I’m responsible for the special operating agencies. We needed some more detail on these parkades,” Robinson said. “There’s no secret report that’s floating around. At the end of the day, we don’t bring reports forward for political approval until we get all the details.”

Katz and Wasylycia-Leis are not far apart on the parking issue. Katz has pledged to use proceeds from the Winnipeg Square Parkade sale to fix the city-owned Millennium Library and the Civic Centre parkades and also construct new parkades, beginning with a mixed-use structure on James Avenue in the East Exchange.

This week, the mayor intends to unveil his own strategy to reduce the number of surface lots in downtown Winnipeg.

 

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca