Wyatt slams planner’s tweets

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This article was published 02/07/2015 (3751 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Transcona Coun. Russ Wyatt says a consultant hired to work on the pedestrian and cycling strategy is acting in an unprofessional manner with a series of comments she posted on Twitter.

Jeannette Montufar was hired by the city to help develop the pedestrian and cycling strategy, but she is now actively criticizing anyone who is critical of the strategy she helped develop, Wyatt said.

“If it’s not unethical, it’s definitely unprofessional,” Wyatt said. “We hired a consultant to give us an independent, professional opinion, and it turns out that this consultant is neither independent or professional.”

Montufar is an engineering professor at the University of Manitoba and a founding partner of MORR Transportation Consultants.

Montufar and MORR partner Garreth Rempel are listed as part of the $400,000 consulting team that developed the pedestrian and cycling strategy.

Montufar is also the spouse of City of Winnipeg public works transportation engineer Luis Escobar — a situation Wyatt said further undermines the credibility of the strategy and raises questions about the city’s hiring practices.

The public works department is bringing the strategy to council for approval, and the department has endorsed its recommendations.

Given Montufar’s critical comments on Twitter, council and the administration need to know how it is she and her firm were hired to work on the project and whether it was disclosed that she is the wife of the city’s transportation engineer, Wyatt said.

“I’m not saying anything was done wrong but it raises questions that now need to be answered,” Wyatt said.

Montufar said she didn’t make her comments as a consultant but as a professor and as an “expert in the area of safe and equitable accommodation of pedestrians in the transportation system.”

Montufar’s Twitter profile (@ijmontufar) describes her as “professor, entrepreneur, engineer, philanthropist, mother.” In one of her tweets, she boasts she was one of the consultants who worked on the pedestrian and cycling strategy.

Montufar said Wyatt’s comments were “inflammatory” and designed to “create conflict and intrigue. As such, I will not address them since there is no point in doing so.”

Montufar said she and her firm were among several sub-consultants for various components of the strategy, and her firm was involved in the pedestrian component.

“No matter what consultant may have completed these strategies, what Coun. Wyatt is doing, in my opinion, jeopardizes accessibility, mobility and equity for vulnerable users and I see it necessary to raise that point,” Montufar said in an email exchange. “I am raising the issue as a professor who has spent many years ensuring that our citizens across (not only in Winnipeg) have the safest infrastructure possible to access services and goods.”

SSLqI’m not saying anything was done wrong but it raises questions that now need to be answered’

Montufar had posted more than 10 tweets since May 13, when the pedestrian and cycling strategy was brought to city hall — most of them critical of anyone who raises questions about the document. She posted tweets when the report was debated at an executive policy committee meeting and tweeted again Tuesday, when Wyatt and Couns. Jeff Browaty and Jason Schreyer proposed the strategy be drastically scaled back.

“I’ve never seen anything like this — attacking members of council on Twitter after she’s authored this report,” Wyatt said. “I think everyone has the right to their opinion, but the issue here is that we paid a consultant to give us a professional opinion. Now, when that same report is going forward for decisions to be made, that consultant… is publicly criticizing members of council who are having to make the decision, is absolutely unprecedented and unethical and unprofessional.”

Montufar appears to be no stranger to Twitter, where she comments frequently.

She is also the Progressive Conservative candidate in the provincial riding of Fort Garry-Riverview.

There is a link on her Twitter profile to her webpage (jmontufar.ca) as the PC candidate for Fort Garry-Riverview. She frequently posts critical comments on Twitter about the provincial government and NDP policies.

Wyatt said he wondered if Montufar’s comments are policies of the Progressive Conservative party and if they are shared by PC Leader Brian Pallister.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca