Many unanswered questions at city hall

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/11/2017 (2896 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Coun. Marty Morantz says he has too many questions and no answers to explain how engineers in the public works department and a private consultant covertly designed a four-lane expressway through south Charleswood without the knowledge or consent of council or the city’s chief administrative officer.

Morantz isn’t the only one who has questions, but, like many of the controversies that have dogged city hall, no one in authority seems willing to stand up and have them answered in a public forum.

There is one individual at city hall who should be able to explain what happened — Scott Suderman, the city’s transportation facilities planning engineer, who headed up the east-west corridor project and who was blamed by both Morantz and CAO Doug McNeil for keeping everyone in the dark.

It should be easy enough for Morantz, who is chairman of the public works committee, to call a special meeting of his committee where Suderman can be questioned.

But Suderman gave his notice — hours after Morantz and McNeil blamed him for the mess. He’s only here until the end of November. If Morantz and other council members really want to know what happened, then Suderman needs to be asked some questions. They include:

● When was the decision made to develop the southwest extension of the Sterling Lyon Parkway as the preferred east-west corridor through south Charleswood?

● Who made that decision: Suderman alone? Was it the MMM Group (now known as WSP Canada)? Was Suderman given instructions to develop that route, and if so, by whom?

● Did Suderman really withhold that decision from Morantz and McNeil? Did Suderman inform any of his superiors in the public works department or anyone else at city hall? Who? And when?

● Why did MMM Group submit an environmental review application — a detailed, 127-page document that would have taken months to prepare — to the province in July 2017, when supposedly no one on council or the CAO knew that the Sterling Lyon Parkway extension had been chosen as the corridor route?

More questions emerged at Wednesday’s executive policy committee meeting, where commercial appraiser Brett Ferguson said he had been hired by MMM Group in the fall of 2015 to estimate the cost of expropriations for the Sterling Lyon Parkway extension route. That’s several months before city hall launched its own public consultation process on three possible corridor routes, none of which was the SLP option, and two years before MMM Group went to the province for an environmental review of the Sterling Lyon Parkway route.

The information provided by Ferguson, who was speaking on behalf of area residents, left the impression that the parkway route was picked as the preferred route years ago, but was deliberately kept secret from council members and the public.

If Suderman and/or the MMM Group acted on their own, that must be made clear. If they were taking orders, then the identities of those individuals need to be disclosed. If they kept others in the loop as they worked, again, who and when must be made clear.

Only Suderman can provide these answers. It can’t be his boss or CAO McNeil — any answers they give would, and should, be dismissed as a coverup.

The public needs to know the answers to these questions; councillors need to know. If these questions aren’t asked and answered publicly, then the cynicism that came to be associated with the former Katz administration will surely envelop this council as well — if it hasn’t already.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca