A wrong turn on the road to clarity

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/12/2017 (3191 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This week, a controversial city infrastructure project took a detour into confusion, suspicion and denial.

The planned expansion of the William R. Clement Parkway became the subject of heated debate last month after Charleswood residents learned that 92 private properties might be subject to expropriation as a result of the project consultant’s recommendation of a construction-route option that had not been revealed to residents. And this week, things took an even more troubling turn.

In November, the city’s chief administrative officer, Doug McNeil, and Coun. Marty Morantz (Charleswood/Tuxedo/Whyte Ridge), who chairs the public works committee, said they were as blindsided as the residents by the revelation that a fourth, undiscussed option was being favoured over the three alternatives brought forward at a public briefing in 2016.

Mr. McNeil said major errors had been made in handling the project and offered a public apology to residents. Mr. Morantz demanded answers and said someone — consulting firm WSP Canada, city engineers or, perhaps both — should be held to account. In the aftermath, two senior engineers who had worked on the project quit their city jobs, citing unfair criticism of staff by administration and councillors.

New revelations this week suggest top city bureaucrats may have been aware of the “rogue” route option long before last month’s alleged blind-side revelation. A briefing note from former public-works director Lester Deane, dated Nov. 28, 2016, requests permission from Mr. McNeil to contact the property owners affected by the so-called fourth option; it also advises the CAO that Coun. Morantz had been “kept in the loop throughout the project.”

In a subsequent email dated April 18 of this year, Mr. McNeil authorized Mr. Deane — who was either dismissed or forced to resign in May, for unspecified reasons — and other senior city officials to proceed with contacting the property owners whose land would be acquired for the project.

This week, the CAO and the public works committee chairman both maintained, despite the emergence of the briefing note, that they were not aware of the fourth option until last month.

Needless to say, questions abound. The only thing clear at the moment is that Mr. Morantz was correct last month when he declared someone needs to be held accountable for this mess.

“It seems incredibly astounding to me that a project of this magnitude would have no management or oversight at the senior level,” is how Charleswood resident David Ames summed it up. “If Coun. Morantz and Mr. McNeil said they didn’t know the details of a $400-million project, then who would know?”

The buck — or, in this case, 400 million of them — has to stop somewhere. Mr. McNeil’s oversight of city operations has been called into question on other occasions this year, most notably in September when a missed deadline by a city lawyer ended the city’s chance to recover $20 million in a lawsuit involving the design and construction of Winnipeg’s water-treatment plant. After that debacle, Coun. Janice Lukes (South Winnipeg-St. Norbert) called for a review to determine what went wrong on the CAO’s watch.

On Thursday, Mr. Morantz called for an internal audit of the south Charleswood parkway project.

As the corridor cauldron continues to bubble, one can’t help recalling Mr. McNeil’s observation as Mr. Deane was headed out the door:

“I have high expectations for my senior management team… (and) he just didn’t meet my expectations anymore.”