City should learn lesson from towing bill

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/08/2024 (398 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last year, the City of Winnipeg sued Tartan Towing for $1,115,626 because, the city claimed, “Tartan and/or its subcontractors and/or its employees used the TowMobile App to report tows which, in fact, did not actually occur and/or which were not performed in compliance with the requirements of the contract.”

The “invalid” tows allegedly occurred between 2016 and 2022, and came to light because a city review found that, while approximately 3,200 parking tickets were issued during a December, 2021, residential parking ban, the tow company reported towing roughly 13,000 vehicles in relation to the ban.

Tartan Towing has countersued, saying it was the city’s responsibility to supervise the towing invoices, arguing as well that the city waited too long to sue and that the city failed to properly assess a 2022 bid for towing, which Tartan was not awarded.

Muddying the waters still further is that the city’s executive committee, back in March of 2023, turned down a settlement offer that would have seen Tartan pay the city $446,000 to drop the suit, an offer that city staff argued would allow the city to save on potential court costs.

Why tell you all this history?

Because this week, with the lawsuit still underway, the city awarded a major Winnipeg Police Service towing contract to … Tartan Towing.

Coun. Janice Lukes argues the city didn’t have much choice about letting Tartan bid on the contract, saying “We cannot restrict people from bidding on a contract if they’re not (found) guilty of anything. Where do we draw the line?”

Certainly, in criminal court, someone — and “someone” includes an incorporated company — is innocent until proven guilty.

Even so, if you hired someone who was charged after you caught them stealing from you, would you hire them again just because the charges hadn’t gone through the court system yet?

Not likely.

And civil court proceedings are different yet again.

Think of it this way: you hire a general contractor, but things go sour. Just how serious would the problems have to be, before you would take the time, trouble and expense required to take that contractor to court?

And how sure would you have to be that you were absolutely right in your concerns about that contractor’s misbehaviour?

In an email, a city spokesman said being sued by the city doesn’t prevent a company from taking part in a new bidding process: “In order to prevent a person or company from bidding on city contracts, they would need to be debarred under… the city’s purchasing policy. Debarment is a structured process with definite causes and steps, and it is completely distinct from litigation,” David Driedger wrote.

Those “causes and steps” include a “serious breach of contract indicating an unwillingness or inability to perform a contract in accordance with the terms and conditions or in accordance with the specifications, or a record of unsatisfactory performance of one or more contracts in accordance with the terms and conditions thereof …” and involve the city’s chief administrative officer notifying a supplier of the city’s concerns and asking for the supplier to make a response. The city’s decision to disbar a supplier is not appealable.

Now, we obviously don’t speak for the City of Winnipeg.

But if the city is willing to state in court documents that it paid $1.1 million over six years for tows that were not covered under the towing contract, wouldn’t you think it would also find that behaviour constituted, “a record of unsatisfactory performance of one or more contracts in accordance with the terms and conditions thereof”?

Most would.

Maybe the city has never heard the saying “once bitten, twice shy.”