Nenshi criticizes Smith’s plan to halt Green Line and re-evaluate
The Green Line’s middle section includes a nearly $2-billion tunnel under the Bow River, selected by council after several options were evaluated in detail.
Phase 1 of the Green Line is funded, with the municipal, federal and provincial governments each ponying up one-third of the $4.65-billion price tag.
Incumbent mayor Naheed Nenshi on Thursday criticized Smith’s plans to re-evaluate a project Nenshi said boasts unbelievable amounts of consultation, overwhelming approval by council and excitement from citizens.
“What a remarkably, extraordinarily uninformed thing to say. Pausing this would mean saying goodbye to $3 billion in funding from the federal and provincial governments,” Nenshi said.
“It is shocking that someone who has never been to a consultation meeting on this, someone who has never been to a city council meeting where we talked about it, who’s never actually raised it at any of the multiple, multiple mayoral forums we’ve had, would suddenly out of the blue say goodbye to $3 billion in funding.”
Jeff Binks, the president of LR Ton the Green — a not-for-profit group that championed the line — said pa using the Green Line and pushing it deep into the south or deep into the north would pit one half of the city against the other half.
“That’s a very worrying thing to hear. We’ve had five years of some of the most exhaustive consultations in the city of Calgary’s history,” Binks said.
Nenshi warned there’s risk in electing someone unfamiliar with city hall’s big files.
“To have someone come in here who has honestly no idea what he’s doing, who has no staff around him or volunteers around him who understand how city hall works at a time when we’re in a fragile economic recovery, at a time when we’re building infrastructure and we’ve managed to get the most funding for infrastructure in history,” Nenshi said. “This will make the transition in Toronto when Rob Ford came in look like paradise. There’s some real danger here.”
Ten men are vying for the mayor’s seat in the Oct. 16 election.