NPCA being mismanaged

Last spring, after months of pressure from the residents of Niagara, NDP MPP Cindy Forster and 10 area municipalities, the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority finally agreed to have a financial audit take place.

The Auditor General of Ontario offered her services at the time but the NPCA refused as they said they weren’t ready; if you can make any sense out of that statement.

The auditor general then offered to look at the possibility of doing the audit when the NPCA felt ready, but made no commitment. After refusing a free government audit the NPCA decided to do a request for proposal for an independent audit.

Somehow, for reasons unknown to the public that became tainted, with the end result being dropped and board member Bill Hodgson being censured, which ended up with Mr. Hodgson stepping down from the NPCA board.

Now the taxpayers of Niagara find out that the auditor general of Ontario can’t fit the NPCA audit into her schedule so the NPCA has decided to start the request for proposal process all over again and the taxpayer will be on the hook for probably hundreds of thousands of dollars when and if it ever gets completed.

Remember, last spring the auditor general offered an audit to the NPCA with no charge to the regional taxpayer which was refused, and you have to ask yourself how long are we expected to fund mismanagement of this scale?

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Robert Milenkoff Welland