$62K report doesn’t include appearance
It seems the $62,000 contract awarded to a firm headed by the daughter of a top local bureaucrat didn’t include a requirement for the company to present its findings to local politicians, who voted Thursday to shell out even more money for that pending in-person appearance.
Sundog Solutions was hired in December 2022 by the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen to review its emergency management program and make recommendations for improvements.
The company is owned by Amanda Newell, the daughter of Bill Newell, chief administrative officer of the RDOS and head of its emergency operations centre.
But neither Newell was in the room when Sundog Solutions’ final 80-page report was formally presented to the RDOS board Thursday.
Instead, the job fell to Mark Woods, RDOS general manager of community services, who noted staff’s role in the review was mainly limited to “providing some logistical support.”
“Mr. Woods,” asked Princeton Mayor Spencer Coyne, who’s also an RDOS director, “I’d like to know why you’re presenting this and not the contractors themselves.”
“We asked for the contractor to make a presentation and they were unavailable as I understand it. We can certainly ask them to come back at a later date, but I think they’ve embarked on to a new project and at this point they weren’t able to come in,” replied Woods.
“So would that not have been part of the original contract that they come in and present to us?” asked Coyne.
“No, just the report itself was part of the contract,” answered Woods.
When pressed again later, Woods noted the contract’s terms of reference were approved by the board last year.
Subrina Monteith, the RDOS director for Area I (Skaha West/ Kaleden/Apex), said she was frustrated not getting answers from Sundog Solutions to some “very specific questions about the feedback we got and the lack of feedback.”
“Apex is an example,” continued Monteith. “That community was evacuated last year (during a wildfire) and I don’t see any reference to resort issues, forestry actions around there, mitigation works that could be done or should be done. So, I’m concerned about what other feedback might be missing.”
Bob Coyne, the RDOS director for Area H (rural Princeton), was among the loudest voices calling for the review and was pleased with Sundog Solutions’ work.
But he wasn’t happy with the company’s findings, which observed the RDOS has only acted on 22 of the 170 recommendations that have come forward through after-action reports that followed major events over the past few years, and recommended hiring at least four new staffers for the emergency program and training many more.
“We’ve never been told that we don’t have enough staff to do the job. At budgeting, we’ve never been asked for more money to do these emergency management-type tasks,” said Coyne.
“So how in the dickens can this possibly add up to this amount of work that’s been sitting on the corner of somebody’s desk?” said Director Coyne. “That boggles my mind.”
Due to the complexity of the report and the lack of answers from Sundog Solutions, the board later voted to request a representative from the company be invited to present the findings and field questions at future meetings — which Woods confirmed will carry an unknown added cost — and strike a working group to dig into the recommendations.
The working group will be led by Mayor Coyne and Tim Roberts, the RDOS director for Area G (rural Keremeos/Hedley).
“I believe that we need to really dive into this,” said Mayor Coyne. “We cannot just let this sit on a shelf and collect dust like some of the other reports are currently doing.”
Both of Sundog Solutions’ contracts were personally signed by CAO Newell, who has maintained there was no conflict of interest on his part because he didn’t benefit financially.
While the affair set off alarm bells among some board members, the group voted as a whole at a closed-door meeting in March not to sanction CAO Newell because it feared a wrongful dismissal lawsuit, sources told The Herald previously.
Besides the $62,000 for the emergency program review, CAO Newell also personally signed off last year on two other contracts to Sundog Solutions worth another $30,000 combined.
Check the online version of this article at pentictonherald.ca for a complete copy of the report.