PARKADE COST OVERRUN ‘SHOCKING’

The members of city council want answers about when and how the roughly $9.85 million in cost overruns on the new underground parkade on George Street and Sixth Avenue were approved.

The city has spent $22.4 million on the parkade project, which had an initial budget of $12.61 million, according to a report to council by city acting deputy manager Ian Wells. Council approved a motion by Coun. Brian Skakun asking for a more detailed breakdown of costs and a timeline of when they were approved.

“We’ve been kept in the dark. How the hell are we going to do our jobs providing oversight?” Skakun said. “It’s shocking. We have literally tens of millions of dollars of overruns. My god, it’s just embarrassing, your worship.”

Coun. Cori Ramsay said she spent the weekend reviewing every report provided to city council about the parkade and the timeline just doesn’t add up.

The city administration was advised in July of 2018 by the developer that the project would cost closer to $20 million. City administration told the developer to go ahead anyway, Wells wrote in his report.

“In March 2019, we were asked to approve a $12 million project,” Ramsay said.

“That is almost an entire year after the city knew it would cost $20 million. In June of 2020 all of council received the capital project update. There was no mention of the George Street parkade. There was so many times that this could have been communicated to council. We have a transparency problem and we have a communication problem.”

Even if the $7.5 million increase did technically fall within former city manager Kathleen Soltis’ authority to approve at the time, that should have been communicated to council, she said. The changes made by city council to require cost overruns of more than five per cent – or $100,000 – on a capital project should prevent this from happening again, Ramsay added.

“The person I’d really like to question doesn’t work for the city anymore,” Ramsay said. “This can never happen again. No one person should be approving $7.5 million – that is absurd.”

The number of major capital projects coming in significantly over-budget is alarming, Coun. Terri McConnachie said. It’s time the city conduct a review of all its project management procedures, she said, because something isn’t working.

That review should involve an outside expert, to assess the city’s processes from beginning to end, she said.