Council will talking about the city investigation into cost overruns on the new downtown parkade during a special, closed meeting on Tuesday night, Coun. Terri McConnachie said.
The special meeting was called on Monday, after The Citizen published city emails regarding the cost overruns on the Sixth Avenue and George Street parkade, which were obtained through a Freedom of Information request (see stories, here and here).
Coun. Terri McConnachie said the city investigation into how the cost overruns happened, and who knew about them and when, was slated to get started in mid-April.
"My first thought, is I'm embarrassed as a councillor that it has taken this long," McConnachie said. "We are meeting later tonight to see how we can move that along. I'll be playing my part to see this gets done. There is a real lack of trust now, around the council table and with staff."
As egregious as the cost overruns are, how they were managed and the lack of transparency to city council and the public are the main issue, she said.
"As a councillor, I'm still in the dark. And that is not a good place for a councillor to be," McConnachie said. "The exchange of emails brings up a lot of questions. What is mind-boggling – and is hurtful, frankly – is to see how many people were in on the overruns, how many staff members were informed, and council wasn't."
On Monday, Coun. Brian Skakun said city council needs to sit down without city staff present so they can discuss what happened.
"It sounds like there were several people on the fifth floor (of city hall) who knew, maybe including the mayor now," Skakun said. "Ian Wells should have kept (Mayor) Lyn (Hall) in the loop. I think the mayor is going to have to speak to that himself."
Skakun said he intends to press council to conduct a full, third-party investigation into the matter, including the B.C. Ministry of Municipal Affairs, office of the attorney general and the RCMP. If council is not prepared to involve outside agencies to investigate, Skakun said he'll approach those agencies himself to call for an outside investigation into the matter.
"I don't want to leave any stone unturned," he said.
Coun. Kyle Sampson said he wants to see all the facts before he comes to a conclusion about what happened.
"I don't have all the answers on what has happened. All of us want to have all of these answers," he said.
One of the subjects raised in the email exchange between former city manager Kathleen Soltis and then-city general manager of planning and development Ian Wells was the need to get council approval to change the parkade construction agreement between the city and A & T Project Developments.
"I want to be clear, I have never been part of a conversation or taken part in a vote to change that agreement," he said. "I don't think it was done before my time on council, either."
The emails back and forth between city employees below the director level emphasize why the city needs to develop a strong whistleblower policy, he said.
"We see an employee who was financial analyst who was sending warning signs to our senior team," Sampson said. "We need to make sure we are providing the tools to come forward if they think something is inappropriate."
Sampson urged the public not to "beat up on those city employees" who were just doing their jobs. But, he said, council and the public need to hold the city's senior management team to a higher standard.
Coun. Garth Frizzell said he intends to "go straight to the source," with the questions raised by the emails.
"(Mayor Hall) is straightforward with what he does and what he says," Frizzell said, and he plans to ask Hall about his knowledge of the situation at the first opportunity.
He said he is also concerned about the internal discussions that took place in the city's administration over the course of three years about the project, and its impact on city finances.
"Reading those emails the first time, your gut reacts, 'this looks like we've been misinformed.' (But) you can't make decisions based on gut reaction," Frizzell said. "We need to go back, and piece together what really happened. When we figure it all out, we will need to take some pretty drastic action."
The biggest issue is the lack of transparency with the public, he said.
"The legislation has been designed that the public, through council, gives consent for any spending," he said. "It's about the transparency of the system."
Coun. Cori Ramsay wasn't not convinced the emails between Soltis and Wells implied any prior knowledge by Mayor Hall about the cost overruns.
"We are all wanting more information," she said. "(But) we just don't have all the facts."
The Citizen's story on the matter was tarnishing Hall's reputation unfairly, without all the information, she said.
"I'm frustrated with The Citizen," she said. "Mayor Hall is my friend, and I trust him. I believe him when he said he didn't know."
Councillors Frank Everitt, Murry Krause and Susan Scott could not be reached for comment on Tuesday. Hall had not responded to a request for an interview as of Tuesday afternoon.
