Upset, but realistic

They don’t like it, but it looks like an $8.6 million overrun on phase one of the city’s waterfront development project will get the OK from city council on Monday night.

Eight of nine councillors spoken to by tbnewswatch.com on Thursday indicated they will vote in favour of administration’s recommendation to gut reserves set aside for Phase 2, the new marina, saying it’s too late to turn back.

The lone dissenter of the nine was Neebing Coun. Linda Rydholm, a longstanding outspoken critic of Prince Arthur’s Landing.

Though she realizes the project must go ahead, Rydholm said on principle she can’t vote for administration’s plan.

“There are enough of them who got us into this mess, they can vote us out of it and vote against it,” she said, reached by phone at home. “I have consistently voted against this project.”

Rydholm added she hopes the process is a lesson learned for both council and administration, who she said jumped the gun to get stimulus funding money amounting to $29.3 million from the federal government.

“There were matters that should have been handled better by administration,” Rydholm said, pointing out the project was not ready to go when the city submitted its proposal to Ottawa for approval.

“Phase 1 was not anywhere near (being) shovel-ready and because it wasn’t there are huge cost overruns.  What is hoped is there will be a lesson from that and the city will work harder, administration and council, planning projects, the costing analysis and then the value.”

To an extent the rest of her fellow city councillors agree. The process must change so something like this doesn’t happen again.

McKellar Coun. Paul Pugh, who inherited the situation and was not in office when any of the decisions regarding the waterfront were made.

“I have to agree that at this point it would be foolishness to just cancel everything. We have no choice but to proceed. I hope that we will have learned a lesson as a city in making sure that with other projects we do better on sticking to and ensuring there is a proper terminology in the agreements that we reach to make sure the projects stay on course,” Pugh said.

“It’s a very expensive lesson to learn and I’m particularly disappointed because there are a lot of issues in other areas of the city that I would like to see that money go to.”

But where to lay the blame?

At-large Coun. Ken Boshcoff accused his predecessors of not doing their homework.

“Clearly council hadn’t prepared adequately, and now we have to solve it,” Boshcoff said. “As the mayor said, this may cause us to end Phase 2. If so my solution now is not to burden the taxpayers anymore than necessary.”

Council will be asked to vote on one of three options Monday night, two of which will scale back portions of the project, to the tune of $1.8 million and $2.5 million respectively. The third option , the one recommended by administration, is to proceed as plan, taking about $4 million from the Phase 2 kitty to fund the city’s portion of the additional $8.6 million needed to complete the now $57.9 million project.

The work must be mostly completed by no later than Oct. 31 to qualify for the federal Infrastructure Stimulus Fund cash.

Coun. Iain Angus said he too would support administration, saying cost overruns in projects of this magnitude are not unusual.

“We’ve got to finish the project. I’m disappointed that we have to delay the next phase, but in a lot of ways we had already made that decision a year ago when we took some money from Phase 2 as well. I’m optimistic that council will recognize that we need to move on this and get the job done. The last thing I want is a half-finished waterfront, which would not be good for anybody.”

Mayor Keith Hobbs and Couns. Mark Bentz, Joe Virdiramo, Andrew Foulds and Aldo Ruberto all said the project is too far in to consider stopping it, indicating they will vote one way or another to continue.

It wasn’t a choice he made lightly, Foulds said.

“This decision has weighed very heavily on my mind, but I believe it’s the right decision,” he said.

Assuming a full complement of councillors are present Monday night, seven votes would be needed to pass the resolution.