ue Dec 18 2007
By Bartley Kives
Dark line shows route $64-million extension will take.
ST. Boniface Coun. Dan Vandal is calling for an audit into the increasingly costly Chief Peguis Trail extension, as council votes to approve the $64-million link between Henderson Highway and Lagimodière Boulevard.
FREE PRESS POLL
Is the Chief Peguis Trail extension, where projected costs have risen to $64M from $34M in less than a year, “out of control” as Coun. Dan Vandal says.
Yes
No
City council meets this morning to debate the 2008 capital budget, a blueprint for $2.1 billion in spending on roads, bridges, buildings and water treatment over the next six years.
The second-largest road-construction project in the budget is the Chief Peguis Trail extension, with a projected cost that ballooned from $34 million to $64 million in less than a year.
In November, Mayor Sam Katz decried the faulty calculations that led to the initial low-ball of the Chief Peguis estimate, and complained that Winnipeg routinely gets nailed by construction inflation rates that far exceed those that plague the private sector.
Katz pledged to reform in the way Winnipeg tenders projects, but Vandal now says he wants the city auditor to dissect the Chief Peguis planning process right away.
In the meantime, the St. Boniface councillor will attempt to strike the Chief Peguis Trail extension from the capital budget.
"We could finance the additional $30 million or we could get the real story and find out what went wrong. If this was the private sector, heads would roll and people would lose their jobs," Vandal said.
"Council needs to regain the public's confidence, and the only way to do that is an audit. As far as I'm concerned, the whole project is out of control."
However, city auditor Shannon Hunt is already in the midst of reviewing the way Winnipeg plans major construction projects. Back in the spring, the auditor's office identified capital projects as an area of significant risk, given the rapid rate of construction inflation in Western Canada.
Deputy auditor Brian Whiteside said his office is reviewing how the city selects and approves capital projects and will also review eight completed projects "from the cradle to the grave."
This audit process began well before September, when the city's chief financial officer and acting chief administrator placed a freeze on capital spending and conducted a review that found the city already faced a $50 million shortfall on construction projects that had not even started, thanks to inflation.
That review led city number crunchers to build inflationary pressures into the 2008 capital budget and also led the city to explore new ways to tender major projects, partly with the help of a new infrastructure specialist, Henry Hunter.
"I can emphatically tell you our staff has acknowledged the problem," said Katz, claiming the cost overruns on Chief Peguis Trail were only discovered as a result of the capital spending freeze and subsequent review.
"If we hadn't already been fixing the system, Coun. Vandal wouldn't even know there was a problem," the mayor continued.
"I welcome his sudden interest in capital cost overruns, but he should know from documents passed by council, the city auditor is looking into capital budgets. She's been doing so long before Coun. Vandal sought to make it an issue or seek press coverage."
Katz surmised Vandal's real issue with the Chief Peguis Trail extension may be that the city plans to finance the project through a public-private partnership, a mechanism unpopular with left-leaning members of council.
Vandal, however, said Winnipeggers are simply being left in the dark.
"When the mayor of the city doesn't have an answer, there's usually something wrong," he said.
bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca