Questions, questions, questions

After a midnight and beyond oil burning session, I am not going to detail the entire story of the Olympic Village and the troubles created by decisions made by the previous NPA dominated council.  For that, you can check out a good account of the basics by Vancouver Courier columnist Mike Howell here.

Instead, today will mark the beginning of an ongoing series of questions that I will put out there for Suzanne Anton, who is the only individual left standing after the NPA’s November evisceration, to consider.

Snatched from Anton's website banner, the NPA logo has been conveniently placed on a white background for easy Photoshopping after the release of the KPMG report

Not that I expect to get any kind of substantial answers until the KPMG report is publicly released.  Nonetheless, readers might also contemplate these queries and choose to ask them of Anton directly:

1) How can Anton state that the social housing doesn’t provide “enough bang for our social-housing buck” when her party’s original estimate for the scaled-back 252 units was $68 million, including free land? (the cost of Olympic social housing is now valued closer to $150 million – $110 million in construction plus $40 million in land)

2) If everything was so transparent and above board in your party’s dealings regarding the Olympics village, why was the city’s former Chief Financial Officer Estelle Lo asking questions like this as late as last October:

“Do the contracts with Fortress/Millenium stipulate who would finance all the unplanned add’l costs or shortfalls and the City’s role re budget overruns?”

3) Why are you asking questions like “How could a CFO not know what was going on?” when it was your party that shut her out of the process in the first place?

4) Why was the completion guarantee to the Fortress Investment Group so rigid, such that the city was responsible for the strict adherence to the construction standards in the original agreement – why wasn’t the city given the ability to shift the parameters if the economy took a downturn?

5) Is the NPA’s tendency to issue blank cheques of taxpayers’ money throughout this and many other capital projects still an official party philosophy/policy?

There are plenty more where these came from, but on a lazy Saturday morning, this should suffice for now.

My phone will be on all day in anticipation of Suzanne’s call.  Holla at me, Councillor!