A new sign of the times at Vancouver City Hall, where someone is finally taking some responsibility over spending
In consideration of the fact that the Whistler Athletes’ Village will be handed over to 2010 Games organizers with a $1-2 million surplus in the bank, it is amazing how Vancouver’s was originally conceived and managed during the heart of construction by the previous civic administration.
First to clarify, current Vancouver City Manager Penny Ballem has introduced some major changes with the way in which capital projects are funded – namely that they are going to have to face “more oversight, due diligence, [and] rigour in terms of our original estimates.”
This is in stark contrast to the days of Sam Sullivan and Peter Ladner, who both offered lackadaisical attitudes towards a project that was to cost hundreds of millions and advertised as a jewel in the massive global profile that Vancouver was to experience both during and after the Olympics.
First, it was back in 2007 that the NPA majority council voted in a completion guarantee for the project (a decision opposed by both Vision Vancouver and COPE), in order to appease the financier Fortress Investment Group enough to prevent them from pulling out of the project altogether. This is on top of the fact that right up until her departure, the city’s former Chief Financial Officer Estelle Lo was completely kept in the dark about the project, as detailed by this email sent while she was on vacation last October.
In the final weeks before the election, Peter Ladner offered his “distress” about the financing troubles of the project, and told CBC news that he “hopes that the private sector developers of the project will be able to finance the overruns.”
In a commentary offered after his term as Mayor, Sam Sullivan downplayed the importance of the cost overruns and whether the city would be on the hook for them because the “Southeast False Creek is just one development in the citizen’s real estate portfolio,” a statement which suggests that the size of the city’s Property Endowment Fund should somehow allow for the absorption of such losses.
All I can say is thank goodness we now have a City Manager that is willing and able to take the proper precautions to protect Vancouver taxpayers, and a Mayor that isn’t afraid to take on the private sector and work out terms that are favourable for the public good – in the case of the Olympic Village, a decision that saved the electorate $90 million in interest payments.
In times such as these, the nonchalant attitudes of the past just aren’t going to cut it anymore.
