This week the Prince George Citizen will be posting a six-part series: Six Questions for Six Mayoral Candidates.
The focus of the series is to allow voters to hear from the candidates running for mayor on how they would handle real issues which will be coming before the next city council. The candidate’s answers have only been edited for clarity, and are posted in alphabetical order.
QUESTION: The issues of transparency and accountability have been raised in this election. Emails obtained by the Citizen through a Freedom of Information request showed that Mayor Lyn Hall was told on July 4, 2018, that the city's parkade project at Sixth Avenue and George Street was facing “very large (budget) overruns.” The project ended up costing a total of $34.16 million, on an original budget of $12.6 million. The full cost of the project wasn’t revealed to city council and the public until Dec. 7, 2020. Had you been mayor in July 2018, and received the same information Hall did, what would you have done?
ADAM HYATT
I would have immediately requested additional, tangible information. What does “very large overruns” mean? I would have demanded numbers and the reason(s) why, and I would have demanded this information be provided without delay.
I would have immediately updated council, and more importantly the public, so we could start formulating a plan to mitigate these overages whether that be via the courts or otherwise. The reality is that when it comes to honesty and transparency, Mr. Hall and every current member of council should be ashamed of themselves.
Even more unfortunate, is that this behaviour continues to this day. When a councillor has to file a FOI request just to get a copy of a letter the mayor wrote supporting another councillor’s private business, this tells me nothing has changed.
Additionally, when the people of P.G. have identified honesty and transparency as one of their highest concerns, it’s appalling that the city has just announced they will no longer be posting legal notices in local papers or media. This is just another decision against transparency, not for it. What about our seniors who don’t use social media? What about those who are not tech savvy? What about those who could but chose not to use social media? Are they not entitled to transparency because of their limited technical abilities or personal choices?
To say this action is to “save money” doesn’t hold water with me. I agree we absolutely need to reduce spending, but there are far more logical areas to do that than suppressing information and limiting people’s ability to access critical information.
TERRI McCONNACHIE
I would have sought clarification and brought the council team together so that, as a group, informed decisions could be made along with a plan to move forward, sharing that plan with the public.
LISA MITCHELL
Mitchell did not respond to the Citizen’s request for comment as of Friday afternoon. This story will be updated, should Mitchell respond at a later date.
ROY STEWART
If I had been mayor and received this information I would have stopped work on the project, and caused those officials responsible for managing this project to appear before a public session of council to explain why, when, how and what went so dramatically wrong.
In addition, I would want special revisions to project management policies, and the delegated power of officials to be curtailed or revised, to ensure this did not happen again. I would have reported this situation directly to the public. I would want those responsible to be accountable to council and to the City.
It appears that council delegated too much discretionary power to the city manager and that in turn led to incompetent decisions without any review or control by council. This approach is completely wrong headed, in so far as transparency and accountability is concerned.
CHRIS WOOD
Same thing I campaigned in 2018 with: fix the Sustainable Finance Guidelines in Section 14 and lower the values of each section.
Remove the "trust" factor in millions of dollars of expenses, and replace with a systematic solution for financial accountability which is multiple people are responsible to report to council when cost overruns occur.
Tell council and make it public. Ask for a report for financial transparency to be created by staff.
SIMON YU
As a professional engineer for over 30 years, I value the trust of my clients and the commitments I make to them when I take on a project. As your mayor this will not change.
I would have immediately paused the construction until an independent detailed Project Quantity Survey (PQS) was conducted.
I would also make myself available to media and the public to provide a detailed report of the situation.
I would also revisit the architectural and engineering designs at that stage side-by-side with the developer to explore options to increase or change housing density to fully utilize the parkade capacity.
