CAO, Morantz under fire

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This article was published 13/12/2017 (2317 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Confidential documents and emails between City of Winnipeg staff raise doubts that city hall’s top official and a senior councillor were unaware of a plan to build an east-west corridor through south Charleswood that would involve acquiring all or portions of 92 private properties.

Coun. Marty Morantz and Doug McNeil, the city’s chief administrative officer, insist they were never informed staff in the public works department, working with consulting firm WSP Canada (formerly MMM Group), had developed a preferred route that extended Sterling Lyon Parkway in a southwest direction from Kenaston Boulevard.

But two documents appear to contradict their repeated denials.

The first is a Nov. 28, 2016, confidential briefing note from Lester Deane, then director of public works, to McNeil. The second is an April 18, 2017, email from McNeil to Deane and four other senior city officials, authorizing them to proceed with contacting property owners whose land would be acquired for the project.

Deane was fired in May without a public explanation.

In the three-page, confidential briefing, Deane requests permission from McNeil to contact the 92 property owners whose land is located on or next to the recommended corridor route.

Deane does not identify the corridor route, but of the four options considered by the department, only the route ultimately known as Option 4 involved that many pieces of private property.

Deane states a draft final report had been received from MMM Group, which was later revealed to include the Option 4 route. Deane tells McNeil that Morantz will be briefed on the next step, and he’s been informed of the project’s status as it developed.

“Coun. Morantz has been kept in the loop throughout the project by the project manager, and we want to set up a meeting with (Morantz) in advance of the impacted property owner meetings to brief him on both IPO and open house materials in advance of the two meetings/events.”

Morantz said the followup meeting never happened, and he denies knowledge of the Option 4 route.

“I only knew about the three options presented at the open house (in January 2016),” Morantz said Thursday. “I only learned about the fourth option when contacted by the residents in October.”

After the city and MMM had presented three route options to residents in January 2016, the MMM team, apparently on their own initiative, developed the controversial fourth option and submitted it to the province in July 2017 as the city’s preferred choice.

Residents learned about the new route in early October, prompting an intense lobbying effort. On Wednesday, city council decided to restart the planning process, taking the residential character of the area into consideration before any route is chosen.

David Ames, president of the South Wilkes Community Association, said he finds the denials from Morantz and McNeil hard to accept given the information that’s contained in the email and the confidential briefing note.

Ames said, based on emails he received through freedom-of-information requests, he believes McNeil and Morantz must have known about the Option 4 route.

“It seems incredibly astounding to me that a project of this magnitude would have no management or oversight at the senior level,” Ames said. “If Coun. Morantz and Mr. McNeil said they didn’t know the details of a $400-million project, then who would know?”

In the April 18 email, which was obtained through a freedom-of-information request and provided to the Free Press, McNeil is updating Deane on the outcome of a meeting McNeil and Morantz had earlier that day with representatives of the Varsity View Community Centre, as they were concerned how the Clement Parkway project would affect their own development plans.

The Varsity View centre is located north of Wilkes Avenue and the extension of the Clement Parkway will pass by the community centre property.

In the email, McNeil refers to Clement Parkway “concept plans” that had never been made public and instructs Deane to contact the south Charleswood property owners who would be affected by the east-west corridor route and to meet with the Varsity View representatives first.

In an interview Thursday, McNeil said the reference to the “concept plans” in the April 18 email has been taken out of context. He said it refers to how the Clement Parkway extension would affect the community centre.

But those plans were made public at a Jan. 19, 2016, open house, where the Clement Parkway extension route was detailed and three options for the east-west corridor were on display. The only “plans” not disclosed at that time was the Option 4 route.

“At any time did anybody say to me we have a new alignment for Wilkes that nobody has seen yet? No,” McNeil said. “I’m frustrated with the department. I’m not happy with the way this file was handled. I’ve very publicly said that we dropped the ball… When I say to you I did not see it, I did not see it.”

McNeil said the November 2016 briefing note never identified the recommended route. It did contain four attachments, including a design report and a drawing of the 92 properties.

McNeil said he never looked at the attachments and blamed Deane for failing to indicate the chosen route was different than the three options presented at the Jan. 19, 2016, open house.

“If you read it, there is no mention in that briefing note that there is an Option 4,” McNeil said.

“I’ve also been accused of not reading all the attachments,” McNeil said. “I don’t have time to read all that stuff. If there is something important in those attachments, then you need to bring it to my attention in the briefing note.”

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca