On January 28, Council approved funding to upsize the water and sewer pipes along the biosolids pipeline corridor. We were told the money was there. It turns out it wasn’t.About $23 million in federal ICIP funding had already been set aside as a contingency and was used to offset COVID pressures in 2022 and 2023. Administration is now asking Council to reallocate $21.6 million from projected savings on wastewater projects in 2028 and 2029 to fund the upsizing project.
The error went unnoticed for nearly nine months and was only caught during the annual capital status review. The CFO has attributed it to human error, staff vacancies, an urgent timeline for the report and the complex funding process involved. I take that explanation at face value, but it doesn’t answer some serious questions that make me very concerned: how does a sum this size get approved twice without anyone catching it? How can we be sure there are no other funds missing or misallocated? How can we be sure this won’t happen again?
Council votes on what’s in front of us. We rely on administration’s reports being correct and complete. When that fails at this scale, it needs more than a corrected line item or a simple explanation.
The report goes to the Standing Policy Committee on Environment, Utilities and Corporate Services tomorrow. I am not a member of that committee, but their recommendations go to Council Nov. 25, so pending their outcome I’ll be watching closely to see if my questions are asked and answered.
If the committee doesn’t call for an investigation, I will at Council. That means tracing how the contingency was recorded, why it didn’t show up when the upsizing was brought forward, and why the January report passed review. Council and the public should see the findings. As it is, there are people with no trust in the City to do things right, and the significant size of this mistake doesn’t help build confidence.
I’m also going to ask for a report that shows every reserve and contingency commitment against the projects they’re tied to, so a decision like this can be checked against what’s already spoken for. The enhanced tracking and secondary review promised in the report is a start, but I want to see how it will work, who is accountable for it, and how Council will know it’s working.