Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek expressed her profound disappointment that no new information was provided by city administration in its October Bearspaw water feeder main update.
City administration delivered a verbal presentation accompanied by an eight-slide Powerpoint to members of council at the Regular Meeting of Council on Oct. 29.
The deck contained an update on current construction sites, future construction that’s planned and an outline of broader goals they hope to accomplish in response to the June 5 Bearspaw water main break.
It did not delve into any new information that may have been learned either through an internal review of the incident or by the third-party group responsible for examining the feeder main break.
On Sept. 12, Mayor Gondek had indicated, when she told citizens that work would be done the upcoming weekend, that a forensic review into the Bearspaw water feeder main had been initiated by the City of Calgary and a report on that was expected by the end of October.
Further, the City of Calgary had already begun the process of having a third-party review of the circumstances surrounding the feeder main rupture, but also in how the City handled it.
The fact that no new information came forward on the Bearspaw water feeder main irked the mayor.
“I hate to say this, but I’m really disappointed in not having more information,” the mayor said.
“This feels a lot like early June, when we weren’t getting communication out to the public quickly enough, because we were waiting for a very complete message. We learned then that you can’t wait for all the information to be in hand.”
The mayor followed up by saying she has a hard time believing there’s nothing new to report.
More time needed for Bearspaw water feeder main report: Infrastructure Services GM
Michael Thompson, Infrastructure Services GM for the City of Calgary said there were no additional details they could provide on the forensic review. They continue to work with the consultant, he said.
“I hear you that… we need to be providing more information as we’re getting it in more real time, as we’re going apologize that we don’t have that information with respect to the forensic analysis that was done and the reporting that we’re doing, we’ll take that away,” Thompson said.
“I apologize, I don’t have that here today, but we’ll bring that back in a more interim update.”
Outside council chambers, Mayor Gondek said that she was worried the City had fallen back into the same information trap it did during the June break. Citizens were frustrated that information wasn’t being provided in a timely fashion.
“I expected to understand what the consultant has found to now. Just because the consultant’s review isn’t done and it’s being finalized doesn’t mean that there’s information that can’t be shared,” she said.
“I don’t know what I expected to see, but it was a lot more than we’ll get you something in December.”
Ward 1 Coun. Sonya Sharp said she didn’t have high expectations for the report, given that it was listed as a verbal update. Sharp said, however, she didn’t see the need to beat down administration. It would be up to individual councillors to defend the communities in their respective wards.
Sharp was concerned that given upcoming critical budget discussion, not having the information they need makes it difficult to make proper decisions.
“It’d be nice to see it with budget, but I don’t think that’s going to happen,” she said.
“I also don’t want something that’s half-baked to come to budget being, like we just heard that you guys aren’t happy, so here’s a report. No show us what we need, but understand it.”
More information is expected to come back in December.
