The Manitoba Municipal Board doesn’t have the expertise or time to oversee major city construction projects, its chair told the Winnipeg police headquarters inquiry on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The police HQ inquiry has devoted its May public hearings to recommendations for improving the way the city plans large-scale construction projects.<\/p>\n
The terms of reference for the inquiry, set by the NDP government, called for this discussion to involve the municipal board. The provincially appointed body’s duties include adjudicating appeals of municipal property assessments and some city land-use decisions.<\/p>\n
Municipal board chair Lori Lavoie, who is leaving her position at the end of the month, told the inquiry Wednesday that her organization is too busy handling property appeals \u2014 thousands of which remain outstanding \u2014 and other duties to consider taking on another role.<\/p>\n
“The board lacks the necessary resources, technical expertise and structure needed to provide meaningful oversight of capital projects,” Lavoie told the inquiry, reading a prepared statement.<\/p>\n
“The board is already struggling to fulfill its existing very broad mandate due to resource constraints, further highlighting its unsuitability for expanded oversight responsibilities.”<\/p>\n
The board’s existing mandate also includes appeals of municipal land-use decisions, water rights decisions and, thanks to a recent NDP government initiative, provincial challenges of grocery covenants.<\/p>\n
Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham said he is pleased the municipal board poured cold water on the idea of becoming another layer of municipal planning bureaucracy.<\/p>\n
“I don’t see a role for the municipal board in project oversight,” Gillingham said Wednesday at city hall.<\/p>\n
Winnipeg has improved the way it manages major projects in the decade since the police headquarters project was completed, he said.<\/p>\n
The police headquarters project, which was planned and built between 2008 and 2016, involved the $214-million purchase and renovation of a former Canada Post warehouse and office tower complex in downtown Winnipeg.<\/p>\n
The headquarters was completed two years late and $79 million over its city council-approved budget. It was also the subject of two city-commissioned audits and\u00a0a five-year RCMP investigation<\/a>\u00a0into allegations of fraud, forgery and secret commissions, which concluded without charges.<\/p>\n The City of Winnipeg also\u00a0launched a pair of civil lawsuits<\/a>\u00a0over the project. One concluded in 2022, when a Manitoba judge determined Winnipeg chief administrative officer Phil Sheegl\u00a0accepted a $327,200 bribe<\/a>\u00a0from Armik Babakhanians, the owner of police HQ contractor Caspian Construction. Caspian and other defendants\u00a0settled a separate lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0in 2023 for $28 million.<\/p>\n Board chair resigned prior to inquiry testimony<\/p>\n Gillingham also said Wednesday he is pleased the provincial government has followed through on 2024 recommendations to ratchet back the powers of the municipal board.<\/p>\n Legislation awaiting royal assent in June will strip the board of its ability to issue binding decisions about city land-use appeals. Instead, the board will make recommendations for the city to consider.<\/p>\n Lavoie told the police HQ inquiry she found it problematic for the unelected, provincially appointed board to issue directives to elected municipal councils.<\/p>\n “There\u2019s a problem with that, in my opinion,” said Lavoie, referring to powers granted to the board when Brian Pallister’s Progressive Conservative government was in office.<\/p>\n Gillingham said there was no accountability for the municipal board when it had the power to overturn city land-use decisions.<\/p>\n “Municipal board members are appointed. Mayors, reeves and councillors are elected,” he said. “There’s a built-in mechanism to hold us accountable.”<\/p>\n The NDP government tabled legislation governing the changes to the board’s powers in March. Gillingham said he was not aware of the pending changes to the board’s powers until Wednesday.<\/p>\n Municipal Relations Minister Glen Simard said the government promised to ensure the city and other municipalities have more autonomy.<\/p>\n During question period at the Manitoba Legislature Wednesday, Progressive Conservative deputy leader Jeff Bereza said municipal board chair Lavoie has resigned her position due to the duties heaped on the board and a backlog of cases to adjudicate.<\/p>\n Simard confirmed Lavoie resigned last week and said her last day is May 31. The province has appointed more board members and hired more staff to assist the board with its duties, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Manitoba Municipal Board doesn’t have the expertise or time to oversee major city construction projects, its chair…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[20038,20040,20037,20039,2307,20041,4648,84,9891],"class_list":{"0":"post-45014","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-winnipeg","8":"tag-city-construction-projects","9":"tag-lori-lavoie","10":"tag-manitoba-municipal-board","11":"tag-municipal-board","12":"tag-ndp-government","13":"tag-project-oversight","14":"tag-scott-gillingham","15":"tag-winnipeg","16":"tag-winnipeg-police"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}