Thread by @akurjata

So I'm going to try and explain what's going on here as best I can at this late hour. I'm not going to look up exact dates right now, but just the gist of things is as follows. Back in 2017 a developer wanted to build something the city has long wanted: downtown condos

https://twitter.com/akurjata/status/1348864670329802754

To make the deal the city agreed to contribute construction of a parkade.

The pricetag approved for this was $12.4M

cbc.ca/news/canada/br…

Now, somewhere along the way that pricetag went up, but it didn't go to council for approval. This is b/c changes had been made to a system called "delegated authority" which allows the city manager to approve budget increases within certain limits without having to go to council

Delegated authority makes sense. If council budgets say $10M for something and it winds up costing an extra $400, you don't really want to have to wait for the month or so it takes for council to approve that $400. Flexibility needs to be there

So the question is really: How much flexibility? And that is what council in PG had changed. It used to be roughly $1M per project. Then, circa 2018, it was changed to five per cent of the overall capital budget. This is where it gets tricky

The stated intention of the change was actually to give city management LESS delegated authority. Five per cent of the capital project budget works out to much less than $1M for every project.

But.... what if all of that five per cent were to go to one project?

Now you can have much higher cost overruns on individual projects without going to council for approval.

And that's what happened.

And council for upset and changed it back princegeorgematters.com/local-news/pri…

So the question NOW being asked is: When city management suggested this new delegated authority rule — the one allowing them to go more than $1M over budget on an individual project without going to council — were they aware the parkade was going to be more than $1M over budget?

In other words, did city management find out the parkade was going to go over budget and then, rather than go to council to ask for approval for more money, instead suggest delegated authority rules be changed in order for them to be able to approve the increase independently?

That is what is being suggest by Councillor Kyle Sampson here

https://twitter.com/cath_garrett/status/1348862868565893120?s=19

This question was asked directly by Coun. Terri McConnachie tonight, and she was told no. But it sounds like council will meet privately to discuss legal advice on this

https://twitter.com/hannaepeter/status/1348861260645863424?s=19

For those not embedded in Prince George city politics, the other aspect of this is that the city manager behind all this abrubtly left late last year, officially for no real reason but the timing raises eyebrows cbc.ca/news/canada/br…

TO BE CLEAR any speculation of wrongdoing is purely speculation. The budget increase was approved following city rules, and there was never a chance that the cost overruns could be hidden indefinitely — this came out because it was in a staff report to council — but we still have

... a $12.4M project that has seen repeated cost overruns, alongside multiple other projects that have not-insiginifant cost overruns, and frustration towards and within council over this is boiling over. /thread