A very interesting committee meeting

Yesterday (Feb 8, 2010) at City Hall there was a joint meeting of the Transportation and Transit committees to to consider the Lansdowne Transportation Impact and Assessment Study and Transportation Demand Management Plan. Committee debate focussed on two main issues: the terms of reference for the work and the sole sourcing of a major part of the work to Delcan. One hopes that lessons learned from this debate will be applied to other city projects in the community where I live and elsewhere across the city.

Several public delegations commented on the terms of reference and on the contracting arrangement and there was considerable discussion between presenters, councillors and city staff. Debate over possible conflict of interest if Delcan was selected to perform the study, revealed that the contractor would be required to review its own work; work undertaken in previous studies for which Delcan was contracted by Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG).

Several motions, including one that would require the city to choose a consultant without prior connection with the project, were debated. Voting on this was preempted when Delcan Vice President, Ron Jack, was allowed to address the committee and elected to withdraw Delcan’s participation in the project. It was also agreed that work undertaken by the selected contractor would be subject to critical overview by an independent contractor.

Much of the debate focused on the terms of reference for the study and planning activity. Several of the presenters expressed concern about the public consultation process in earlier phases of this work. It was agreed that proactive public involvement was needed and specific steps will now be incorporated to:

- Ensure that the public is notified well in advance of public meetings;
- Relevant documentation will be made available for public review well ahead of meetings;
- Minutes of meetings with the public will be provided; and
- Adequate time will be provided to enable public delegations to submit comments and suggestions to the city.

Interestingly lack of timely public involvement is major concern surrounding the OC Transpo Bus Garage currently under construction an Industrial Avenue. If effective communications and timely public involvement had been facilitated by the city, many of the community and city-wide concerns that are only now being raised could have been resolved before construction began. I am sure that there a many other project across the city that would also benefit from this kind of foresight. The process needs to be much more open and transparent.

Also, one wonders if Delcan should have been allowed to participate in detailed design of the hospital link section of the Alta Vista Transportation Corridor (AVTC) given their role for many years in the environmental assessment for this roadway. Granted Delcan was contracted directly by the city for all of this work, but there was no independent review of work undertaken during the EA process before design work commenced.