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Toronto, Mayor John Tory says that Waterfront Toronto has to start acting in a more “transparent manner” when it comes to how it spends public money.
Tory made the comment to reporters at city hall on Thursday morning, one day after the Waterfront Toronto board met to discuss an estimated $35 million in cost overruns on the Queens Quay revitalization.
“This is an organization basically entirely funded with public money and people have a right to see how that money is spent,” Tory said. “I understand that with complicated projects there are going to be things that arise unexpectedly but there were also decisions that were made to change the scope of the project and so on that I think were downplayed a bit yesterday.”
Last week Waterfront Toronto officials revealed that the budget for overhauling a 1.7-kilometre stretch of Queens Quay has increased from an estimated $93.2 million in 2011 to $128.9 million with the final cost still unknown.
At the time officials blamed the ballooning cost on challenges surrounding soil and groundwater conditions, aging infrastructure and unforeseeable underground obstacles, however the Toronto Sun subsequently reported that $4.4 million of the additional cost was attributed to cost overruns on the $11.9 million installation of granite sidewalks.
On Thursday, Tory stressed that he doesn’t want to see the city do a “half-assed job on the waterfront” but said the discussions surrounding its revitalization should be conducted in a public forum, something he said Waterfront Toronto hasn’t always done.
“I believe the waterfront should be done in an excellent manner. This is our only waterfront and it is a precious asset that we have neglected for a number of years. However, it is important that when they decide how to do that excellent job it be done in a transparent manner and that includes a legitimate, reasonable and public debate about how much granite you use on the sidewalks,” Tory told reporters. “Right now I think what people are offended about is that those discussions have not taken place in a public setting and you find out after the fact. That’s not right.”
The controversy over the Queens Quay cost overruns is just the latest one involving Waterfront Toronto, which was created in 2001 with the task of revitalizing the city’s lackluster waterfront,
In July, the federal-provincial-municipal agency also faced criticism over spending with Rob Ford calling on CEO John Campbell to resign over the purchase of a $600,000 washroom and 36 pink umbrellas priced at $12,000 each for Sugar Beach.
Speaking with reporters, Tory said that Wednesday night’s Waterfront Toronto meeting was a “good start” in terms of instilling more transparency but he refused to weigh in on the long-term viability of the agency.
“That’s a discussion that we are going to have,” he said. “If you want to proceed ahead with something like the waterfront corporation you have to have two discussions. One, do you want to continue to develop the waterfront in an excellent manner? My answer today would be yes. The next question is do you want the waterfront corporation in its present incarnation to be doing that work? I think we have to have that discussion.”
Waterfront Toronto has said it will take 25 years to transform Toronto’s lakefront and about $30 billion in public and private funding.
