City needs to win back the public’s trust (PENTICTON)

Jan 21 2007 EDITORIAL http://www.pentictonwesternnews.com/
We applaud Mayor Jake Kimberley and city administrator Leo den Boer for issuing an apology for mistakes made leading up to the selection of Giffels Partnership Solutions to design and build the South Okanagan Event Centre. But this apology is only the first step in restoring the public’s confidence. “With the benefit of hindsight, references to guaranteed maximum prices should have been qualified or deleted,” they wrote in a letter issued to local media Thursday in response to growing concerns about the SOEC’s escalating costs and the selection of Giffels.

This apology refers to city advertisements that appeared before a Sept. 16 referendum when citizens approved plans to borrow almost $40 million for the facility expected to cost $56.1 million. That figure included a “guaranteed price” of $39.6 million for the actual facility. Giffels promised this guarantee would be good through mid-October. So one can imagine how the public reacted when they heard in December that the cost of the centre had escalated by more than $17 million to $73.5 million, with both sides distancing themselves as quickly as they could from earlier promises of guaranteed costs. The city is now admitting that it received those assurances from Giffels with the last confirmation coming three days before the referendum. Naturally, the city made “an assumption we now know in hindsight to be erroneous,” stated the letter from Kimberley and den Boer.

This of course raises several interesting questions. The first one revolves around culpability. Should we blame the city for making that “erroneous” assumption about Giffels? Or should we point the finger at Giffels? We believe that the city should have been more careful, an admission also found in the letter. “Undoubtedly, we now know that the price for such a complex facility could not be set firmly in this overheated construction environment until the design was detailed enough to allow sub-trades to provide precise costs.” But we believe that the city needs to go beyond admitting its mistakes and urging people to move along. With key deadlines looming, we doubt the city can reverse its commitment towards Giffels, despite appealing but ultimately unverifiable claims from Giffels’ competitor Global Entertainment. But the city should at least explore the potential of reminding Giffels of its unfulfilled guarantee in a way that gets the company’s attention and co-operation. This will tell citizens that their elected officials are working for their future benefit, not just apologizing for past mistakes.