An Open Letter to Victoria Councillors re: Amendments to Bridge Project Charter
Dear Victoria Councillors,
Tomorrow (Thursday, October 6) you will receive another quarterly update on the progress of the Johnson Street Bridge project. This update comes with a staff recommendation that you approve several amendments to the Project Charter [agreed to by council on February 4 of this year].
We believe you cannot approve these amendments until you are
provided thorough explanations about the current state of the project –
from the staff, and from the mayor – for the following reasons.
1) You have been asked to approve a reduction of the navigation
channel (and hence, the length of the basucle span) of the bridge from
47 metres to 41. As the staff report notes [on page 4], 47 metres is an
international standard for such channels.
However, after consulting with
users of the channel, on March 3 of this year, the owner’s engineer
(MMM) obtained
a letter from Transport Canada approving a reduction to 41 metres.
On April 23, mayor Fortin signed a
new contract with MMM,
defining the scope of the new bridge. On page 22 of the contract, the
size of the navigation channel is identified “as per Navigable Waters
Protection Division Letter, dated March 3, 2011” – in other words, for a
channel of 41 metres.
[Authors' note: The following was sent to Victoria's councillors (councillors@victoria.ca) on the evening of October 5, 2011. Many thanks to Focus magazine,
which has done extraordinary work filing the Freedom of Information
requests that provided many of the supporting documents linked below.]
Page 13 of the Project Charter governing the bridge project states:
In the event that major risks do emerge and the relevant
mitigation strategies identified earlier are not effective, the
following cost saving opportunities could be considered:
1. Reducing the navigation channel width;
2. Reviewing land opportunities related to the Project;
3. Phasing or reducing landscaping;
4. Reprioritization of other City capital projects
5. Others
Should this become necessary, staff would report back to Council prior to finalizing any considerations (our emphasis).
The mayor has already signed a contract agreeing to a reduced
navigation channel. Therefore, this consideration has been finalized
without council’s approval, in violation of the Project Charter. You are being asked by staff to approve this change retroactively.
2) The new staff report refers to the necessary relocation of a Telus
telecommunications duct, which will take up to a year, and cost $1.1
million more than the $1.3 million originally estimated. The location of
this duct was known as early as this past January 26, when consultant
engineers argued about the liabilities of drilling near the duct, and a geotechnical crew was told by its insurers to cancel drilling test holes near the duct for fear of damaging it. However,
staff did not advise you about this complication at subsequent meetings
– even though a “significant delay in utility relocations” was
identified as a “major risk” to the project by Dr. Francis Hartman
during the Project Charter presentation on February 4.
Instead, staff focused on the question of rail on the new bridge –
repeatedly recommending that you approve a design without rail, which
you finally did on March 7. On March 25, MMM then confirmed in a memo to staff
that the Telus duct lay directly in the path of new bridge, making it
impossible to prepare the foundations until the duct is moved.
Now we are told in the latest update that the new bridge is only at a
30% design level, not much more than the 20% it was at a year ago. Can
any real design work be done until the duct is moved, and the in-water
geotechnical work is completed? If the design cannot proceed
significantly for the next year, you can and should reopen discussions
with local mayors and the province for financing to include rail on the
new bridge.
3) The staff report also asks you to approve an elaborate
public-engagement strategy for planning the “public realm” (landscaping)
around the bridge. This should not be considered at this time, for
several reasons.
a) It will be difficult to design the “public realm” when the council
has not decided the fate of land freed up by removal of the S-curve on
the western side of the bridge. Council should clearly determine
public preference about the use of the land – and resolve that the land
will be turned into a park, or that it will be sold – before debating
the locations of trees and sidewalks.
b) Page 13 of the Project Charter (quoted above) identifies “phasing
or reducing landscaping” as one of the strategies to bring the project
within cost. It would be poor planning to spend staff and citizens’ time
on elaborate landscaping plans that may have to be abandoned if the
bridge itself goes over budget.
c) Staff have not made clear what the role of the Citizens’ Advisory Panel
is in this process – or whether the CAP has consented to open meetings –
even though two councillors specifically asked for this information at
the last project update in July.
Victoria citizens expect you to address these concerns. The terms of
the Project Charter, a document and process designed to provide
transparency and accountability to the City’s largest single
infrastructure project, are not being met. Staff have failed to promptly
notify you of a serious risk to the project, pushed for the severing of
a historic rail link when it might have been preserved, and now want to
undertake a public-relations exercise that may prove both costly and
pointless. These concerns must be resolved before approving current, and
future, recommendations on the scope of the Johnson Street Bridge
project.
With kind regards,
Ross Crockford and Mat Wright
Directors, johnsonstreetbridge.org
