There’s been a lot of chirping in the past few days about the City’s proposed $24 million sale of the Winnipeg Square Parkade to Crown Realty Partners.
Some people are upset at the price. Some object to the idea of selling a money-making asset. And lots more are suspicious of Shindico’s role in brokering the deal.
I’m going to leave most of that alone except to say that I agree in principle with the decision to sell this particular parkade.
But I do have a major problem with the way this deal was rammed through Council today.
How many times have we seen this pattern during the Katz era? A major initiative gets announced, a special meeting of EPC is held to rush the item on to a Council agenda, the Katz majority votes to suspend the rules and debate the item without any advance notice, and by the end of the day it’s a done deal. Policy, procedure and opposition councillors be damned!
However, the balance of power has shifted a bit over the past year (with the election of Orlikow and the defection of Wyatt), and the unofficial opposition were able to block the parkade from being discussed at Council this morning. So what did the Mayor do? He turned around and called a special meeting of Council…for this afternoon.
And while City Clerk Richard Kachur says this is legal, it’s clearly a violation of the spirit of Section 9(20) of the City’s Procedures By-law:
A notice of a special meeting of Council shall, whenever possible, provide one working day between the giving of the notice and the meeting date and shall contain an explanation giving reasons for the convening of the meeting.
The sale has been discussed for months. Negotiations have been taking place with Crown for weeks. The parkade isn’t going anywhere, and continues to produce income for the City. There’s absolutely no reason this couldn’t have waited until tomorrow, or better yet, until Council’s next meeting in three weeks. To rush this through today just demonstrates total disregard for Council process and complete disrespect for opposition Councillors.
You’ve still got your majority Sam. And even if it takes you a couple of extra weeks, you’re going to get most of your initiatives through Council. So spend your energy on making the city a better place, not on playing spiteful games with Dan and Jenny.
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