By Pepper Parr
June 23, 2104
BURLINGTON, ON.
REVISED
The quickie version of the city’s media briefing on the legal settlement related to the costs of building the Brant Street Pier is that the city say they will not have to pay as much as a dine.
Mayor takes the position that the pier is now bought and paid for. No more special meetings of council, no more legal fees. The end of a project that has plagued the city since the day the crane toppled.
They in fact did quite a bit better – they are going to pocket $1.5 million and hang on to $500,000 that was in a “holdback” account.
What the city did not get was as much as a dime of the $6,429,700 it paid Graham Infrastructure to complete the construction of the pier.
Many on council thought the original contractor should have paid the city for walking off the job when he claimed he could not build the pier with the plans he was given.
That position appears to have been validated – but there are still a lot of details that have yet to be made known – there are some we will probably never know.
The deal is still provisional in that there are two of the nine parties that have to get approval from their boards of directors.
The pier problems have always been complex. From the concept during the Rob MacIsaac era to the Goldring era the project has gone through far too many ups and downs and the full story has not been told and it looks as if there are parts that the public will never get to hear.
The city always took the position that it did nothing wrong and that would seem to be borne out by the details we have to date on the settlement.
The headline we used on a story published yesterday – Final phase of the Brant Street Pier saga about to unfold – it will be painful. The city chose to focus on the getting funds to pay legal fees – not a word about the $6 million it had to pay a different contractor to complete the pier
We will follow up with a more detailed story.
Well this is an interesting report.
Hasn’t the City’s position on the Airpark also been that it ‘did nothing wrong’, even though it knew about Mr. Rossi’s fill operation…five years before it finally stepped in to protect its citizens and their environments?
And the City has also been recouping (a portion) of their legal fees from the Airpark owner.
Sounds like the same dung from City Hall….being flung into a different pot.
“The city always took the position that it did nothing wrong and that would seem to be borne out by the details we have to date on the settlement.”
With respect, I disagree with the assessment “that it [the city] did nothing wrong.” When a $7-million pier costs $14 million, somebody did something wrong.