Parkade Review Bill Higher Than Planned

Thursday, April 15, 2010 04:00 AM

Prince George, B.C.- Opinion 250 has learned the bill for the review of the development of the Chances Gaming Centre and the City’s parkade, has come in about one third higher than anticipated.

The initial estimate of the work for the review was $20 thousand dollars.

That was before it was known there would be more than a thousand e-mails, a bankers box of documents and a CD that would have to be sorted out before the actual review could get underway.

Reviewer, Jane Neumann of Deloitte Touche LLP, told Council on Monday night it took much longer than she had expected to sort the material.

The final bill was $29,500 plus gst for a total of $30,975. The City can recoup the gst. The funding will come from the City’s operating budget.

John Bowman, the President of CNC, was asked to provide third party oversight. He provided his services on a voluntary basis. In his report to Council, he noted his surprise at the fact the material provided to Neuman was not organized “the fact that the printed and electronic information provided to Deloitte and Touche was not organized in any semblance of order was noted; given the size and significance of the Gaming Centre project this fact was surprising;”

City Staff say that at the time the Gaming Centre and parkade were constructed, the Electronic Document Management System (which provides a more organized system of storage of documents) was not in use. That system was installed in late 2007, too later for many of the matters leading up to the construction of the facility.

In the end, the review found nothing untoward in the City’s involvement with Otter Properties in the construction of the parkade. The only glitch noted was the failure of Otter Properties to build the promised townhouses. The covenant covering that matter has been passed on to the new owner of the property.

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Posted on Thursday, April 15, 2010 04:00 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: gus on April 15 2010 4:21 AM

Gee, golly .... whatever did the world of business do before Electronic Document Management Systems ?????!!!!!!

I remember those days .... it would take us years to find things ... NOT!!!!!!!!

Posted by: skeptikl on April 15 2010 6:35 AM

if Mr. Skakun was trying to make a name for himself by looking for "dirt", he's done it all right. the name is "waster of time and money"

Posted by: Vdesign on April 15 2010 7:32 AM

$30,000 dollars wasted, have to think this is a bit of egg on the face of those who were so sure that they could find that the city had wasted money. What they succeeded in was showing that they can waste their share.

Funny how there is always unlimited funds to reviews, consultants, and planning, but always very tight budgets for actually doing something.

Posted by: gus on April 15 2010 7:52 AM

Review, consult and plan is what the modern world is all about. Everything else is mechanized to the degree that we need 1/10th the workforce and less than we did 100 years ago to create something in the physical world.

What we have not figured out is how to distribute the money which part of the population still working on those physical things makes to those who have nothing to do.

So, in order to keep those others working, we made copious rules and regulations which require an army of clerks and bean counters to record things, lose things, search for things, find things, and report on things.

If we ever run out of things to record and discover some new system of actually finding things we recorded very quickly, we are going to be in deep doodoo again. I do not want to be around for that war.

Posted by: gus on April 15 2010 7:56 AM

BTW, imagine how much it will cost the City to put all the old records onto the new Electronic Document Management System.

There is the hidden story in all of this ..... :-)

If it had not been for good old Brian, many of us would not have known what goes on.

And you thought that the City was just not filling potholes.

Posted by: Loki on April 15 2010 8:46 AM

I heard once, that long long ago in a far away land, a government project came in on budget. The politicians were shocked, the citizens were ecstatic.

Posted by: metalman on April 15 2010 9:59 AM

What Gus said.
metalman.

Posted by: PrinceGeorge on April 15 2010 10:14 AM

So all pre-2007 city documents are unorganized in Bankers boxes?

What if somebody needs to know something in a hurry?

Like a city councilor.

Is this for real? Scary.

Posted by: duffer on April 15 2010 10:48 AM

Mr. Skakun did the right thing. We have to have everything above board and accounted for when it is public money.

Posted by: Harbinger on April 15 2010 1:47 PM

First the Black Orchid kerfuffle and following lawsuit and now this. Busy guy. I wonder what's next?

Posted by: mistyeyed on April 15 2010 2:05 PM

He loves to have his name in the press and it always seems to cost us money!!!!!!

Posted by: duffer on April 15 2010 3:20 PM

Harb and Misty, perhaps you like being kept in the dark???

Posted by: Harbinger on April 15 2010 6:31 PM

All I know is what I read in the papers.