Winnipeg Sun file photo
With council committee doors shut, whistleblower Terry Wachniak knocks on Mayor Gillingham’s instead
After the Public Works committee scheduled a “Special Meeting” without the public having any genuine opportunity to find out about it and have a say, former council member Terry Wachniak blew the whistle.
He smelled something fishy about the rush to hand over a $10M contract for consultants to plan the decommissioning of the Arlington Bridge, since holding a “special meeting” requires an emergency and the agenda report didn’t identify what that emergency was.
So he sent a letter that laid out his concerns and asked to appear at the meeting on May 25th. The clerk invented an excuse to not share the letter with the committee, because Wachniak had dared to address not only the contract, which appeared to have been single-sourced, but the clearly problematic process the meeting was held under that precluded the public getting fair notification.
At the meeting, Wachniak had to argue for his correspondence to be read into the record and even then, the clerk tried to leave out part mentioning how he “will be requesting that the Manitoba Ombudsman launch an independent administrative fairness investigation into the specifics of this matter.”
It took 15 minutes to finally allow Wachniak to address the contract, and in particular, his warning that the illegitimate process “appears to be repeating what was done to benefit favored contractors involved with the Downtown Winnipeg Police Station.”
Some of his perceptions, according to committee chair Janice Lukes, was because the department has failed to adopt council’s edict from two years ago to present reports in “plain English.” That obfuscation wasn’t enough to stop her and the committee from voting for the contract award, which was to commence a gradual deconstruction of two of the five bridge sections.
The other councilors – Deputy Mayor Markus Chambers, Water and Waste chair Ross Eadie and council speaker Devi Sharma – all referred to a scenario that the Arlington Bridge was at risk of collapsing.
Those assertions were nonsense, according to Wachniak, because the railroad would not be operating underneath if there was danger. But thanks to their decision, he says that’s now a genuine risk.
The councilor for Mynarski ward in the late 1980’s, Wachniak noticed there was no reference to that contract on the last council agenda, and worried the entire matter could fall into a memory-hole with no accountability.
He went looking for an open door to raise his updated concerns and thought the Lord Selkirk Community Committee – composed of Sharma, Eadie and Community Services chair Vivian Santos – was a logical step, as their wards surround the bridge.
He wrote to the committee clerk:
“The engineering reports that would normally provide public assurance that all potential risks to public safety in a matter like this are known, have not been made available to the public, and it appears that the standard Taxpayer liability protections for the contracted demolition work, is also missing, or worse, knowingly non-existent. I am expecting these issues of genuine concern to be considered as New Business.”
Council approved $17 Million last year for the “complete demolition” of the bridge, but the Special Meeting approved a $10 million contract to demolish only of 1/3 of the structure. With no timeline or estimate on the costs to tear down the rest, Wachniak stated it “exposes a severe and highly questionable risk for the city of Winnipeg taxpayers.”
Citing new safety risks, Wachniak cautioned that “Dismantling only one-third of a continuous steel truss structure (“for a year or two”) could fundamentally alter its load-bearing distribution” and inclement weather “amplifies these concerns, over time. The assurance that the remaining two-thirds will remain safe and stable above an active rail line until future funding (“in a year or two”) is found, becomes highly questionable project management, for those obvious reasons.”
He wanted the committee to make “an immediate request for administrative clarification on the potential for safety and budget failures directly related to the remaining structure, over time.”
At the meeting on Tuesday, the clerk explained that as the Arlington Bridge was not on the agenda, the procedure bylaw established in 2007 didn’t allow Wachniak to come forward and speak as a delegate.
Santos noted that “processes have changed” since Wachniak’s time on council, “so unfortunately we won’t be able to hear from Mr. Wachniak at this time.”
“Cool,” said Eadie, who added the Community Committee didn’t have jurisdiction over the bridge contract. Mused Sharma, “it’s not typical to speak to an item that’s not on the agenda.”
What’s not typical, is for a “Special Meeting” to be held under such shady circumstances. As two of the three community committee members had gone along with it, their shutting the door on a knowledgeable whistleblower is especially disturbing.
Imagine if a police headquarters-style fraud was underway now.
Is this how a whistleblower would be treated, told their letter couldn’t be distributed to councilors or be read into the record, and be told they had no standing to speak at public meetings?
Wachniak made another point in his request to speak- that holding the Special Meeting “seriously restricted critically important public involvement, by design.”
The day after he was shut out by the Lord Selkirk Community Committee, Wachniak sent a letter to Mayor Scott Gillingham.
“I requested a meeting with him, fifteen minutes either in person or by phone, anytime next week. I know he’s a busy fella, but I think he should be given the opportunity to get ahold of his own administration and take responsibility for what going wrong and put it on track again. And obviously something is going very wrong with the Arlington Bridge.”
Wachniak believes that “the appearance of the City Administration not learning anything from the Downtown Police Station scandal, must continue to be taken seriously, by everyone. It’s very dangerous for all of us for any city councilor to support this once they have the facts.”
— Marty Gold is a Winnipeg journalist and a guest writer for the Winnipeg Sun. You can find more of his work at The Great Canadian Talk Show