By Gagandeep Ghuman
Published: Sept 6, 2014
It won’t be so much fun, but hold my hand dear reader and let’s go down the SODC rabbit hole. What are we getting into, you ask? A deep doodo of $11.5 million debt.
But let’s thanks our civic leaders first who have been generous enough to give us a breakdown of where our money was spent.
Descend into this swamp and see: SODC made a lot of consultants, planners, surveyors, and lawyers happy. In 2009, for example, a group of consultants from Ground Control Enterprise billed $569,116 to the tax payers for creating a sub-area plan. In a span of three years, SODC also paid a Vancouver consulting company more than $2million for business plan marketing.
You must remember the time when your credit card bill bloated because of the interest on your unpaid bill. Well, that wasn’t the only bill you were paying all these years. SODC spent a whooping $1.5 million on bank interest and loan financing fees. And then of course, there were the community-minded volunteer board members and staff burning the midnight oil to get all of us a better deal. All included in the wages, expenses and insurance payments, just $1.4 million when everything has been said and done.
Now, why don’t we climb out of this hole and ask our very open and very transparent council to call for a referendum on Squamish Oceanfront Development Corporation (SODC).
And as Coun. Patricia Heintzman would agree it doesn’t have to be duh-inducing yes or no question (“Do you hate debt or not?”). No, it doesn’t have to be simplistic. It can be as pointed as it can be complex and there can be more than one questions.
Why don’t we ask in our referendum question: Do you support a detailed, forensic auditing of SODC expenses?
Or, maybe we can ask: Do you support SODC refusing one FOI after the other on expenses, staffing and rival bids?
Do you support a former SODC director finally landing a lucrative Oceanfront deal?
Should we find out more about who else submitted an RFP for the Oceanfront development? Do you like white elephants?
A few weeks ago, the Reporter filed an FOI to find out records related to a Coriolis group’s handling of offers on SODC. The intention was to find more about the process through which the current developer was selected. Not surprisingly, the district refused to part with that information citing section yada yada of the Freedom of Information Act. This brings us back to the referendum question and its tantalizing possibilities on SODC. Which councillor will call for it?
Wolfgang W says
The call for such a referendum should even satisfy those who protest against one on Woodfibre LNG on grounds of it being ‘outside DOS’s jurisdiction’, that referendums should be reserved for decisions on ‘important DOS financial matters’, or ‘for large public infrastructure or capital projects only’ to list just a few of their objections.
Surely the one argument, about such weighty matters being best left to our elected representatives, their committees or boards to deal with behind closed doors, because ‘they know best’ must be running thin even for the trusting types by now in this long, and for the taxpayer, costly saga.
So, keep adding to the smorgasbord of possible referendum questions, Gagandeep, which – how could it be otherwise with the new promise of openness by the Mayor on all things SODC – will be eagerly anticipated by Council…
Peter Legere says
“Which councillor will call for it?”
Well, it probably won’t be the one that thinks any problem can be solved with a lawsuit. I am told it was his suggestion to take me to the Supreme Court to rid Cattermole Slough of moored boats. The last line item in the Accounting, Legal, Advisory section is a summary of payments to the legal firm of MacKenzie Fujisawa totalling $49,080.
What did the Sods get for the expenditure of a gnat’s eyelash short of fifty grand? Not only are the boats still picturesquely moored in Cattermole Slough, but the legal fiddle which established the Sods’ dominion over the waterway has been exposed.
This is not the only blatant waste of money I have personally witnessed: The Armani-clad Mike Chin, [who was probably the highest paid executive in history, when one factors in the value of the company he headed, ($22 million) and the number of employees, (1)] spent a million hiring his engineering friends to submit now obsolete reports on various aspects of the property. One in particular caught my eye: Hayco reported on potential erosional effects of wave action on Nexxan Beach using wind data from the weather station at Pam Rocks, (between Anvil and Gambier Islands) and wave fetch data from Passage Island (off Fishermans Cove, West Van.) This is not the only Hayco engineering report I have run across that was obviously written without even a site visit.
Recently, the SODC execs have been developing another project at the same time as they were supposed to be working for us. As a developer myself, I know how much effort and planning goes into a project. I have to wonder if we were getting the effort we were paying for in furtherance of OUR project, and were any SODC resources used in furtherance of that other project. A forensic audit would answer that.
Generally, I am opposed to referenda; I don’t like to see important decisions made by the fundamentally uninformed, but in this case, the question should be: Do you support a forensic audit of the Squamish Oceanfront Development Corporation?
Jim Harvey says
Thank you Gagandeep for posing the questions. Thanks to Wolfgang for supporting the notion and thanks to Peter for fueling the fire. However, their concerns over financial shenanigans pale, in my mind, to some of the fundamental planning decisions that are supposed to be intrinsic to the ‘sustainability’ of this development. For example, they propose a major new marina with significant capital costs that, as evidenced by the current state of investment in our existing marina, no one is prepared to fund. They talk of a significant commercial development through the growth of a marine services industry (up the far end of a fiord, no less) in response to a non-existent market for such services. And then, of course, there was talk of the signature ‘waterfront’ hotel as anchor tenant that would be built 2 km from downtown at the end of a brownfield wasteland. These are just some of the inexplicable components of the SODC planning vision.
But more importantly, whereas staff and Council have been spending so much time, effort and resources on fostering the SODC dream all the while the existing downtown remains stagnant. Logger’s Lane, the most obvious land to focus our planning and development efforts on and the key to downtown revitalization, lies moribund, still saddled with obsolete railways tracks. And then there were the two major development proposals for lands adjacent to downtown. Both the proposed residential/commercial developments slated for the old Interfor Mill site and the more modest Westmana proposal were very appropriate and timely developments. Both are close to the existing downtown where both zoning and infrastructure implications were minimal. Both projects died on the drawings boards. Why? Is it because these proposals represented competition to the SODC proposal and were thwarted by vested interests? From my perspective, the vanity of some of our politicians, the unwillingness/inability of staff to oppose such grandiose planning agendas and finally the manipulations of behind the scenes players has led to the current morass. As Gagandeep says, we are truly down the rabbit hole on this one
And, as best as I can tell, all of this has continued because of the simple desire amongst the majority of the community to see a park out at the end of the peninsula. A goal that is still not any closer to realizing.
Dave says
Rather than “The Rabbit Hole”, it should be called the “Squamish Black Hole”. Black holes eat mass and will not allow light to escape. Well, the Squamish one eats money and NOTHING comes out of it! The “gravity” of this one is beyond belief! The rabbit went down it’s hole to “Wonderland” and I doubt we will ever see “Wonderland” from SODC.
Sorry Gagandeep 🙂
tj says
But we don’t need LNG or other such ridiculous fantasies aye ? ..just the realistic hyperbole of Enviro-religionists…. hmmmmm…….
Douglas Day says
With my apologies to the respective Governments of Indonesia, Mexico and Columbia who are doing their best ??? to eliminate graft and corruption!
larry mclennan says
I have sent a request to the Auditor General for Local Government (AGLG) regarding this situation and querying whether they can be of any assistance in addressing the above mentioned concerns. I suggest that like -minded citizens do the same. Perhaps several more requests will stir a response to answer these concerns. Just go to the web page and click on “contact us” (top of the page). Dougie, if you send one, just be calm.
Douglas R. Day says
Hi Larry
Lets chat
Regards
Doug
Cell # 604-815-3435
tj says
I think some should run for council, rather than ALWAYS WHINING about what SOMEONE ELSE does or doesn’t do …example is everything aye ? !!
larry mclennan says
The problem with referendums is that ,in my view, most people are ignorant of what they are voting on (if they vote) and what the objective and / or costs associated with the outcome. Some referendums ,such as the (now defunct??) LNG proposal are simply strategies employed by cowardly politicos to not say anything so that they don’t lose any perceived voting blocs.
Regarding the SODC ; the secrecy behind this whole venture from the get-go is egregious to say the least and yet there is no announced outcry ,to my knowledge , by any elected councilor. It appears to me that most of them (councilors) don’t have a clue as to what has been or is going on with respect to SODC and have even less interest. One would think that issues such as the SODC and the proposed LNG plant ,with their significant financial effects on the community , would be major topics which Council would spend the time to educate themselves about. Some of their comments I have read in the media demonstrate that this is obviously not the case. Sad and disgusting .
Dougie- yes we (and others ) should talk and see what actions are available. I hope others on this blog will contact the AGLG with their shared concerns. I haven’t had a response yet. I’ll give you (Dougie) a jingle tomorrow (Wed).
Douglas Day says
Thank you Larry.
I am easily reached on my Cell # 604-815-3435