This week, Squamish Council decided to forget about the established policy on purchasing and give Kerr Wood Leidel (KWL) Associates more than $130,000 for consulting on the Powerhouse Springs wells.
While ensuring the town has an adequate supply of clean and safe drinking water in the summer months is certainly a noble desire for council, what is worrying is the departure from the public process.
According to the council's own procedures and policies, any consulting project with a cost of more than $50,000 must be authorized by council. DOS staff didn't think that was necessary in this case, and tried to slip it past as for "information" only at the Dec. 20 regular council meeting.
Coun. Corinne Lonsdale understandably saw this as disturbing and strongly questioned the move, as should we all. She put forward a motion that council stick with established policy, and at that meeting it passed successfully.This week's meeting saw two councillors, Jeff McKenzie and Mike Jenson, flip-flop on the issue, saying they "misunderstood" the issue and Lonsdale's motion.
While DOS staff, as well as Mayor Ian Sutherland cited the need to act quickly on the matter for the sake of a better water system as the reason for moving ahead without a transparent public process, one questions how imperative this issue is in reality.If the state of Squamish's water supply is in such dire straits, why was this issue not brought up long before? If time is of the essence, why did the DOS wait seemingly until the last moment to throw this project together - forcing them to go around their own policies?
It appears that the DOS was either caught off guard by this problem, or they were much too slow in reacting to it. Either way, it doesn't look very flattering.
Both Lonsdale and Coun. Raj Kahlon said they thought Squamish had "one of the best water systems in B.C.", and were confident it could supply safe and adequate drinking water to locals through the difficult summer months. Sutherland and the other councillors don't seem to agree with that assumption. So, who on council really knows what is going on with our water?
Lonsdale also said she doubted KWL was giving Squamish the best they could get, and therein lays the problem. Without calling this project out to tender, as should be the case, nobody will ever know if we could have gotten the job done by someone else for a cheaper price.
These policies are in place for a reason, and should be taken seriously, and followed properly.
We hope not every decision this council makes gets made twice.
