Will Brampton move forward in 2017 or remain stuck in neutral?

With many big issues facing Brampton, 2017 could be the year the struggling city finally moves forward on critical matters residents want action on.

Thestar.com
Jan. 2, 2016
By San Grewal

A $28.5-million lawsuit still hangs over Brampton City Hall, council is wrestling over a future route for a LRT corridor, long-standing policing policies in one of Canada’s most-diverse communities are being challenged by residents and plans for the city’s first university need to be hammered out.

These are some of the critical issues facing Canada’s ninth largest city in 2017.

Some city hall watchers and councillors worry that the ongoing lawsuit launched by local builder Inzola Group against the city in 2011, regarding the handling of a historic downtown redevelopment deal, is causing reputational harm and the possible loss of business as it drags through the courts.

“It’s of the utmost importance that this matter be resolved in 2017,” says Councillor John Sprovieri, who has been critical of the city’s handling of the six-year-old lawsuit, which Mayor Linda Jeffrey said has “paralyzed” city hall.

“A lot of people are following what’s happening with this lawsuit,” Sprovieri said. “There is a lot of speculation and much of it is negative. Until it is resolved this speculation and the allegations are a reputational issue for Brampton - it could be doing significant damage to our reputation.”

After Inzola was disqualified from bidding on the project, its lawsuit was filed, alleging bias against the local builder by senior city staff and former mayor Susan Fennell in the awarding of a $500-million downtown redevelopment project. The city denies all the lawsuit’s allegations.

The city, responding to numerous questions from the Star about the lawsuit throughout 2016, did not address documents that had been filed with the court raising concerns about the conduct of senior staff involved in the selection process. The city stated that it had filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit “in its entirety.”

In November, after more than 19,000 pages of documents supporting its case had been filed by Inzola to fight the city’s attempt at dismissing the lawsuit, the city abandoned its dismissal strategy, dropping its motion, and now the case is heading for trial.

“No one knows what really happened,” Sprovieri said. “We could be losing tens of millions of dollars in business because reputable firms might be concerned about getting involved with projects here. We need to get this to trial as soon as possible now, to find out what happened and finally clear the air so the city can move on.”

Early in 2017, the Ontario Ombudsman is expected to release his findings after a broad investigation into Brampton real estate and development dealings. The probe could cause more controversy inside city hall, and force changes to the way the city does business. Ombudsman Paul Dube stated in the spring, after his team’s initial inquiry, that “we determined that the issue of non-competitive procurements could potentially have systemic implications on the city, its staff and its citizens.”

The sweeping investigation, called after Brampton council raised concerns about the procurement for the redevelopment deal and other possible systemic problems inside city hall, is being conducted by a team from the ombudsman’s office that has had access to all documents and staff inside city hall for much of the year. The investigation will not, however, deal with matters related to the downtown deal that are subject to the ongoing litigation.

On the transit front, early in 2017 city staff is expected to present council with more details for a future LRT corridor after it voted against the province’s preferred route along Main St. in 2015. Staff is looking at council’s chosen alternatives along either Kennedy Rd. or McLaughlin Rd. Concerns have been raised about how much work has been done on the file, particularly after more than 45 managers, including some top bureaucrats, were suddenly dismissed by the city recently.

Chris Drew, co-founder of the group Fight Gridlock in Brampton, who advocated for the scrapped Main St. route, says lessons were learned from that LRT debate, which bogged down council for the better part of a year and divided many in the city.

“I’m hopeful that the city can learn and grow,” he said, adding that he expects staff to report on the only two LRT routes now on the table, early in the year. Asked if council and the city might again get mired in an exhaustive debate over which of the two routes to back, Drew said the city can’t afford to get into another acrimonious battle while traffic congestion gets worse every day.

“It’s not healthy for Brampton to make things personal.”

Drew said council can make a decision on the future route early in 2017, when staffers present findings on the two corridors being considered. This, Drew said, will allow the city to start advocating for funding from higher levels of government and get the project moving.

Along with better transit for the city, residents have also been clamouring for a university presence - it is the largest city in Canada without one. In October the province saved Brampton from having to fight with Milton over the selection for just one new university - the Liberal government announced it will award one campus to each municipality along with $180 million in combined funding.

Now, residents are wondering what work has been done to select a campus location, who the university acting as Brampton’s required partner will be and where the money will come from, beyond the city’s share of the $180 million, to build the city’s first university campus. All of these issues will have to be tackled by a staff missing now many key personnel in the management ranks.

Mayor Jeffrey said that while the province’s decision is a welcome one, it means more work, but also more potential opportunities because the scope of the proposal has been greatly widened.

“Whereas before we were really limited to Ontario partnerships, the province is really expanding that reach ... we now can look beyond an Ontario partner.”

Jeffrey said that while the principal university partner has to be Ontario based, the city is now going to start working with the province to find other post-secondary partnerships, even possibly overseas, that tie in with the local economy and the desires of Brampton residents who want specific types of educational opportunities in a rapidly transforming economy.

She says the work about to be done to build the city’s first university campus could “transform the region.

“It’s early days, but I’m very excited about it.”

Another key issue facing Brampton, where more than two-thirds of residents are visible minorities, is the future of policing, specifically policies surrounding racial profiling and diversity within the force. After the force’s own data was published by the Star in 2015, showing black individuals were three times more likely to be carded by Peel police than whites, Mayor Jeffrey voiced strong opposition to the practice, in her role as a police services board member, overseeing the force.

Jeffrey has also supported a broad equity-diversity audit of Peel police, which in 2017 will probe whether or not its hiring and promotion practices are equitable and reflect the demographics in one of Canada’s most diverse regions.

Police Chief Jennifer Evans, who refused the board’s request to suspend carding (after the board voted in 2015 to do so) and challenged the board on how it handled its decision to launch the equity-diversity audit, is in the last year of her contract. Jeffrey and the rest of the board will have to decide in 2017 whether to keep Evans on as chief after almost two years of tension between her and the board.