With the new Johnson Street Bridge now open Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps is calling for an independent audit.
The controversial project took 9 years to complete, and ballooned from the original cost of $35-million to at least $105-million and still counting.
Helps says while she was on the council that approved the project, she was not in favour -- and now wants the Auditor General for Local Government (AGLG) to examine what went wrong:
" I've got a lot of respect for Gordon Ruth who is the Auditor General for Local Government, and got a lot of respect for that office. And I think it is our responsibility to see if there is anything else that we can learn from that project. And not only that, the AGLG makes the reports public and so it will be a good learning opportunity for other local governments across the province.
The timing of the request -- during a municipal election -- is just a coincidence according to Helps. She says after meeting with the Grumpy Taxpayers group earlier this year she committed to asking council to pursue an audit once the project was done.
Asked why the request is being made now-- in the midst of a municipal election campaign -- Lisa Helps says it's a promise she made earlier this year:
"I met with the Grumpy Taxpayers as they call themselves earlier in the year, and I committed that when the bridge project was finished I would write to council and ask council to write to the AGLG and ask for an audit. And the bridge project officially finished a couple of weeks ago, PCL is off site, the south side walkway is open. So that's the why, and that's the why now."
Helps says lessons have already been learned and applied to new projects, but there may be more to know, and it should be a matter of public record.