Raise the Hammer

John 1242, you would have a point if there hadn't been other scope changes that Hamilton Council simply accepted. The problem is that, most of the city councilors are against LRT, not this project and not this specific scope change. They have publically stated too many times that they are against LRT as a concept, not just this project or just this specific scope change. Only a few of the councilors against this have even mentioned that this vote in particular is to pass an add on to the project's Environmental Assessment.

Too many of the anti-LRT councilors were extremely clumsy and showed too little competence in the use of precise language in public that, would keep the city from being sued, after the fact! I have lived this as a resident of Ottawa and as a professional urban planner. The completely undisciplined use of language by the anti-LRT councilors is deadly after the fact, when angry companies and the people that represent them, who made bids during the RFQ process go to get their money back. The normal way of doing this is of course, to immediately sue!

When you don't use perfectly precise language when in public, you pay a price. The anti-LRT councilors have made this mistake and if this project gets killed because of them, the city will be found at fault. That's why the mayor of Ottawa from the first election win in 2010 told his councilors to shut up, come to him first on these types of controversial issues. Do not argue the points of a particular project or policy in public! This is what competent councilors who have basic intelligence know before they enter municipal politics. It will most likely be successfully argued that, a certain group of councilors who were always against the LRT program conspired during the RFQ process to kill the project while everybody else involved moved forward in good faith (a legally defined public process with rules that everyone including the city has to follow and is now breaking).

Therefore, instead of voting down the winner of the RFQ or the winning project plan at the end of the RFP process, both of which have to be voted on by the council before construction starts, they are now pulling support before the RFQ process ends, which is something you are not supposed to do. This makes the city liable for all the associated costs of this particular process!