Smith wants the city to ‘reimagine’ the Green Line and ‘rethink that downtown piece’
On Monday afternoon, Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek met with Devin Dreeshen, Premier Danielle Smith’s point man on the Green Line LRT.
It is said Gondek was accompanied by a couple of Calgary city councillors, Sonya Sharp and Dan McLean.
It didn’t matter.
For the umpteenth time, the Smith UCP government insists it is not forking out more dough for the first phase of the Green Line LRT, from Eau Claire in the downtown to Shepard, south of Quarry Park and Douglas Glen.
There will be no cash from the Alberta taxpayer to foot the bill for cost overruns on the first phase of the Green Line. Period. Full stop.
“There’s no more money. It finally sunk in, they finally realized it,” says Dreeshen.
Dreeshen adds the Smith government is willing to help bring LRT to the airport.
Smith’s folks also insist they want to get as much of the Green Line built within the existing budget.
“We are still working with the city to help them wake up from the Nenshi nightmare,” says the province’s mince-no-words main man on the LRT.
The Green Line LRT plan rolled out under Nenshi.
Enter Danielle Smith.
“Understand where we’re coming from,” says the premier.
Smith talks about all the students coming to Alberta, all the schools needing to be built.
Each school costs about $40 million. Green Line cost overruns will be in the billions. Do the math.
“We’ve got schools to build. We’ve got hospitals to build. We’ve got infrastructure we’re paying for,” says Smith.
“There are other demands on our provincial resources. If they want to build a line that has not been well-designed, that is going to be massively over-budget they should really do a rethink about a better way to do it.”
Why is Smith not giving Gondek and the city more dough for the Green Line?
“Here’s the why not. Why did council approve a Green Line that doesn’t cost out the tunnel? That’s the most expensive part of this, it’s the most complicated part of it.”
Instead, they’re going to go underground while asking the Smith government for more cash.
“I’m not happy,” says the premier.
Smith says the province had a problem with where the city was going. The city went ahead.
“We said: OK, if you go ahead you’re on your own. They knew that and they went ahead anyway and so now they’re coming back with another funding ask and we’re just not prepared to do that.”
Smith wants the city to “reimagine” the Green Line and “rethink that downtown piece.”
“That is the part causing the biggest problem. It’s a cost overrun. It is going to be an engineering nightmare. It’s not in sync with the rest of the way their system works. There are underground river systems and that is what they have to rethink.”
Right now, the premier would like to see the Green Line connect to the current system without a tunnel and build the line as far south as the existing money will go.
“Here’s the frustration I have with them, they sold the federal and provincial governments on a 46-kilometre project, cost-shared three ways for $4.5 billion.
“They rescoped the project. It is now more costly and they keep on asking for money.”
Smith’s tune has not changed. She does not believe the city hall cupboard is bare.
The city has surplus dollars flowing into their coffers.
“Watch what they do. They run surpluses. They put the surpluses into reserves. That’s what reserves are for, to tap into them when you have difficult situations.”
In case you were asking, Smith is also not in the business of fixing city water pipes.
People pay for the water system on their utility bill. There are also reserve funds there.
“It’s a user pay system. This is the kind of core work that should always be done. Monitoring lines, identifying areas that need to be repaired and repairing them,” says Smith.
“We can’t do something for Calgary that we’re not prepared to do for 325 other municipalities.”
Back to the Green Line.
On the weekend, Nenshi spoke out against the Smith government’s handling of the Green Line.
“Minister Dreeshen can be as childish as he wants. He may want to lower the shields,” says Nenshi.
Nenshi says Green Line cost overruns are the fault of the provincial government and people have wanted the Green Line for decades.
Dreeshen fires back.
“Nenshi has a terrible track record on planning and budgeting projects so I can see why he’s resorting to personal attacks to distract from his disastrous record.”