‘Nenshi must have drawn up the Green Line budget with a green crayon,’ says Devin Dreeshen, Premier Smith’s point man on the Green Line
A green crayon.
You know things are going to get messy when the province’s point man on the Green Line says former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi must have used a green crayon to draw up his Green Line plans.
Devin Dreeshen, the Danielle Smith government’s transportation boss, calls the Green Line LRT the Nenshi nightmare.
“If the province had a say when Nenshi was mayor you wouldn’t have a way over-promised Green Line proposal,” says Dreeshen.
“Nenshi must have drawn up the Green Line budget with a green crayon.
“There was no engineering. There was no proper planning to have a massive 46-km Green Line with that budget. It was ridiculous. More provincial oversight for municipalities would prevent Nenshi-style nightmares when it comes to big projects like this.”
Dreeshen says Nenshi “dreaming up the Green Line and saying this is what it costs to build” was “wildly out of reality.”
“That’s where the problem with the Green Line is. Now Nenshi is trying to defect blame to anybody but him.”
Unfortunately, the Calgary city council majority led by Mayor Jyoti Gondek didn’t wake us up from the bad dream.
The Green Line isn’t completely off the track but there just isn’t a whole lot of track left at all.
Cut the line any more and you’ll be able to get to your destination faster by walking.
The nightmare continues.
Dreeshen says he actually feels bad for this city council.
You might be surprised by that comment but remember Smith and the UCP face an opposition NDP now led by Nenshi.
“They were painted into a corner just because this was so horribly designed by Nenshi. That’s a sad reality.”
Dan McLean is a councillor who voted No to the Green Stub Line, a Mini-Me LRT.
McLean hates the timing of this decision to go forward getting less Green Line and more bills.
He points to city council and the Green Line Board and when they decided to give us the goods.
“They waited to the last minute of the last day before council breaks for six weeks in the middle of the dog days of summer to give out the numbers and the scope of the project.
“I would have loved to raise alarm bells earlier but I can’t say anything about what goes on behind closed doors.”
When did city council know the score, the growing price tag of the shrinking Green Line?
The answer. About a month ago.
McLean says he’s been asking questions for a very long time about rethinking how the Green Line could be done, whether it was going way over budget, whether there would be problems with tunnelling in the downtown.
The councillor was always told things were good. Then they weren’t.
His attitude now? A lesson he learned growing up.
“You don’t throw good money after bad. That’s what we’re doing.”
And all the city politicians who pushed the Green Line and voted for it, many of them won’t be around to face the music.
“It’s very easy to spend billions of taxpayer dollars when you’re pretty sure you’re not going to be here when the crap hits the fan. That’s the truth,” says McLean.
“They laid this at the feet of future taxpayers.”
So what about the $6 billion-plus for the stub of a Green Line?
“In what world would I believe in that number?” asks the councillor.
Michelle Rempel Garner is an MP representing people in north Calgary.
North of the river is now totally out of the Green Line picture.
“I don’t like to lose and I certainly don’t like it when my constituents lose and that’s exactly what’s happening here.”
The MP has been a huge backer of the Green Line but she says it’s time to “stop the bleeding.”
“I do not support giving an endless flow of tax dollars to an incompetent set of bumblers who cannot manage their way out of a paper bag.
“If they want the federal government to spend more taxpayer dollars on their incompetence they need to have a moment of sobriety.”
The MP also talks about Nenshi trying to spin his failure.
She speaks of “a decade of incompetence” he kicked off.
So what was Rempel Garner’s gut reaction when she heard about the shrinking Green Line and the expanding budget?
“This is B.S.”