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Consultant's fees top $5 millionIn July 1999, Stantec Consulting Inc issued its first invoice to the Town of New Tecumseth in the amount of $6,538 for "site surveys and modelling" for the Alliston Secondary Plan. By December 31, 2003 the private sector engineering specialists had collected $5,168,886.26 in consulting fees for 21 various projects."How do 21 projects that Stantec has done add up to $5 million in a span of two and half years, and why was none of that work tendered out?" asked Ward 4 councillor Richard Norcross. "Do you (public works director George Degroot) have any checks and balances to make sure we haven't been over-billed, triple-billed, quadrupled billed? And that what they're billing us for is fair? I just don't understand how they can get $5 million from us without us having any checks and balances in place at all." Mr. Norcross last month requested a financial report on all Stantec work commissioned by the Town. The consulting firm's main occupation in New Tecumseth has been to develop a plan to correct deficiencies plaguing the regional sewage treatment plant (which is the subject of ongoing litigation between the Town and Maple Engineering, the project's contractor) and the Tottenham sewage system. And while Stantec was performing consulting services on the sewage issues, the group was also retained on an "as needed basis" to handle the engineering aspects of other Town projects like the Alliston Industrial Secondary Plan, Appledale Subdivision in Beeton, and the development charges bylaw. Stantec Fees by Year
"We do (now) have checks and balances in place since this," said Mr. Degroot. "We do issue POs (Purchase orders); we go through resolutions with council. Mr. Degroot had been a critic of using the design and build process to construct the regional STP. His concerns proved accurate as the plant has never operated as intended. And it is the remediation and expansion of the regional STP that pushed Stantec's consulting costs $1.95 million higher than the $1.49 million purchase order limit set by council in 2001. "As a lay person, this is all very confusing," said Ward 2 councillor Dennis Egan. "It just seems we have spent an inordinate amount of money over the past number of councils to arrive at a situation where we've been told that the vehicle in the driveway in the morning doesn't start. We already know it doesn't start." Mr. Degroot said the escalating fees were because the scope of investigative work required to solidify the Town's legal position against Maple, which it accuses of cutting corners, and working from faulty technical data to stay within the $10 million funding allotted to the project from Queen's Park, was wide ranging. "We were working from a blank page," said the public works director. "We knew there was a problem because it (regional STP) wasn't meeting MOE requirements. We worked at trying to resolve the issues and correct deficiencies. As we got further into the plant, we found more and more things were wrong. If we knew then what was wrong, we would have not incurred the costs." Mr. Degroot notes in his report, that the plant design has been submitted to the Ministry of Environment and to reach that point has cost $3 million. The expenditure is an unfunded capital liability, which means the Town has been paying the bill on credit. "It is anticipated that an estimated additional $2,033,000 will be required to complete the project management and contract supervision for Stantec," writes Mr. Degroot. "When council awarded the design to Stantec, the fees only included the design of the Regional Sewage Treatment Plan and existing Beeton Pumping Station. The unfinanced capital outlay for this work is to be funded from the provincial grant (about $11 million which was to pay for a new plant) and will be budgeted in the 2004 budget." |
 
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