Dominating the municipal news cycle in Greater Sudbury in 2021 has been the Kingsway Entertainment District, which took several steps forward and one significant step back.
The step back was Gateway Casinos postponing site preparation work that was scheduled to commence by Nov. 29.
In emailed correspondence to the city by Gateway Casinos executive vice president development and construction Jagtar Nijjar leaked to Sudbury.com, he wrote it was “not commercially reasonable” for the company to provide significant funding to the next phase of the project at this time.
At issue, he said, is the legal challenge by the Minnow Lake Restoration Group and an ongoing investigation by the OPP of a claim Ward 3 Coun. Gerry Montpellier made in a Facebook post on Sept. 4 that indicated he was “offered a financial conflict of interest” to support The Kingsway location for a new municipal arena in 2017.
The previous year capped on a positive note for KED proponents, with the Local Planning Appeals Tribunal dismissing all appeals related to the project on Dec. 23, 2020.
During the first city council meeting of the year held Jan. 12, Mayor Brian Bigger called for a special meeting on major projects so that council had the correct information before taking any steps forward.
During this special meeting, Ward 2 Coun. Michael Vagnini made one final push for city council to reconsider a previous vote and request an evaluation of the Project Now proposal, which would have seen the Sudbury Community Arena renovated instead of moving forward with the KED. Bigger assured Vagnini at the time that the requested information about Project Now would be included in the updated PricewaterhouseCoopers report to be presented in the second quarter of the year, but it was not.
The updated report finalized in June indicated that the KED would offer the most benefits at a lower cost compared to a modernized Sudbury Community Arena as per the city’s plan and not the Project Now proposal.
Downtown Sudbury dismissed the report as predetermined to favour the KED, and city council OK’d the next step in the project’s development in July. The motion of council allowed city staff to work toward things such as a site preparation contract, to confirm venue operations and the final budget based on the final design build.
Shortly thereafter, an anti-KED petition was drafted, which was finally presented to city council in December.
Montpellier’s allegation of attempted bribery arose in September, the same month city council greenlit site preparation work to commence by Nov. 29.
The process to select a third-party manager for the KED began in November and Gateway Casinos pulled out of the project by the month’s end.
December found Genesis Hospitality come on board as the hotel partner, pledging to build, own and operate a hotel at the KED site, and the year capped by city council narrowly passing a motion to have the city clarify that there is no legally binding build agreement among the project’s partners. The motion, presented by Montpellier, aimed to clarify an ongoing claim of Ward 5 Coun. Robert Kirwan to the contrary.
Sudbury.com closed the year’s KED coverage with a story that strived to clear up some of the misinformation swirling about in relation to the project, mainly on social media.
Looking forward to 2022, it remains unclear when Gateway Casinos might push forward alongside the project’s partners with site preparation work, however the court case isn’t expected to be heard until April.
Tackling a difficult budget
Any municipal budget season will be accompanied by statements about how difficult and tight it will be, but there was something unique about the City of Greater Sudbury’s 2022 deliberations.
Budget talks were preempted by an increasing awareness of the city’s infrastructure deficit, mainly via a report that clarified they’d have to spend another $100 million per year in order to maintain city assets in their current state.
Alongside this and COVID-related uncertainties was the city’s ballooning debt and city reserves lagging far behind the average for Ontario municipalities.
City council pushed for a three-per-cent tax increase, which Bigger reaffirmed before deliberations commenced, admitting that it would be a challenge.
The city ended up settling on a tax increase of 3.1 per cent despite making several additions. They achieved this by taking what Bigger referred to as a “measured risk” in removing $1.1 million from the budget and banking on the province footing the bill for a supervised consumption site.
That said, with the project receiving council’s approval and construction underway, the project is still expected to open in March. In the event funding doesn’t come forward, a report will come to council with suggestions of where to find the money.
Although early comments of some city council members pointing to the approval of business cases being unlikely given the tight budget situation, most ended up passing.
Among the 2022 budget highlights included:
- A water/wastewater rate increase of 4.8 per cent
- Unanimous approval for a transitional housing complex for the chronically homeless
- Approval of the Valley East Twin Pad Multipurpose Sports Complex, pending $20 million in funding from senior levels of government
The city’s 2022 property tax policy is expected to be finalized sometime in May.
Council behaving badly
Not all of the city’s elected officials weren’t always on the best behaviour in 2022, with councillors behaving badly becoming a running theme in the year.
The matter that gained the most attention this year was of Ward 5 Coun. Robert Kirwan’s connection to a fake Facebook account that gave the false impression of public support.
The account, under the moniker “Jessie Timmons,” has supported Kirwan’s stances on the Valley East Facebook page, which he moderates with his wife, Valerie.
Although Kirwan has denied that he ever used the account, city integrity commissioner Robert Swayze concluded that Kirwan was aware of the posts as an administrator of the page and therefore “colluded with his wife” to contravene the city’s code of conduct.
City council voted in favour of reprimanding him for the breach.
This wasn’t the only time Kirwan’s online behaviour drew public ire.
In September, he was criticized for politicizing a local tragedy to prove a point.
Using a “Robert and Valerie Kirwan” account, he shared a Sudbury Star story titled “‘Revenge fantasy’ led to Sudbury teen’s killing,” on the Valley East page.
The story, published Sept. 16, centred on the sentencing of Steffin Rees for the 2019 killing of Preston Pellerin. As Sudbury.com reported, Rees was sentenced to 15 years with no chance of parole for 7.5 years after pleading guilty to manslaughter in Pellerin’s death.
Accompanying the Kirwan couple’s post linking the story was a message that began, “This is what can happen when people get into angry exchanges on Facebook or any other form of social media. It is why we are so strict in enforcing our group st…”
With that, the screenshot of the now-deleted post was cut off.
In response to Robert and Valerie Kirwan’s original post, a screenshot of a post by Pellerin’s mother, Courtney, notes, “My sons murder had nothing to do with Facebook messages.”
This resulted in a December vote of city council to have city administration pursue a social media policy for the city’s elected officials.
Kirwan has also been part of the misinformation that has clouded the Kingsway Entertainment District, repeatedly insisting there is a legally binding build commitment among the project’s partners to see their projects through to completion.
Kirwan said he believes this commitment is in the cost-sharing agreement, but city administration has clarified this agreement only applies to initial site preparation work.
In December, city council narrowly passed a motion to have the city inform the public that there is, in fact, no build agreement.
On KED-related misinformation, Ward 11 Coun. Bill Leduc stated in December that the Genesis Hospitality-led hotel will be the “largest hotel in Sudbury,” but company executive president Kevin Swark clarified that they’ve yet to settle on various things, including hotel brand and room count.
Ward 3 Coun. Gerry Montpellier also ran afoul of the city’s integrity commissioner, with city council voting to reprimand him in July for what Swayze referred to as his “diatribes.”
“He’s obviously going to keep it up, and the only way to stop him is to fine him,” Swayze told council at the time.
Swayze’s office had received an anonymous complaint on May 19 about comments Montpellier made in a newspaper article in which he accused fire management staff as having a “condescending nature” and “endorsing warfare,” also saying fire management staff treat volunteer firefighters as “third-class citizens.”
Earlier in the year, Montpellier was reprimanded for an incident stemming from a Dec. 21, 2020, city council meeting where city CAO Ed Archer called Montpellier’s behaviour “boorish” in a typed message to another city staffer, which was inadvertently made visible to anyone watching the livestream. While Swayze recognized Archer’s comments, he maintained that Montpellier subsequently strived to injure the CAO’s professional reputation.
In recent comments to Sudbury.com, Ward 7 Coun. Mike Jakubo cited the incohesive nature of city council as a mitigating factor in his decision to not seek re-election, behind family concerns.
“Our new council started out on a reasonable track, but increasingly has been drawn into personal attacks and outbursts at meetings, attacks in the media and it has slowed the decision-making process most of the time,” he said, adding that it’s a “minor miracle” they got through this year’s budget deliberations in five meetings.
Jakubo also criticized some members of council for neglecting to do their homework prior to meetings, including reading reports and connecting with city administrators for additional information.
During budget talks on Dec. 1, Jakubo reached a breaking point as elected officials talked and argued over one another, all the while ignoring his pleas for decorum. Jakubo asked that all microphones be muted, after which he called an immediate five-minute recess.
During a Nov. 8 special city council meeting, meeting chair and Ward 8 Coun. Al Sizer interrupted a heated debate, declaring “This is a friggin circus. Relax, people.”
Meanwhile, city council meetings routinely time out at the three-hour mark before the day’s agenda is completed, with lengthy discussions eating up the bulk of their time.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.