There are no taxpayer funded cosmetology courses that our City officials could enroll in so that they could ever cover up all the warts uncovered in the Orgaworld Audit released yesterday. The City Manager, Kent Kirkpatrick, city staff, lawyers and all fourteen Council members who have been there since 2007, when this Orgaworld mess first started should be ashamed of themselves and never be given any responsibility with regard to our tax money again!

One of the huge problems I am having with the Audit that was released is in contemplating the fact that there is missing information. The new Auditor General himself, Ken Hughes, detailed that there was an incredible lack of detail available. I feel it would have helped any “trust factor” immeasurably if Alain Lalonde, the author of the Audit, had actually been there during the unveiling of the report. Which version of the Audit did we get? Now we are left to wonder when and if any “plastic surgery” took place on any of these documents. It would have been a far more significant Audit if we had been provided complete information on the input each individual made and been provided a complete list of signatures to this contract.

Records were not kept? We pay for an Archive Building to maintain information about exactly what? Why do we pay such high salaries to these people if they do not know what they are doing?

Yesterday, we had the spectacle of our City Manager, Kent Kirkpatrick, apologizing profusely saying “it will never happen again”. Upon hearing this coming out of his mouth I felt he should be weeping with Peggy Lee’s version of the song “I’m Sorry” playing softly in the background. His words certainly ring hallow considering the wonderous contracts entered into by this Robin Hood and this merry band for the Airport Parkway, Strandherd / Armstrong Bridge and so on. Furthermore, we can only cringe in anticipation when the LRT wheels start to “fall off the rails”.

We are told that all the members of the city staff responsible for this boondoggle have gone off into the sunset to “greener pastures”. We are left to wonder what “bobbles” they were given to “lie or mislead”, as Council members are now trying to tell us. Was there something illegal going on with City officials and Orgaworld?

Why then did we wait all this time, over three years for the Arbitration process, when the truth to the numbers could have been told all along? It cost taxpayers millions of dollars so the City could force Orgaworld to take leaf and yard waste at higher costs, just so the City could play with the numbers and mislead us. By the way, the Audit was asked for by Maria McRae back in Jan 2011. Jim Watson and this entire legal team was there and they knew the truth. They have a responsibility to us for “transparency”, a term Watson often used when it suits him. We are now being led to believe that the Mayor and legal staff never talked during the last 3 years!

Finally, we come to all the Councillors that were there in 2007 and are still there now. They now all try to say that they were mislead by city staff. How disingenuous can a group of individuals be? Gord Hunter was the only Councillor at the time that voted against the contract and tried repeatedly to warn the rest of them. Obviously, they all have a problem with simple Mathematics which could have been calculated on the back of a napkin.

Therefore, in conjunction with smiling Mayor Jim, the “bobble head Councillors” decided which shade of lipstick or “diversion” to use by releasing this “pig” of an Audit yesterday. Then, they could recess for the summer and race down to the stadium for a ribbon – cutting and photo – op. These people have absolutely no integrity; they should be too ashamed to show all their warts to the taxpayers!