Bell: Game on! Farkas vows big change at Calgary city hall after water pipe explosion

Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas knows the political heat is much higher than the temperature on the thermometer.

Political types at Calgary city hall are already talking quietly and off the record about a possible shake-up downtown, perhaps starting with city hall No. 1 paper-shuffler David Duckworth.

Farkas won’t wade into those waters. At least not yet.

But the mayor does make clear to this scribbler this water pipe fiasco isn’t just about the pipe explosion this week or the water pipe mess in the summer of 2024.

The sad saga of Calgary’s ever-lousier water pipe system Farkas himself calls a ticking time bomb has a history going back years and it sure looks like there was a dereliction of duty while politicians and highly-paid city hall bigwigs were supposed to be watching out for us.

There are questions.

“How the city of Calgary is run? How this was allowed to happen, right? To only talk about the pipes is missing half. It’s pipes and people,” says Farkas.

“We are going to be seeking accountability for the decisions that were made.”

Please explain, Mr. Mayor. He speaks of the state of affairs at city hall.

“The culture has got to change,” says Farkas.

“Calgarians can’t afford leadership at the elected level or the unelected level that continues to pass the buck.”

Speak on.

“The buck stops with us, here and now.”

Here and now is the next few days. The political yarn is moving faster than the pipe repairs and they are expected to be done in two weeks.

Follow this bouncing ball.

A committee of city council headed up by Farkas meets Jan. 13.

There is an outside panel doing a probe into how Calgary got into the water pipe mess it now finds itself.

The panel will be at the Jan. 13 gabfest. The head of the panel will be there.

City council members will be able to ask questions.

When the agenda of the meeting comes out on Jan. 6 the panel’s report would likely be an agenda item but could be marked confidential because councillors may want to see the report before it is made public.

So says the mayor.

The bottom line.

“The drop-dead deadline? This report will be provided to the public by Jan. 13, at the latest.”

Farkas says he made it “extremely crystal clear” to the panel boss there was an expectation their report be made public asap.

As soon as possible.

“He indicated to me it wasn’t done yet. It needed just a couple more days of finishing touches, checking facts and what not.

“I accepted that on the condition he had at most a week to finalize this report.”

Farkas also said Duckworth, the city hall boss bureaucrat, has been getting updates on the panel’s work but does not have the panel’s final report because that report is not quite complete.

The mayor says he assumes the report will tell us “what went wrong, who was responsible and how are we going to fix it.”

Farkas says the problem with the water pipes was clear years ago.

Six years ago, Farkas says, when he was a councillor, he and fellow member of city council Druh Farrell brought up the issue of water pipes.

Farkas says the “unusual pairing” of himself and Farrell shows the water pipe issue was huge and is huge and cuts across political lines.

The mayor adds what is happening now “should not have come as a surprise to anybody.”

So who were the people who knew about the pipe issue, when did they know it and why did they do nothing?

Duckworth has been in charge at the city for more than six years and was promoted after being in charge of utilities … er … like water.

And Naheed Nenshi, the mayor of the day, thought Duckworth was a rock star.

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For now, Farkas says he will wait to see the panel’s report.

Meanwhile, Coun. Dan McLean admits he gave city hall brass the benefit of the doubt in the massive water pipe break of 2024.

Now, as the political temperature around this issue goes up, the words “taking responsibility” are getting thrown around.

McLean figures talk really is cheap.

“If you say you’re going to take responsibility, who is going to finally take responsibility?”

Book your ringside seat.

rbell@postmedia.com