St. Catharines Mayor Walter Sendzik calls it shocking that a Niagara Region task force looking into the massive cost overruns of the Burgoyne Bridge is trying to turn the blame to his city.
Earlier this week, the task for voted unanimously in favour of an investigation of the city's forensic audit on their role in the bridge project.
Sendzik says when the city's contribution was just over 3 million to a nearly 100 million dollar project - pinning blame for problems on St. Catharines is a bit outrageous.
"It's pretty absurd what they're trying to spin it into, but the city has been coooperating all along and the city has exchanged any information that has been made available, but really it's kind of shocking that a project of this nature at the Region is now trying to be spun into making a city side to it."
Sendzik says the task force was to look at the process from start to finish on how the bridge escalated in cost and how to tighten controls.
He says it has now spun into a witchhunt which he calls embarrassing for the region.
Sendzik says it's the same councillors coming at St. Catharines that went after Pelham adding if they're looking for a smoking gun, they're not going to find one.
He also indicated that the task force has not even seen a report from Deloitte, the investigative firm in charge, and is making assumptions about missing emails.
The city's IT department has been working with Deloitte, as well as the IT department from the Region and Sendzik says his understanding is a lot of information from 2011 and 2012 has been exchanged.
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