Lesson learned: Never give Hamilton City Council a deadline

Update: Moments after posting this, The Hamilton Spectator reacted by publishing that they’ve been told there is now a deadline of August 30. I’m only slightly annoyed that days of dogged reporting is for nothing. The post below remains on my site, despite the sudden change from information given yesterday.

The Toronto 2015 Pan American Games organizing committee learned a valuable lesson from last year’s Pan Am stadium fiasco in Hamilton – NEVER give Hamilton City Council a deadline.

The proposed velodrome in Hamilton was scheduled to begin the “Request for Proposals” stage at the end of this week.

However, Hamilton City Council has not yet debated a site or the cost of the velodrome. There is no timeline for this debate to occur. Council’s August agenda is not public for another two weeks. If the velodrome is not on this agenda, the debate will have to wait for September.

I contacted Toronto 2015 on July 15 enquiring if the RFP’s would be issued this week.

“The date mentioned below [July 28] was a proposed date and we are still on schedule with this project,” replied Toronto 2015 communications advisory Carlene Siopis.

I emailed again yesterday. The response: “We are working with Infrastructure Ontario and the city of Hamilton on the velodrome project to bring it to closure as quickly as possible and deliver the desired outcome.”

Smart communications by Toronto 2015 – they learned.