Formula E Ticket Sales Known Immediately After Event – Auditor

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Former mayor Denis Coderre knew exactly how many tickets had been sold the day after last July’s ill-fated Formula E race, Montreal’s auditor general says in a scathing report.

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And they were not 25,000, as Coderre said two days before last November’s elections.

It wasn’t 15,000 either, as Montréal c’est électrique (MCE), the nonprofit agency that ran Formula E, reported in February.

Only 13,646 tickets were sold for the electric car race, a number that “was available and known” immediately after the event, says Michele Galipeau in her 536-page report for 2017, which was presented at city hall on Monday.

Coderre’s management “had no business case” for the event, “including a description of the project, issues, risks and overall costs,” Galipeau says.

And he could have told the public the next day that nearly 35,000 tickets were given away for the July 29-30 race rather than dodging questions for three months before finally giving the wrong number, the report suggests.

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He says the city hoped to break even with the event, with $ 22.2 million in projected costs and the same amount in projected revenue. Estimated revenue was reduced to $ 15.5 million in March 2017 and actual revenue was just $ 7 million, the auditor’s report says.

Ticket sales were expected to generate $ 4.9 million, but only $ 700,000 was raised.

The city had had $ 11.6 million in federal and provincial grants, but only received $ 3.7 million.

The event cost $ 20.6 million, less than the projected cost of $ 24.7 million, in part because attendance was lower than expected and expenses related to the viewer experience were less than the original estimate.

Mayor Valérie Plante said the report, coupled with recent criticism from the city’s inspector general, confirms she did the right thing by canceling the 2018 version of the race.

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“For us it is definitely a lesson for everyone, that is, that cities have a governance framework, which is there precisely to avoid this type of situation,” he said.

“Denis Coderre ignored this and this is the result,” he said.

Last month, Inspector General Denis Galant said in a report that Coderre’s office established MCE to circumvent the law on awarding contracts for the 2017 Formula E electric car race.

Last week, race organizer Formula E Operations Ltd. (FEO) sued Plante and the city of Montreal for damages stemming from the city’s decision to cancel the 2018 and 2019 races. PwC Canada, the company it oversees MCE bankruptcy, requests more than $ 33 million to pay MCE creditors.

The auditor’s report also addressed a host of other issues, from housing subsidies to street food.

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He says the city falls far short of its environmental goals of reducing the organic waste it dumps into landfills, plugging its leaking water system and monitoring for contaminants in the snow it clears.

For example, while the Montreal Metropolitan Community was supposed to recycle 60 percent of food waste by the end of 2015 under a five-year provincial action plan, the goal has been pushed back 10 years to 2025, it notes. The report.

Only 20 percent of organic waste was recycled in 2016, compared to just 10 percent in 2010, Galipeau says.

“To date, it is clear that we are still far from the government’s goal, despite the great efforts that are being made in this regard,” the report says.

To achieve his goal, he said the city should include apartment buildings and condominiums of nine units or more in municipal composting programs, create composting for businesses and industries, and raise public awareness of the need to divert food waste from landfills. , He says.

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Jean-François Parenteau, mayor of Verdun and member of the executive committee for citizen services and the environment, said the city must step up its efforts on organic waste.

“We have to update the model. We have to go further, ”he said.

Parenteau said the first steps would be to extend composting programs to larger apartment buildings and condominiums and have Éco-quartier offices in the districts go door-to-door to promote awareness.

Noting that water “has become one of the major global problems of the 21st century,” the auditor also criticized the city for not reducing leaks in the water system to a maximum of 20 percent, compared to the 34.7 percent that is now potentially lost to leaky pipes.

And he asked the city to improve environmental monitoring of the snow it clears and throws, which contains all kinds of debris such as abrasives, garbage, plastics and oils and other toxic substances from vehicles.

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While the city has made active transportation a priority – building 864 kilometers of bike lanes by the end of 2017 – it must do more to improve the quality of the bike network and ensure the safety of cyclists, the report says.

Street food, which was first allowed in Montreal in a pilot project in 2013 and became legal in 2015, is actually declining in some counties, Galipeau says.

Six counties had street food trucks last summer, but only three have them this year, he said.

The auditor suggested that the city simplify the process for obtaining a permit and register food trucks in its database for food inspection.

He also said the city should evaluate its housing subsidies aimed at attracting families back to the city to see if the $ 29 million in funds spent for this purpose since 2014 has achieved measurable results.

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