Article content continued

Photo by Postmedia / Postmedia

“Fundamentally, this will be a political decision: there are councillors who have expressed very specifically that they’re not interested in the city hosting a Games, there are councillors who’ve said they’re very interested in that and then there’s the broad council in-between who I think are looking to see this host plan before they make a final decision.”

Compounding the already truncated timelines on the Olympic file was the news Tuesday that the province and city have struck a time-sensitive agreement for funding to cover the $2-million cost of holding a plebiscite.

City solicitor Glenda Cole told council’s Olympic committee that funding for the plebiscite is contingent upon the city conducting a minimum of 30 days of public engagement, “with facts,” ahead of the Nov. 13 vote.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi told committee members Tuesday that he was “extremely concerned” about the risk posed by delays in the finalizing of an agreement to fund the Games.

“Council has an expectation here that we’re going into a vote of the electors with the numbers, and I don’t know how we can go to the public and ask them to endorse us if they don’t understand what the numbers are.

“The ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ sides need some facts on which to run their campaigns or we’ll end up with a campaign based on no facts whatsoever.”

A request for proposals for a consultant to conduct the city’s public engagement is expected to close Aug. 27. The city says it hopes to select a consultant shortly after and that a “thorough, robust and balanced” public engagement could begin in September and carry on throughout October.

Tuesday’s meeting also saw the new CEO of Calgary 2026, Mary Moran, introduced to the city’s Olympic committee.

Moran told committee members that “significant progress” was made last week in negotiations with the other orders of government.