The City of Brampton and its staff have been absolved of wrongdoing by the Court of Appeal on the Request for Proposal (RFP) process related to the City Hall Southwest Quadrant expansion. Inzola Construction was seeking $28.5 million in damages. The court instead awarded the city $3.1M in costs against Inzola.
In July 2011, John Cutrozzola who owns Inzola Construction filed a $28.5 million lawsuit against the City Of Brampton and staff for being disqualified on the proposal process for the City Hall South West Quadrant expansion project. Cutrozzola claimed that he was unfairly disqualified in the process because of bias from City staff and some council members. Inzola previously built the main city hall building.
The city used a new “competitive dialogue” bidding process for the RFP process. This bidding process was intended to remove political influence of the design and construction. Inzola was disqualified for breaching the rules of the RFP process including his refusal to sign a required confidentiality agreement and revealing details of the process to the media. The contract to build the South West Quadrant was eventually awarded to Dominus Construction Group.
In May 2018, Ward 1&5 City Councillors Elaine Moore and Grant Gibson took the stand against the City of Brampton and testified that they believed the tendering process for the City Hall expansion was fraught with bias from former Mayor Susan Fennell and senior staff. The former councillors were critical from the beginning about the “competitive dialogue” RFP process, which was used to eliminate political influence and lobbying efforts. A last minute motion to defer the final vote on council failed and the contract was awarded to Dominus.
The lawsuit by Inzola Construction resulted in lingering questions of the integrity of city staff’s decision making and provided fodder for media to ridicule the city and former Mayor Susan Fennell.
In a statement after the Court’s decision, city representatives said “that the City’s established procurement processes are rigorous and the integrity of these processes are adhered to by staff and elected officials alike.” Mayor Patrick Brown said that “it is unfortunate that the public, and especially the people of Brampton, were mislead about the procurement process for the Southwest Quadrant based on this legal action.
