19 Jun Was HRM’s Commonwealth Games bid really doomed to cost overruns?

Peter Spurway was for a time a member of the committee promoting HRM’s aborted Commonwealth Games bid. He faults the logic underlying Jon Stone’s relief, featured here Tuesday, that we dropped that bid (a sentiment I endorsed):

So, Glasgow didn’t manage their CWG budget very well, and therefore we wouldn’t have, either.

What has irked me through this whole thing was the natural assumption that Canada/Halifax wasn’t capable of managing within a budget. Then again, based on the mountain of evidence as to the experiences elsewhere (Olympics, World Cup, etc.), my belief may be misguided.

Tim Bousquet thinks Stone understated the case against HRM’s bid. He points to an article he wrote back in 2007, citing reports by consultants Bobby McMahon and Price Waterhouse Coopers questioning cost estimates by the bid committee and warning, in McMahon’s words, the tab “could be in the $1.6 billion to $2 billion range.”

Bousquet was the Coast’s news editor at the time. This week he launched The Halifax Examiner, my thoughts on which you can find here.