The Red Hill Valley Parkway inquiry has already cost $639,000, and much of that total has involved legal fees.
City council voted in March to ask a Superior Court judge to investigate how a report about poor friction levels on the parkway was hidden for several years.
The taxpayer-funded probe will include public hearings, witness testimony and findings.
Dates have not been set for those hearings, but Superior Court Justice Herman Wilton-Siegel has been appointed to head the judicial inquiry.
Ward 14 Coun. Terry Whitehead agrees that the probe will be costly, and that the dollar figure is already adding up, but he says “confidence in the decisions of this council is paramount.”
Whitehead adds that when that confidence is undermined by issues such as the Red Hill Valley Parkway, council must ensure it is doing everything openly and transparently “to reinforce and reestablish that trust.”
City council has set aside $7 million to cover the cost of the probe which involves a 2013 report that raised concerns about the pavement’s “slipperiness” and which was hidden for more than five years.