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Ottawa has the worst city political administration in the country. But it’s important to remember it wasn’t always so. We used to have one of the best. We were out front with an award winning, pilot light rail project and had a deal inked for a comprehensive Barrhaven to the University of Ottawa rail line at half the price of comparable projects in Vancouver and Seattle. We’re now saddled with a 267 million dollar lawsuit for breaking the contract, the only city in the country to be so blessed. And we’re moving backward with a non-existent public transit plan for the future. We’re back to ideas only. We’ve got a Mayor’s task force, staff reports, public and media opinions all running in every direction. All of the ‘ideas’ that are presently exercising the media mind were on the table six years ago. We discussed the ‘tunnel’ option. We discussed the conversion of the transitway to rail. We discussed links to airport etc. etc. Now, we’re going to discuss them all over again and some time in the distant future the same tough questions will have to be answered. Is it worth spending several billion dollars ‘to replace the transitway, which will not add a metre of ‘new’ transit service? This is what we will do if we go with the transitway conversion and tunnel option. The previous, `Do Not Pass Go’ answer was no. It wasn’t worth it. Better to spend less money and immediately to add a new service which would relieve our north-south road congestion and also reduce east-west congestion by draining off the traffic that hits the 417 from the south while the more complex and contentious east-west route was resolved. But I digress. The failure of Ottawa on the transit front is just a symptom of a larger problem. The provincial amalgamation is not working. Ottawa has two city councils. One that represents the outside the greenbelt interests and one that represents the inside the greenbelt interests. That’s the elephant in the room that no one wants to admit exists. Without a Mayor — yes like Bob Chiarelli who worked tirelessly to connect the two divergent halves of the city — the city has simply gone into full-on stagnation. No city councillor or group has been able to overcome this division. We need to find a way to do this or we need to de-amalgamate. We’ve seen this with the snow budget this year. The City of Ottawa acted like a township stealing from provincial infrastructure funds to reduce taxes by ten dollars a year per household. Ottawa was the only city in Ontario to do this. Presumably other cities also had snow. City councillors like myself have spent a great deal of time making the case with marches on Parliament Hill in support of the One Cent Now! Campaign, in our newsletters, in meetings with provincial and federal officials, that cities need either to share in the GST/PST growth revenues or be provided with sustained funding for roads, transit and affordable housing. Council’s decision to move 4.7 million dollars of city funding out of infrastructure and into snow clearance and then replace it with 4.7 of provincial funding is a slight of hand that fools no one who has one eye open. It damages the city’s credibility. How can you argue that we have a crisis in infrastructure funding when Council decides its more important to save constituents $10 than repair roads, bridges, stadiums and recreation centres? The coverage in the media is ‘Leave it to Beaver’ reporting i.e. be ‘more efficient’ and ‘get rid of the fat’. Ottawa will not be a better place if it sells off Lansdowne Park or fires 200 city workers or sells off pieces of Hydro Ottawa. It won’t. It will be worse because these things will reduce the quality of life for all Ottawans, reduce long term revenues, and won’t solve any of our budget problems.They are all destructive band aids; another version of scampering off with the province’s 4.7 million dollars. The government of your city should be preparing for a time of contraction, not expansion. The limits to growth predictions made by the Club of Rome 35 years ago are coming true. All cities are experiencing the same financial strangle because their servicing costs are increasing faster than the tax revenues growth brings. Witness the effect on this year’s budget of increasing diesel fuel costs. You think it’s tough at the pump for your car? Try filling up a 1,000 bus tanks and hundreds of police, fire and ambulance vehicles every morning. Witness the effect on snow removal of the costs of rock salt and machine rental. The only way to address this is by building much lower cost urban environments and getting a fairer share of the taxes people pay. It means electric public transit, not more roads. It means densification but not uglification. It means you have to create urban landscapes that cost less to run because people who walk require fractional support compared to those that drive. We’re seeing none of this in the city of Ottawa. Instead we’re seeing destructive cries to privatize Lansdowne Park. What is the matter with this city? Even in the height of the Great Depression, the City of New York never contemplated selling off Central Park. Why can’t we get a media which has the guts to take on ‘politics and business as usual’? And go after the root causes of our financial problems because until we do, each budget year will be exactly the same as the last, only the band aids will change – until there are none left. Then we will be forced to change but it will be immensely more difficult because the resources that could have helped us to do it will have been exhausted applying the bandaids.
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