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2006 Budget FalloutIn late winter I mailed information to the entire ward with a calendar of events and an article describing in general terms why I voted against the 2006 City Budget. In addition to the householder, I’d like to elaborate on implications of the budget that are focused on the Riverside Drive area. As I mentioned in the mailing, the 2006 budget commits us to big expenditures to widen roads beyond the financial capacity of the city. In three years time we will have depleted our reserves and will be running a large deficit as a result. Are these road widenings essential? The roads already exist. The extra cars that the widenings are supposed to carry haven’t moved into the suburbs yet. Could the people moving into those new developments benefit from a better choice than having every family member drive everywhere for everything? The 2006 budget sets us on a course that is not financially and not environmentally sustainable. The real cost will come to roost within three years. But how exactly does the 2006 budget relate to Riverside Drive area? Riverside Drive is getting some essential things in this budget: $1.2 million in sewer improvements to reduce the risk of backup in the San Remo and Corsica area. Considering how much taxes are going up in the downtown neighbourhoods this shows how little of the money is returning to where it is collected. Think about $1.2 million in the context of the city spending $245 million on new roads in the next 3 years. It isn’t that we don’t have other needs. Traffic on Riverside Drive needs to be safer and measures to improve safety would be a better investment than spending money to make it worse. A homeowner taking out a mortgage to put an addition on his/her house instead of fixing a leaky roof would be seen as irresponsible. That’s what this 2006 budget is doing: committing us to spend more money than we will have in our coffers for new things while refusing to put smaller sums of money aside to adequately fix things in established neighbourhoods. The other neighbourhoods in Capital Ward received the same treatment: a few good things but a longer list of needs not yet funded. Add to that, the net negative impact on the environment and in simplest terms: the budget does more harm than good. I introduced motions to scale back our new road building in 2006 by roughly half and to redirect a small fraction of those savings back to our neighbourhoods. Even though Ottawa spends a lot more per capita on roads than the average of Ontario cities, most of Council wasn’t prepared to correct this imbalance. It was a real irony to see so many of my colleagues who claim to be fiscal conservatives voting to protect Ottawa’s largest elective expenses. The financial crisis our new road expenditures is creating is the reason I recently suggested a small road usage fee on morning commuters crossing the bridges across the Rideau River in Capital Ward headed for downtown as well as the suggestion that the City sell surplus water in bottled form to generate revenue. These suggestions wouldn’t completely fix the imbalance but they’ve helped advance awareness about the gravity of our financial situation and to think about possible solutions to our financial crisis. I welcome feedback and other suggestions on this and other concerns so please don't hesitate to contact my office or visit with me at coffee with Clive, at the Second Cup corner of Bank and Sunnyside in Old Ottawa South on the first Friday of every month at 10 a.m.. Best Regards, Clive
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