Sutcliffe Should Save Ottawans The Trouble Of Firing Him

If I were Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s old math teacher, I’d be very ashamed of myself at this point.

I’d love to know who’s advising him on this file. If any of them are city employees, they need to not only refund the pay cheques they’ve been collecting but they should be paying a penalty for wear and tear on the city spaces they’ve occupied and equipment they’ve used. Again, a high degree of shame is in order.

I’m quite confused by the point he seems to be attempting to make about the buildings the feds are vacating. He says they’re leaving 50 per cent of their current space and so should continue to pay the payments-in-lieu for those locations. Is he suggesting that if I’m a tenant in a commercial building and move out, I should continue to pay the property taxes regardless? Will his next campaign be to pursue people in that situation? If a commercial landlord sells a building, does Sutcliffe think they should continue to cover the property taxes?

Here’s a little news flash for him. When you vacate a property, whether you’re a public or private entity, the new owner or occupier takes over paying the taxes. And life moves on.

There will be people who will take Sutcliffe at his word and approach the other levels of government to do their share. I hope that when they get a response explaining how things really work, they go back to Sutcliffe and ask him to explain his incomplete telling of the story.

He’s crabbing about how the upper levels of government didn’t give us fair funding for our transit capital costs. There are trilateral agreements that the City signed, apparently willingly, agreeing to pay the residual costs of Phase 1 LRT after each of the other partners put in $600 million. They paid what you (the city) agreed to and now you’re crying foul? Take it up with your council predecessors who seem to have thought it was a fair deal. Call ex-mayor Jim Watson and get him to explain how that all went down.

You aren’t doing yourself any favours with this ridiculous campaign but, while you’re on this tack, maybe in the interests of full disclosure, you could fill us in on the legal settlements you’re working on for the LRT. You can’t ask me to go to bat for you unless you’re going to provide me with all the details of the transit black hole.

Have you agreed to settlements that the city doesn’t have money to pay for? If you believe that the feds and the province have some responsibility to cover some part of these settlements, were they at the table when the negotiations took place? If not, why not?

I hope you’re starting to put out feelers regarding employment options for yourself for when your term as mayor is over. I expect you will need to find other opportunities and your performance to date won’t speak well to many positive letters of reference being provided for you. In fact, it might not be a bad thing if you gave some consideration to resigning now before things get much worse. We can’t afford much more of this.

The Voter is a respected community activist and long-time Bulldog commenter who prefers to keep her identity private.

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