Functional, Ethical City Government Ends: QUOTABLE

“I am increasingly concerned that we aren’t having a real conversation at the City of Ottawa about what things cost.”

College Councillor Laine Johnson

You mean there’s a conversation? About anything?

Where are these conversations being held? Why wasn’t your agent invited (actually I might already know the reason for that one)?

Does this mean there are real conversations occurring?

Johnson is right. Very few real conversations occur at Ottawa City Hall.

No real conversation is occurring on Lansdowne. The second version of this made-for-developers project is likely to have the same stunning results as the first failure. In fact, what the city is doing at Lansdowne is practising failure. The city and Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group created a product, took to market, tried to sell it, it didn’t sell and so let’s build more project that didn’t sell.

How could this not work out? Who’s making money out of this? The taxpayers of Ottawa? Don’t think so.

Acres of people have shown up at various venues to tell us that Lansdowne doesn’t work … a rather one-way conversation. Anyone looking at this project … anyone … can tell we’re building an amazing flop. But it’s going forward, like a freight train, conversation be damned. The budget has a hole the size of the aforementioned freight train yet the city is breaking the bank constructing a luxury stadium without a roof. Renovate the kitchen as the foundation is about to collapse. There’s no accounting for stupid.

And top planning honcho Jeff Leiper? Well he maintains there’s an off-ramp to the second coming of Lansdowne. The off-ramp is to build-it land. This is a done deal. A friend asked me a couple of years ago if he should join the people fighting Lansdowne. My answer? No. This fix is in. It has blood on it. Don’t waste your time. You won’t win.

The only off-ramp at Lansdowne is Leiper into comfortable retirement.

Yes, real conversations. You mean the one about sprung structures? No consultation, sole-sourced, probably the wrong decision, dictated by staff, genuine debate squelched, mistakes carelessly not covered up very well, and council goes along with it as an after-thought having just discussed Shawarmatown, snow-plow-naming and how the City of Ottawa will single-handedly take on Nazi-saluting Elon Musk over X. The triumph of cheap press over real governance. Getting re-elected rather than making the city better. Easy over hard. Self-interest over real interest. On the subject of those potholes …

Real conversations? The province must step in to save the transit system because the City of Ottawa, through incompetence, sleeze and arrogance, has, all by itself, destroyed transportation in his community. Two years into a promise to fix light rail and no fix and no fix in the apparent future. What was that root cause of the train’s failure again? Pathetic.

And there are dolts in this city who are decrying the loss of city control over transit. How could the city have done a worse job and you want the municipality to retain the reins at careening OC Transpo? Get a grip. Let’s put a cat at the wheel of a car and drive through downtown to see how it fares. We find the cat missed a couple of buildings. So let’s send it out again. The city destroys transportation but let’s make sure it does it again by retaining control of transit.

Look, real conversation has not happened with the city since Bob Chiarelli was mayor. The rest has been governance by dictation. Maybe this is the way the city was getting us ready for Donald Trump 2.0.

So real conversation? Maybe we could substitute the word dictation for conversation. Let’s see. New central library costs. Lansdowne. empire-building, transit, infrastructure, potholes, useless idling bylaws … we could go on.

There hasn’t been real conversation in Ottawa for decades and Johnson just noticed. And don’t blame Johnson. She’s not responsible for the biggest destruction at city hall, the corruption of democracy. She’s just noticing the tip of a culture of non-functional government that has developed and will take generations to end, if at all.

Ken Gray 

The allegory of transit in Ottawa.

For You:

City Council, Staff Just Pathetic: BENN

Do Your Job, Councillors: PATTON

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