You Caused The Sprung Structure Fiasco: GRAY

The sprung structure dilemma was your fault.

Why? Because you don’t care. Never underestimate the ability of the Ottawa public to be overcome with galloping apathy on important municipal questions.

That apathy has allowed Ottawa City Hall to become an entity unto itself. A bubble. The guardrails of public opinion don’t keep city staff and its politicians from careening off the road. Because if the citizenry couldn’t care less, staff and pols believe they can do what they want. And then they sometimes get it wrong.

Furthermore, city staff encourages this by orchestrating public meetings and, particularly, online feedback. The problem with online meetings is that they can be tightly controlled and city staff does just that to get the answer it wants.

So even if you do care, you’re not heard. You don’t matter.

Accordingly, the motto of the Washington Post applies. Democracy dies in darkness.

City staff believes it can do whatever it wants. And it does, much to the disservice of taxpayers.

The problem is, sometimes, perhaps oftentimes, staff is wrong but because it has designed a system that allows it to do as it wants with little to no public input. That works great for Ottawa City Hall but not for the public. The citizenry gets what it is given rather than what it wants (if it wants anything at all).

Nature abhors a vacuum, so two pressure groups occupy that vacant spot. Developers, with huge amounts of money that result in development charges to the planning department and small but significant councillor campaign donations, are the biggest beneficiaries. Second is the well-organized cycling lobby that has so taken over municipal decision-making that the province had to curb its power by limiting bike lanes.

How effective are those lobbies?

Well there was a time when the development community just controlled the arterial roads and the suburbs for their building. But not now.

Everywhere is where developers can develop … not just the suburbs and arterial roads but apartments in residential neighbourhoods, destroying the delicate network of neighbours, social cohesion and help. Despite what Kitchissippi councillor and planning chairman Jeff Leiper tells you, extremification is not about saving the climate (Ottawa produces, on a global scale, a negligible amount of greenhouse gases) but big city revenue and re-election.

And as for the cycling lobby, in a climate that is about as inhospitable to cycling as anywhere in the world, it has been so effective that one wonders why cycling lanes are not mandatory on driveways.

So what does this all have to do with sprung structures? Well, the city hall feedback system is so closed that staff is accustomed to doing what it wants or being told what to do by pressure groups within its departmental echo chambers. Then council, with noversight as its operating principle, rubber stamps it and so you get light rail and Lansdowne and a monstrously over-budget and poorly located central library (central if you think walking up and down Parliament Hill from downtown is easy and convenient … Ottawa Senators take note).

Staff and politicians do what they want in the face of no or orchestrated public input and sometimes they get it wrong … dead wrong. The only time city hall buckles is in the face of the strong development and bike pressure groups.

However, not with sprung structures. The public cared about that and city hall was unaccustomed to real and unfettered concern.

So staff went about its merry way, on its own, deciding that refugees to Canada should be housed in glorified tents in January. That they should be crammed into those tents full of noise and flu bugs and utter lack of privacy. Even the public, apathetic as it is, could tell that was wrong and the tall foreheads at all-knowing city hall had made a multi-million-dollar mistake.

That resulted in a vicious and divided community as city hall tried to push through the wrong solution. Imagine in a city where downtown towers are emptying as if a fire alarm had been pushed, that tent housing for refugees was the preferred city option. Wrong, really wrong, unbelievably wrong. Were not refugees leaving tent cities to come to Canada to live in a tent city in a cold climate? Not exactly an improvement. Residents were outraged. City hall was wrong … again.

So here’s a template for getting issues solved, not easily, but easier:

• Hold a meeting and say city hall has a problem;
• Provide some alternatives … not etched in stone. Listen (no LISTEN) to some alternatives from a very smart community. Add them to the list;
• Now come up with a tentative plan and run it by the public. If the public likes it, proceed.
• If the public hates it, back to the drawing board. The key is to find a solution the public can back. If so, mission accomplished. You know, public service. But you can’t do that by dictating a solution such as happened in the sprung structure debate. That issue degraded into charges of NIMBYism and racism. Ugly. And those charges were the result of city staff not consulting the public early and getting its dictated solution incorrect. If the public is not behind a remedy, city hall got it wrong.

If city hall had gone to the people at the start of the refugee question, the sprung structure fight would never have unfolded. Tell the people that refugees need your help and we’re here asking you how to do it. Good people would have charged the stage to help. Helpful suggestions might have ensued.

It all comes down to listening and consulting. City hall has stopped doing that because of its little empire building and control-freaking. And that’s because you don’t care. So city hall does what it wants.

Stop that.

Diplomat and politician Stephen Lewis once told a National Capital Commission urban forum that if you want to know what’s best for a neighbourhood, ask the neighbourhood.

Very simple. So simple that even Ottawa City Hall could do it … if it wanted to. But probably won’t. Because it knows better than the public.

Thus upcoming, another badly handled piece of public policy.

Ken Gray is a journalist, broadcaster, educator and editor of The Bulldog.

For You:

Airport Parkway Plan Gets Added Pathway

POTHOLES: Look Back In Anger: QUOTABLE

I Will Debate Lansdowne: SARAVANAMUTOO

Night Mayor Serves Whole City: THE VOTER

How Western LRT, Richmond Road Are Progressing

Bookmark The Bulldog, click here