Our Self-Absorbed City Council: BENN

Is this the most selfish Ottawa city council ever?

Hard to tell, because ‘most’ is a very big word and ‘ever’ is a very long word. Hyperbole aside, there is no doubt that this Ottawa City Council has established a track record of acting selfishly.

Do councillors put enough effort into addressing the multitude of problems the city faces? Problems like balancing the budget? Or ensuring that core services like public transit are operating effectively and efficiently? Or does council distract itself and the public with flashes of light and puffs of smoke. With feel good initiatives, with little in the way of tangible results.

Back a council ago, then Barrhaven Councillor Jan Harder expressed her shock that Barrhaven residents faced an hour-and-a-half commute. A council term later those look like the good old days. Now a commute of two hours is not atypical.  What happened in the intervening four or so years? A new council that decided that funding public transit properly would result in a higher-than-politically-palatable tax-rate increase. Politically unpalatable is not something that councillors thinking about their re-election prospects are prepared to consider.

The starting point for the debacle that was the Sprung Structure Welcoming Centre program was council voting overwhelmingly in favour of delegating authority to staff. No council oversight on a $100 million or more project. Why? According to Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, it was to avoid the decision from being political. Put more clearly, it allowed councillors to say that they were not part of the decision. To avoid a politically unpalatable situation from arising.

Why have city staff, a decision supported by council, refused to set target dates for the completion of Stage 2 of the LRT Confederation Line? Is it because neither staff nor council want to have to explain why another target was missed? Do they really think that being embarrassed for a lack of accountability is less palatable than not being willing to properly manage a multi-billion dollar project?

A project plan without targets is a recipe for allowing the work to expand to cover the time available. The never-ending work along the roads that are impacted by western leg of the Stage LRT project have created major inconveniences, not just for the residents, but for the employers and their staff. This is clearly of no concern to council. Why? Because if council cared, they would insist on a faster work schedule.

Rather than focus on addressing critical issues, council spends its time on politically palatable decisions.

Council decided to spend $1-billion on an electric bus fleet. Was council concerned that the due diligence was not complete? No. Was council concerned that the project includes natural-gas fired generators to produce the electricity that cannot be delivered by Hydro Ottawa? No. But councillors couldn’t help stumbling over each other to tell the residents of the city how this was a major step towards meeting our climate change targets.

Rather than focus on improving the delivery of pressing municipal services, council passed an amendment to the idling bylaw to make progress on its climate-change targets. It did this while exempting virtually all city vehicles, including OC Transpo diesel buses that are parked while the driver takes a much-needed break continue to idle.

Council has failed to adequately address the impact on the public of an ineffective public transit system. Council ignores the impact of having no target to complete LRT construction. Council has allowed the congestion on city roads to become an almost insurmountable problem. The greenhouse gases emitted by vehicles sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic far exceeds any theoretical gains from the not-enforced idling bylaw, or the possible future gains once the electric bus fleet is deployed is willfully ignored by council. Why? Because councillors are afraid to be held accountable.

Why do councillors continually ignore the most pressing issues while focusing on politically correct tweaks? Why do councillors delegate authority to staff on a frequent basis? Why don’t councillors take staff to task for poorly prepared analyses and reports, such as the much discredited Lansdowne 2.0? Because councillors are too focused on themselves. They don’t want to be held accountable. They don’t want to make the tough decisions. Decisions like property-tax rate-increases that will properly fund public transit. Decisions like which non-core programs need to be curtailed. Decisions like taking into account the cost of congestion.

All of the above, and then some, are examples of a council that thinks about themselves first. And that is why they are selfish.

Ron Benn, a finance executive, has been a member of the Centrepointe Community Association for the better part of three decades.

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