City Election: Denley Serves Up A Non-Whopped Whopper

The Citizen’s Randall Denley has gone where no journalist has gone before. Denley has created the first non-whopper whopper.

Denley, who has covered Ottawa civic politics so long he was on a first-name basis with then-mayor Charlotte Whitton in the 1950s, was able to write a column handicapping the mayoral race without mentioning the woes of the biggest municipal project in Ottawa history … the $8.3-billion north-south and east-west light-rail project.

Thus the non-whopper whopper.

You can’t whop that which is non-whopped.

Now there’s a reason for this. Denley obviously supports Mayor Mark Sutcliffe for a second term in an election about a year away and light rail is Sutcliffe’s biggest problem. The mayor promised a fix but … no fix. In fact, staff cannot even provide a root cause for the first derailment in 2019 because it either doesn’t know or doesn’t want to say. Your corner mechanic could do better.

Six years and Denley is playing Sgt. Schultz. “I see nothing … nothing.”

But that’s not all. Denley praises Sutcliffe for his astute budgeting. And it is astute if you neglect to mention the $37-million hole in the middle of it. Now federal and provincial governments can play with that kind of problem but municipalities are not allowed to do that. So says the province. But that’s astute budgeting for Randy In Denleyland.

Furthermore, how do the Citizen editors let that column go? That’s a yarn so light it’s a surprise it sticks to the page. Two giant holes in the column you could drive a commuter train through … as long as an axle doesn’t break and miss the hole altogether.

And so it goes.

Oh there are other things missing. AWOL is the wildly over-budget new central library which is bricks and mortar in the days of the internet. Obsolete when it was in the first planning stages (but it looks nice). There was the campaign to get more federal money that didn’t get more money. There was the mayor jumping on board a provincial plan to give Ottawa’s LRT to Metrolinx but Metrolinx failed to show. There are roads that look like a relief map of Utah. Potholes upon potholes and if that’s not enough potholes, you pay for a speed hump on it. Apparently not humpy enough. Your agent hit a pothole so deep on Richmond Road that the car bottomed out.

And here’s a gem.

“Lansdowne opponents pretend that the city’s plan to repair critical assets that it owns is really nothing more than a giveaway to sports magnates. It’s a tough argument to make, if you stick to the facts.”

What facts are we sticking to here?

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Leiper Campaign Speech No. 1? POTTER

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A critical asset is a $500-million arena and stadium that doesn’t need to be replaced but is being replaced with a sole-sourced stadium that lacks the current stadium roof and an arena that’s half the size of the present one. All this for a football team you couldn’t barter at a scratch-and-dent sale and a junior hockey team in a league that’s losing its best players to the NCAA because the colleges pay real money. Facts are so flexible.

And then there’s $11 billion of infrastructure that needs to get done but won’t. Still, we have Lansdowne.

Oh yes, and the butchered bus system. A New Way To Wait.

What an election. A faulty mayor and the choice of Kitchissippi Councillor Jeff Leiper who, amazingly, might be a worse option.

A train-wreck of a vote in a burgh that knows its train-wrecks.

This election should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a light rail.

Ken Gray is an award-winning journalist who worked at five major Canadian newspapers. He is an educator, broadcaster and at present is the editor and founder of the 16-year-old pioneering internet publication, The Bulldog.

Sgt. Schultz in action.

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