CITY FISCAL CRISIS: Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Here is a litany of Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s mistakes concerning taking on the provincial and federal governments over a real or imagined massive shortfall in municipal finances.

There are so many we’re using point form here:

– Blaming the federal and provincial governments publicly for the city’s financial problems is really bad practical politics. This is a strategy former mayor Jim Watson used to deflect fault from his own big spending mistakes onto the senior levels of government. That, in the short term, might be effective. Long-term, less so. Watson was all over Ontario Premier Doug Ford like a bad smell concerning business closings during Covid. Ford didn’t like that. He called the provincial LRT inquiry that destroyed Watson’s political career. Ford eats his enemies. Sutcliffe was building a bromance with Ford. Wonder how Ford feels today?

– As for the feds, you can make an argument that the province ignores Ottawa. But that is balanced by the federal government being hyper-active in building a capital. We take the announcement of a new museum in Ottawa like it’s just another day in the park. Come from cities such as Regina and Winnipeg and you are overwhelmed by the amount of discretionary spending in Ottawa. Ottawa looks like a theme park compared to Regina or Winnipeg.

– The city government has a long history of lying, lying by omission and covering up. So what’s going on here? Does Ottawa have a financial crisis or not? Is Sutcliffe setting the stage for big-money tax increases in Ottawa services due to local mismanagement? Is he looking for an excuse or a deflection from the city’s incompetence using the province and federal government? The biggest shortage on Laurier Avenue is trust. You don’t get that back easily. Usually, you don’t get that back at all.

– Why is Sutcliffe asking for a call to arms by the Ottawa public to pressure the senior levels of government? In August? Sutcliffe couldn’t draw a crowd this time of year if he gave away municipally financed free Bud Light on city hall’s front porch.

– Politically, it makes sense to release bad news in the dog days of summer. But call for Ottawa to rise up against the imagined oppressors at Queen’s Park and Parliament Hill this time of year won’t even get residents off the innertube at  the lake.

–  Do Ottawans trust that the city government is telling the truth about a financial crisis? Probably not after the LRT inquiry. Trust, trust, trust. The biggest city problem. Ottawans would be wise to be skeptical when dealing with Laurier Avenue. City hall looks like it works for itself, not the people of Ottawa. You don’t want to tell citizens about possibly hundreds of millions of dollars of legal settlements with unnamed organizations in the LRT debacle? You want the people to support the city in a real or imagined fight with the feds and province? No way. The settlement cover-up doesn’t benefit residents. It benefits the people who created this multi-billion-dollar fiasco. City hall is working for itself … not the people it should be helping. No open government? No support.

– The municipal government throws around financial-crisis figures with the care of hogs in a barnyard mud puddle. Let’s see. OC Transpo is losing $1 million a month. Then it’s losing $160 million a year. Then in 30 years, it is short $8.6 billion. In a CBC story on Thursday, Sutcliffe conjures a $9-billion shortfall. The Confederation Line cost $2.1 billion, then $2.2 billion … then, who knows? Derailments, outages, delays, unreliability, a $300-million sinkhole being paid by whom? Is it in the budget? Or is it delayed until there is a settlement? What this does is make the city look like a liar, incompetent or both.

– The city is trying to re-write the original deal signed by the province, federal government and the municipality. The feds were responsible for $600 million for the project. The province was responsible for $600 million. The city was responsible for all the rest. That’s it. End of story. Find your way out city.

– This looks a lot like Watson and why shouldn’t it? The same people who backed Watson back Sutcliffe. The current mayor’s people have Watson pedigrees. One should expect that Watson and his cronies have a fair amount of influence in the mayor’s office. And many of the same stooges from the Watson Club are still on Ottawa City Council. This war against the feds and the province is Watson political strategy pure and simple. We screwed up but it’s not our fault. Blame it on someone else. Ottawa City Hall is perfect because we said so. That’s an awful big posterior city hall is trying to cover.

– If you have $9 billion in financial shortfalls (and that didn’t just happen this week), why did you spend $419 million on the frill and money-loser that is Lansdowne which is highlighted by one of the most lopsided ‘partnerships’ in government history. What prompted that? Why was that done?

– Why does the city pour hundreds of millions of dollars into a bricks-and-mortar epic library in the internet age? You can put a library online. You can publish a website that gets 186,000 page views a week without a palatial headquarters (one should take the staffing and infrastructure touted behind The Bulldog as, perhaps, generous) and yet the city builds a monumental library that other municipalities stopped building decades ago. Show some fiscal restraint. Build what you can afford. That’s what many, if not most, Ottawans do personally. No doubt most people who work at city hall do that with their personal finances.

–  Why does the city continue to build faulty technology from the Confederation Line into its extensions?

–  Other cities get more transit funding than Ottawa and that’s not fair, the city says. If that is true, and it’s a big if, why in their right mind would the feds and province give more transit money to the clown show that botched LRT in this community and destroyed a good transit system?

– Why is Sutcliffe and his administration treating the smartest population in a Canadian major city like it is stupid? Stupid is as stupid does.

– It might well be, if the city is telling the truth, that there is a crisis in municipal financing. That’s not the result of actions by the federal and provincial governments. That’s a political ploy. Ottawa City Hall might have a crisis but its inhabitants  need not look beyond the walls of the building to find the cause.

– The mistakes of the Watson-Sutcliffe era have now taken shape, as most Ottawans knew they would, in taxpayers wallets. Grandiose dreams, prestigious awards, architectural wonders and a “world-class” transit system have turned into a huge bill that might be bigger than this city can handle without some substantial taxes. City hall’s appetite for glory is not matched by its ability to pull off these big projects.

It’s commonsense Ottawans who will bring good governance back to Laurier Avenue. And unfortunately, they will pay the bill.

There is much shame in the fiscal and project management at Ottawa City Hall. Apparently that’s not enough. The City of Ottawa, its politicians and administrators over at least the last 16 years are responsible for that shame. Period. Case closed.

Trying to blame the senior governments for the fiscal mess at city hall is just that much more shameful.

Ken Gray

This says it all.

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