City Hall Can’t Fill A Pothole: BENN

08/02/2025

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Solid decision-making at Ottawa City Hall has hit a pothole.

Let’s look at it in a city-hall context. But first, what’s good decision-making?

The art of decision-making involves adhering to some key principles. Ensuring that the solution actually addresses the problem is a critical concept. Matching the life span of the solution to the life span of the problem matters. Basic concepts that escape some organizations, often to their detriment.

Implementing short-term solutions to address long-term problems is a waste of resources. Too often it results in having to return to the scene to spend more money, but never really solving the problem.

Consider Ottawa’s approach to potholes. Potholes take time to develop. Water seeps in through a crack or seam in the asphalt. Freeze-and-thaw cycles loosen the surface asphalt. Vehicles driving over the weakened area apply torque to further loosen the asphalt. Eventually a pothole develops.

The city’s solution? Apply a quick asphalt patch without sufficient effort to seal the seams. Before too long, perhaps a few months, certainly within the next year or so, the pothole re-appears. Why such slip-shod work? Why do city staff accept, on behalf of the city, a standard of work that it would not accept if the work was being done on their own property? Could it be because they are more interested in the timely closing of a 311 work ticket?

In contrast, a far more appropriate solution has been used in northern European nations for decades. Cut the edges of the pothole to create a more readily sealable contact surface. Dig out the loose stones and asphalt from the hole. Apply tar along the edges, followed by hot asphalt, followed by a roller to smooth out the surface. Followed by more tar to reinforce the seal between the new and old asphalt. No need to come back for many a year.

Then there is the city’s short-term solution to fixing cracks in concrete sidewalks. Smear a layer of asphalt over the crack, followed by quickly rolling. Aside from looking ridiculous, that the asphalt patch will be scraped off during the sidewalk snow-clearing is not even part of the thought process. An experienced handyman knows that like-on-like is always a better solution. Not to worry, the 311 work ticket is closed.

Potholes and sidewalk non-repairs are small on an individual scale, but cumulatively significant. A change in approach is long overdue. But only if someone in a position of authority at the city wants to solve the actual problem – the first time.

Bigger picture examples.

The Official Plan states that Ottawa’s population will grow to about 1.4 million people over the next 25 years. It goes on to declare that about half of this population growth must be housed inside the Greenbelt. Yet the densification plan to accommodate this significant growth is focused on small rental apartments the size of which is best suited to one or two occupants.

The Official Plan is based on an ill-considered assumption that empty nesters will sell their larger homes to younger families in need of more space and move into the high rises. No. There is little to no inclination in the empty nest demographic to do a divide by four or five in their living space. Just ask the property developers who are building mid to high rise towers for the rental market, rather than for the condominium owner. Why? Because there is insufficient demand for small condominium apartments.

What is happening now is that empty nesters are competing with the growing families for the mid-sized townhomes. The units that are being built in the outer ‘burbs.

The result of the Official Plan is just another short-term solution with small rental units, applied to a long-term problem, population growth.

Have we seen any long-term solutions applied to short-term problems?

The recent debacle that was the Welcoming Centre Sprung Structure project was meant to address a recent, short-term problem, notably the surge in immigration that resulted from the federal government’s decision to loosen the regulations to accommodate refugees fleeing war-torn countries.

By the time this Welcoming Centre project was introduced to council, the federal government had already acknowledged that its open-borders immigration policy had resulted in an unmanageable influx of refugees. The influx of refugees was ratcheted back significantly. What did city hall do, aside from carry on obliviously?

A decision was made to “repurpose” an existing sports field that another city hall silo had pointed out is in short supply. The plan was to erect a long-term structure that Barrhaven West Councillor David Hill pointed out was, based on his “lived experience” totally inappropriate for its proposed use. That it was cancelled so soon after the public uproar started is a reflection of politicians recognizing that their long-term career aspirations were facing a short-term resolution.

Not enough column space exists to critique the failed decision-making that was Lansdowne 1.0 and is 2.0. Suffice it to say that implementing a half-billion-dollar flawed strategy to recoup a quarter-billion-dollar failed initial project would be career-shortening in the private sector. The senior management would be shown the door for repeated failures like the ones I cite above. So too would a board of directors that repeatedly approved this type of poor decision-making.

Down at city hall? They can’t attract the talent necessary to create change. Not to worry, no one at city hall in a position of authority is prepared to entertain a cultural change.