City Has Made Fiscal Mistakes: MENARD
This excerpt is courtesy of the city-wide community group Your Applewood Acres (And Beyond) Neighbours.
Capital Councillor Shawn Menard’s recent newsletter includes his take on Ottawa City Council’s unanimous support last week for Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s campaign that is focusing much blame for the city’s financial woes on the federal and provincial governments failure to pay their fair share to Ottawa.
While Menard supported Sutcliffe’s call (petition campaign) for more funding, he emphasizes that the city must accept its failures as well.
“As we seek to tackle this financial issue, we need to have an approach that’s rooted in honesty and collaboration,” says Menard. “We can’t be playing the blame game or obscuring what’s actually been happening in the city.”
He then cites: “a lot of decisions that have helped create the tremendous budgetary pressures we’re feeling,” including urban boundary expansion (“especially the last-minute inclusion of the Tewin Lands”), re-re-development of Lansdowne Park with costs that keep growing, continued road expansions, back-to-back budgets with below-inflation rate increases, and development charges that are 50th in the province.
“We neither have the revenue tools we need, nor are we acting as prudently as we could be with those we do have,” writes Menard below.
His conclusion: “So, yes, we must work together, both as a city and with other levels of government, to secure better funding for important, necessary services that our residents deserve. But we also must acknowledge the mistakes we’ve been repeating for the last decade or longer.”
For You:
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City Chose Extravagance Over Good Sense: BENN
City Council Backs Fairness Campaign
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– The Bulldog – News Feed Enter 
I’m a bit confused here. Is Mr Menard’s admission to his mistakes supposed to make me feel better?
SIsco..Menard has fought most of the bad decisions especially Lansdowne.
Read the other Councillors’ newsletters. Then you will be upset…no self accountability in the three I read..or nothing at all.
I agree wholeheartedly with Councillor Menard that the City and, in particular, Council should own up to their mistakes. If he and other councillors believe that, why did they vote to support Sutcliffe’s campaign that seeks to focus attention on other levels of government without taking any responsibility for the City’s errors and omissions?
It would have been easy enough to propose an amendment to Sutcliffe’s proposal that would have stated that some of the responsibility for the City’s financial woes rests on the shoulders of Council. Instead, a motion was passed that points the finger at the province and the feds. Perhaps they all need to be reminded that, when you point your finger at someone else, your other three fingers are pointing at you.
As usual Voter, you are way ahead of the gang that couldn’t shoot on Laurier Avenue.
Give Watson credit where credit is due. When the city told a whopper it was sometimes believable to the casual observer.
You look at the continuing advertisement for incompetence the LRT, and the city’s argument about fairness is weak.
The public isn’t buying it.
Watson spent, then left the new guy to clean it up. The oldest political trick in the world.
cheers
kgray
You have to wonder where we would be if Watson hadn’t seen the writing on the wall and decided not to run. Who would have run against him and what would he have done when the LRT inquiry came out? Would he have employed those skills he learned at Carleton for his Communications degree and tried to bluster his way out of everything? That degree, by the way, was money well spent on his part. He’s definitely used it to his advantage.
The chickens are all coming home to roost and even his particular brand of bafflegab probably wouldn’t have been enough to save him this time. But, with Watson, you never know. I’ve seen him pull some pretty amazing things out of the fire. He’s well aware that success only requires you to fool enough of the people enough of the time. And he was a master at that.
Now we get to watch Watson-lite try and pull off some kind of financial voodoo to get through this budget cycle without raising taxes more than 10% or slashing city programs further than to-the-bone. Methinks it won’t be pretty.
Sutcliffe, of course, dropped out of Carleton and had been taking Poli Sci, not Communications. I wonder if he learned anything useful while he was there.