Council Report Card: Well Below Average: BENN
It is June, and that means report cards are being prepared so it’s time to assemble one for city council.
While our youngest has been out of high school for a decade now, I still recall that the most informative part of the report card was the comments from the teacher.
With that in mind, here is my truncated report card on Ottawa’s city council.
Comprehension of Duties: Needs Significant Improvement. Council members need to demonstrate a better understanding of their role in city governance. They need to demand better quality reports from staff. Very simply put, council needs to take charge. To reinforce to staff that the role of council is to provide oversight, and that it can only be done if council receives complete, accurate reports on a timely basis in a format designed to support the decisions that need to be made.
Plays Well With Others: Satisfactory. This council is far more collegial than the previous several iterations. A low bar to meet, but one should give credit where credit is due.
Listening Skills: Needs improvement. Too many councillors appear to be formulating their rebuttals when they should be listening to what their constituents and colleagues are saying. Based on the remarks made by many councillors, it is clear they have failed to listen to anyone other than the self-interest groups that supported them during the election campaign.
Ability To Develop Workable Solutions: Needs Improvement. Ideology is fine as the basis from which one develops a position, but it must be tempered with practicality when it comes to generating workable solutions. Too few councillors seem to grasp this fundamental concept.
Staff Left Council In Lurch On Garbage: BENN
Leadership: Needs Significant Improvement. It is not just the mayor who needs to present a vision for the city. Council as a whole needs to present a vision. What is council’s vision for Ottawa? Seriously. I haven’t a clue what they want to accomplish in a tangible, measurable manner.
Basic Arithmetic Skills: Abject Failure. Council as a whole appears incapable of elementary school arithmetic. Not complex mathematics. Basic arithmetic. The budget must be balanced. That is the law. Yet council passed a budget with tens of millions of dollars of fudge-factor in the middle of it.
Virtue Signaling: Excellent. However, since virtual signaling has a syllabus weighting of zero, excellent times zero still equals zero. Basic arithmetic. See above.
Effectiveness: Needs Significant Improvement. Effectiveness is doing the right thing. No vision. Incapable of developing workable solutions. Inability to comprehend their own role. See all of the above.
What’s City Staff Hiding On Tag-A-Bag Program?
Overall mark: C, and a generous C at that. C used to mean average. That hasn’t been the case for at least the last three decades. The high school that my kids attended had almost half of the graduating class with a grade average of A- or higher. That means that the average mark for the graduating class was more like a B+ or an A-.
In short, council has a lot of work to do to bring itself up to being merely average. Someone with potential should strive for better than average. That is asking far too much from this council. We regret to advise the residents of Ottawa that they should reset their council and public-policy expectations.
Ron Benn, a finance executive, has been a member of the Centrepointe Community Association for the better part of three decades.
—
Don’t miss our regular features
Everything Ottawa Full Local Bulldog Canadian
Opinion Comments Breaking News Hood Hub
Ontario World Get Cheap Gas Big Money
Pop Gossip Your Home Relax …
Bulldog Weather Full Local Sports
Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
– The Bulldog – News Feed Enter 
Ron, AGAIN you are precise in you assessment. The only corollary I would add is that most organizations have either mandated or self imposed objectives set, standards imposed or a similar set of guidelines from the onset of each year or term.
Council seems to have none of these goals with the exception of a) getting reelected and b) formulating some kind of budget and passing it without goals.
In my view this leads to the grade you gave of a “C” and bumbling on without a captain at the helm.
Bruce,
You nailed it!!! City of Ottawa council number one job is to get re elected. Being a council/mayor should not be a life long career.
Bruce, I had initially given council a failing grade, but having spent so much time in HR jail prior to retiring, I remembered to adjust my score card so that I didn’t offend their collective sense of self esteem.
I’ve always appreciated your assessment of things Ron.
The only qualification required to be a councillor or Mayor, for that matter, is to be elected. So far this term most of council seems to have only one goal – to be re-elected. Benn has given council a fair grade and they definitely need to do better.
Thanks, Ron. I’d suggest you might want to add an additional topic on which to assess council for future report cards: “looking for better solutions to existing problems”. These people are supposed to be leaders after all. A couple of examples that come to mind are are finding new methods to make our roadways last longer and determining more effective ways to dispose of solid waste (a topic of much discussion in the Bulldog of late).