Council Sees Nothing, Knows Nothing: BENN
Would you get on an airplane if you knew it was only fueled to get you half way across the Atlantic?
How would you feel if you found out a few hours after lift off? Not from the crew, but from another passenger. Well, that is how this city is being managed. Let’s look at a few examples.
The operating budget had an eight figure hole in the middle of it. A roughly $40-million shortfall at the time it was passed. And that was before a similar sized operating deficit for OC Transpo was factored in. Sound like a solid financial plan to you? Sound like there was enough fuel on board to get the airplane across the Atlantic?
The LRT? Which part should I lead with? The part where staff and senior politicos decided not to share critical information with council. You know, the part of the governance model with the statutory obligation for oversight. Sound a bit like you were a passenger who found out after lift off that there wasn’t enough fuel on board? Not from the city. No, from an independent provincial inquiry which had to sift through the willful omissions and outright lies given during testimony.
How about the part where the proponent for the expansion of the Trillium Line failed the technical part of the contract procurement – twice? Couldn’t tell the decision-makers due to a confidentiality clause that staff agreed to insert into the contract. The contract that was not yet approved. Seriously. How convoluted is that piece of logic?
Which takes me to Lansdowne 2.0. The gift that keeps on giving. At least to the developers who run Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group.
Star-Studded Group Demands Open Lansdowne Process
City staff won’t provide meaningful information to council until 10 business days before they are scheduled to vote on it. That would be barely enough time for a sophisticated business analyst to make their way through the reports. Draft questions seeking clarification. And get fulsome responses. Having said that, no one on council fits the description of a sophisticated business analyst. Even if they did, based on the lack of quality of reports that staff submits to council, it’s fair to say that the material provided to council will be so devoid of analysis as to render it meaningless. Which means that the list of questions seeking clarification would be long.
A group of concerned citizens, some of whom have held senior positions in the federal government, in well-known law firms, even a former city councillor recently released an open letter to Mayor Mark Sutcliffe asking questions. Not trivial questions such what flag will they fly on which day. Questions about who bears what risks. The confidence the city has in the construction cost estimates that are now a year or so old. The key assumptions underlying the financial model, and how sensitive the business case is to minor changes in those variables. How will the city pay for the services used by the residents of the three towers if a portion of the property taxes are allocated to debt service? Meaningful questions. Questions that should be addressed in any report presented by staff. In a report that is released that underlies the very basis of the decision to be made by the council with the statutory mandate to provide oversight.
But my answer to the above question is I would not board an aircraft that I knew was not fueled to get me across the Atlantic. Hoping to meet up with a refueling aircraft somewhere west of Ireland is not my idea of a good plan. As for finding out after the fact, let’s just say that, assuming we made it across the Atlantic, my first call would be to my lawyer.
As for how council would answer those questions? Well, based on the operating-budget example, council wouldn’t be worried about getting on an aircraft with low-fuel levels. Councillors wouldn’t be offended that they had been willfully misled. They would just settle in, turn on the onboard entertainment system and plug in their earbuds. La la la la.
Ron Benn, a finance executive, has been a member of the Centrepointe Community Association for the better part of three decades.
The mantra of Ottawa City Council.
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There was a Lansdowne consultation on Zoom on Wednesday evening. It was to present the changes to the Official Plan and zoning needed to build up to 40 floor condos behind a new and smaller stadium on land sold to development interests. This will result in the arena being moved into another roughly 60,000 sq ft. of parkland. There were a lot of concerns raised by attendees, but that wasn’t recorded or put on Engage Ottawa – so the messaging may well be that we all liked the idea – with no recorded evidence of what really was said. The existing partnership agreement with OSEG has had revenue forecasts reduced by something like 40%. It is acknowledged that we will probably never see any return from the Lansdowne 1.0 waterfall. And now we will have 10 working days to digest the Lansdowne 2.0 waterfall. When this is all done, we will have roughly a half billion dollars invested in publicly funded event venues at Lansdowne with no known return to the City. And ten working days to figure it out. If a project ever needed an independent audit, this one ticks the boxes.