Planners Can’t Plan, Leaders Can’t Lead: BENN

Published 08/26/2023 · Updated 08/25/2023

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Why is it so hard to get good help?

That question came to mind a few times earlier this week, while contemplating what is emanating from Ottawa City Hall.

In their haste to get a routine, and I stress the word routine, approval for a high rise on the north side of Carling Avenue out the door, planning staff failed, and again I stress the word failed, to properly notify the entire community. Seems that planning staff didn’t consider the owners of the land across the street from the site of the proposed high rises worthy of receiving notice. The owners of that big expanse of land also known as the Central Experimental Farm, Agriculture Canada, did not receive proper notice of the public consultation. Nor did the National Capital Commission.

City Manager Botches Her Own New Posting

This is not the first time that planning staff has come up short on public notifications. Based on the quality, or lack thereof, of the documents released by planning staff as part of the public notification process, it is clear there is inadequate review of the material. I have received documents in support of variance applications with errors in fact, contradictory statements of “fact”, and copy-paste errors. Errors usually associated with hustling to meet a deadline. Hustling to meet a deadline is often the result of, wait for it, poor planning. From a department that specializes in planning.

On to the next case. city council just approved a continuation of the vacant unit tax program … a program that they acknowledge as flawed. Apparently 15 members of council thought that giving staff another two to three years to work out the kinks is appropriate. Council pointed out that the initial estimates of about half a per cent of the homes in Ottawa qualifying for the vacant unit tax was just an estimate. Can’t hold staff responsible for seriously under-estimating it by a factor of three. Can’t hold staff responsible for a process that generated a result that is 50 per cent higher than the vacant unit rate in Vancouver.

Is it even remotely possible that the questions posed to the registered owners of all residential properties in Ottawa were so poorly crafted as to create confusion at the taxpayer’s end of the equation? Did staff test the questions with a small sample of homeowners in advance? A review with no coaching or explanations provided by the staff who drafted the questions? You know, something that a non-dysfunctional public facing organization might do? Or was this just another example of staff focused on getting the document out the door.

On a related note, six councillors co-authored a column in The Citizen a day before the council meeting. In this column they pointed out the above noted anomalies. However, only two other members of council joined them in voting to put the vacant unit tax program on hold until the flaws were worked out. Was this dismal outcome the result of an inept effort by “the six” to explain how unfair this flawed program is? Did they even try?

On to the next example. After much fanfare and some actual physical effort, the Chief Commanda Bridge was opened to pedestrians, cyclists and other non-vehicular users. Except it turns out that no one on the Gatineau side of the river cared to put an adequate “landing pad” in place. Congestion and related frustration were the result. Did anyone in Ottawa’s city hall try to coordinate their multi-modal infrastructure with their counterparts in Gatineau? If they did, and Gatineau shrugged its collective shoulders, so be it. A non-dysfunctional organization would have ensured that users were aware that chaos was to be expected on the north end of the bridge.

City Manager Botches Her Own New Posting

Hiring an experienced outsider as the new city manager, someone who hasn’t been a senior executive in the dysfunctional culture that permeates throughout city hall would have been a good next step. Oops.

It is time for council to hold not only staff to account for the poor quality of the work performed. It is time for council to hold itself accountable for its own poor performance.

Ron Benn, a finance executive, has been a member of the Centrepointe Community Association for the better part of three decades.