Watson Loved His Big Projects: WHOPPER WATCH
“(Mayor Mark) Sutcliffe does have more vision for big projects than his predecessor, Jim Watson, did, so there is a good chance the city will find a way to lend a hand.”
Bruce Garrioch, Ottawa Citizen
Wrong.
Watson was one of the biggest boosters of the ill-fated light-rail project. It is the largest undertaking in history by an Ottawa municipal government.
Watson was also the straw that stirred the drink on the massively over-budget new central library … bricks and mortar in the age of the internet. Couldn’t all that stuff have been put online? Easily accessible. You could work on it from home though the ex-mayor was against work-at-home because you couldn’t supervise the employees. At least that’s what he thought.
Then Watson pushed forward the eventually $1-billion ill-fated Lansdowne project. Yes, a billion city bucks for a Redblacks team you’d be lucky to get $1 million for if you could find a buyer.
Nope, sorry Bruce. To the city’s undoing, Watson was much in favour of big projects. We’re paying the price today.
Just what we need. One more bad city investment at LeBreton.
Ken Gray
For You:
Ottawa Post-Work-At-Home: CRERAR
Here’s The Latest Light-Rail Completion Date
No Lansdowne, No LeBreton: uOttawa Prof
Get Game On Budget City Council: BENN
Auditor Reports On Menard Election Compliance
Bookmark The Bulldog, click here
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Watson kept his promises of 2.5% instead of Sutcliffe That increases the levies to make the overall increase 12%. That’s so much my monthly payments went up from June to July. That never happened under Watson. Watson may have screwed up LRT badly but my taxes never went up like it did with Sutcliffe.
C, there was an advertising line from decades ago to the effect of “You can pay me now, or you can pay me more later”.
Watson’s decade or more of too low 2.5% tax rate increases set the stage for Sutcliffe’s higher, but still too low 3.75% tax rate increase. See Alex Cullen’s recent (repeat) lament on the sad state of repair of many of the city’s recreational facilities as Exhibit A of the consequences of forcing politically expedient decisions at the cost of operationally wise expenditures.
Hi Ron, the city increased staff and programs last year. Increased staff by over 200 people. Every new program whether it be extending the tree by law to the suburbs or substituting contractors for city staff for park garbage removal and not removing the city staff from the payroll, and even the empty house by law, that increases staff significantly. About 20 to 30 million dollars in staff and program additions last year alone. These are not important priorities, they are nice to have. Effectively what we have is a total disregard for budgeting. Rather than deal with the priorities and funding those, they are bleeding themselves dry by a thousand cuts And then claiming poverty! No way. And by moving costs to levies they’ve increased our taxes by a total of 12%. Do the math on how much you pay per month on taxes and look at the change from June to July. When Watson had a budget deficit he actually reduced staffing. Under sutcliffe hey’ve gone up by around 600 staff. And program and human resources cost that’s $120 million a year increase.
No Ron, It’s not that they have insufficient taxes, they have excessive spending
Let’s look at the increase in the youth bus pass. As thousands of students get free passes from the school transportation authority to get to school, this was effectively a backdoor tax increase as this 5 million dollar change in funding went from the city to the school transportation authority who now has to increase school tax levies to pay for it. And look at hydro Ottawa That is requesting permission to double distribution costs do the insufficient infrastructure at the same time the city is harvesting $250 million over the past 10 years.
C, I agree with your assessment of the inability or lack of willingness of council to exercise anything approximating good judgement when it comes to priority setting (see my recent column).
My comment (above) was intended to point out that today’s problems are a continuation of Jim Watson’s administration … adding new programs, many which are not the direct responsibility of the city, while ignoring the fundamentals – maintaining existing infrastructure.
The cumulative effect of inadequate regular maintenance is manifesting itself with situations where existing facilities, such as the Belltown Dome rink, having to be closed down because it is no longer functional.