Welcome To Hum-Drum Ottawa: READER
Long-time reader and commenter Sisco Farraro takes on the issue of the City of Ottawa’s leadership:
Allow me to discuss mediocrity. Ottawa has become mediocre.
We live in the capital city of Canada, a city with a rich history and many splendid architectural and natural sites. The Central Experimental Farm and the National Gallery of Canada spring immediately to mind.
Lansdowne 2.0 Has Serious Heritage Impacts: REPORT
We have a lot of which to be proud but the current version of city council, as well as the ones that sat at the table during former mayor Jim Watson’s tenure, have been clueless.
Are other capital cities throughout the world as poorly run as Ottawa? Hopefully residents of foreign countries can take pride in their capital cities.
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There are, in local government, competent councils that have competent administrations. Competent councils employ competent staff, and competent staff provide competent guidance and support. The opposite is also true. Incompetent councils do not engage and challenge the best of breed – for many and varied reasons. And therefore they own the resulting complexity and confusion, policy and operational chaos, high costs and poor results.
Thanks, David. You’re right. Whoever is putting incompetent people in high-ranking non-political positions, eg. city manager, head of transportation, etc, should also be turfed.
New City of Ottawa motto:
“Ottawa where we strive to be average”
You can’t be serious Kosmo. Average? Average is well above what Ottawa city hall strives for. After all, one should set one’s targets beyond what one can achieve.
Faint praise. Mr. Benn. k
might be useful to recall that the main reason Judge Charles Hackland used to explain why he was not going to find Ottawa City Council guilty of contravening the Ontario Municipal Act, leading to Lansdowne 1.0 … eg. sole-sourcing etc. etc. , was that if the citizenry thought so, they can always vote them out; what a judicial cop out !
and now if we look at the list of Councillors who seem to want to keep their heads in the sand on the LPP details’ ( ie. asking almost no thoughtful or probing questions of staff, ) and compare that list to those who voted “No” to Menard’s motion to call for a proper inquiry on the LRT … are we going to find a fair amount of ‘alignment’ ?
In some ways we get what we deserve. In my ward there was a the kind of candidate you hope for, successful in private industry with legal experience. However they were up against a candidate supported by the previous regime. Despite this candidate making several mistakes and having to apologize for tampering with his rivals campaign literature, they were elected. Was it due to voter apathy or the the fault of partisan media for burying the story. Either way it resulted in putting another bobble head at the council table.
Well Mr. Benn:
“Ottawa where we strive to be below average”
Is just a little too wordy…
Just because we don’t achieve average, doesn’t mean we aren’t trying (ok, who am I trying to kid).
Perhaps the slogan should be:
“Ottawa, where average is the stretch goal”.
Now we are getting somewhere Andrew.
“Ottawa – where we take whatever comes which sometimes turns out to be just below average and that’s okay with us.”
“Ottawa – the city apathy remembered and success forgot”
“Ottawa – whatever …”
“Ottawa – not so much”
“Ottawa City Hall – the place that makes other municipal governments look good”
“Ottawa – City of Squirrels.” “Don’t worry about what I’m doing over here! Look! Over there – I see one!”