New ways to do business!

Ottawa is an amazing place to live. Where else can you have 3 levels of government competing to do the least for their citizens.

Take the local government. The mayor, elected by voters across the city, wants to run municipal government with a bit more streamlined bureaucracy. The majority of councillors, elected by, in most cases, a minority of ward voters, tell the mayor not to bother trying; because the bureaucrats run the show. The senior bureaucrat, the city manager, says to the mayor; get stuffed.

Let's get serious in Ottawa. Our cupboards are bare and the kids are still hungry. Rather than stealing from the supermarket to feed the kids let's reduce the number of kids.

Better yet, let's put the kids on a diet!!

What does that mean?

It is financial pay back time for city employees, including the police department who seem to think that they are not city employees.

I propose that all salaries in the municipal civil service be rolled back between 10% and 20%. The overall budget of the city is $2.1 billion of which about 50% is salaries. That is a payroll of about $1 billion. (This number may be slightly off because it is difficult to determine the number by reading the 2007 or proposed 2008 budget. We do know that there are many thousands of full time equivalents, including the police, on the payroll.)

So assume the $1 billion payroll. A 10% cutback across the board means a saving of $100 million. That is enough to balance the 2008 budget without cutting a single job or program.

After that comes the hard part. You need to get rid of some of the kids in 2009.