Is Maria burned out?

Maria McRae, a strong proponent of Light Rail and chairperson of the Transportation committee, derailed the entire LRT program last night.  She was concerned that the federal and provincial government money would not be forthcoming so she voted against a recommendation of the current plan and then sneaked out the back door to her hearse car.

What's next, Maria?  You still have a chance to kill the emergency plan for the swans.

Let me set the stage for this issue.  Prior to the last municipal election, John "Screamer" Baird killed the N/S LRT plan to help elect a right-wing city council.  "Go back and figure it out then come back to me with something that I like," spouted Johnny.  Nobody blamed the Cons for the delay in the project or for the $57 million law suit the city faces by cancelling the contract with Siemens. 

The provincial government, when the plan was killed by Johnny, told the city that they will not get any funding, although the money has been set aside by the government, until they decide what their new plan will be.  For that, McGuinty was crapped all over, especially by our favourite local MPP, Lisa Head-in-the-Clouds.

Now the city has a new plan to put forward to the feds and provincial governments to have them decide on funding and what does the Transportation committee do?  They voted to send it to council without a recommendation. And Maria casts the deciding no vote.

Give it up, Ottawa City Council.  At this point in time I am ready to ask the Government of Ontario to dissolve council and install a trustee to run this city.

Jan Harder - Ottawa Councillor for Ward 1 thru 22

Sometime after the last municipal election Jan Harder decided to change her approach to politics from in-your-face-sucker to team player. I think she looked at MPP Lisa MacLeod, thought she saw her own reflection and didn't like what she had become. Just my opinion.

However the new Jan Harder is starting to slip back into the bad old ways. When Maria McRae was new on the job, last term, Jan would turn up at every Maria door opening. Now that Steve Desroches is the new guy on the block - and he had the gall to take over part of Jan's old riding -she's all over him like stink on crap.

And now she has someone old, but new, in her sights. Ward 21 councillor, Glenn Brooks was on vacation this week. Some concerned Manotickers, part of Glenn's ward, decided that they needed another bunch of public meetings to bitch and complain about the proposed Minto development in the tiny, perfect village of Manotick. Since Glenn was away, they asked Jan to organize and chair the meetings. Jan was more that happy to help out. In fact, she even invited Glenn to attend.

So you are saying... well, Jan just jumped in to help out, right? Wrong, this Manotick fight is over 2 years old. It has been discussed, bitched about and explained more times than Wade Reddon scores in hockey.

Jan just figured that she could put Brooks in his place.

Damn, I missed a meeting with Maria McRea

Ward 16 Councillor McRea held a town hall meeting this week to discuss the widening of Prince of Wales Avenue from Woodroffe to Fisher. I wanted to go but got held up at work. Was I working late, you might ask? No, Councillor McRea meeting to get citizen's input was at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Good timing if you want to hear from the mases. Even better timing if you don't!

I wanted to bring to Maria's attention the fact that, if you twin Prince of Wales up to Fisher Ave, you do not clear up traffic problems... you just move them around. Also, if you drive the Prince of Wales traffic on to Fisher Avenue, the increased traffic passes by, or close to, four... count them... four schools, including three junior schools. This is a tragedy waiting to happen.

The problem with the whole mess is that it is a half-assed planning job. You twin Prince of Wales to Fisher but not the rest of the way to Baseline Road. As a result, you will move the traffic onto Fisher, which is a four lane road, but when they get to Dynes Road they get funnelled back into two lanes until they hit Baseline. Then they go back to two lanes through the Experimental Farm all the way to Carling Ave.

Sorry I did not make the meeting, Maria. Maybe next time you can make it at 10:30 when I take my coffee break.

I hope that you take note of my concern.

Select 1,2 or 3, unless you don't want to

I attended a consultation on Ottawa's Transportation Master Plan last night. The TMP, as it is called, is the blueprint that will carry (literally) Ottawans into 2031. That's well after I am dead and my body blown up by my kids.

There were questions about Light Rail (LRT) versus Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). There were questions about traffic congestion, how to clear it and, more importantly, how to pay for it.

But was I the only person in the room to roll their eyes at the way this consultation was carried out?

The session deteriorated from the very beginning. Two, count them, two City Councillors left the budget consultations to glad hand the crowd and tell us what great work they were doing. I would have preferred that Maria and Alex had stayed at the budget consult. It was also quite obvious, from the number of people that Maria recognized in the crowd of 77 or so, that this was not a random sampling of Ottawans.

Then on to the questions. An earnest pollster gave a bit of background to each question and then asked the assembled group to press 1,2 or 3 on our wireless keypads to give our choice.

It started with one guy who asked "what if I don't like the options you propose?" He wanted to answer the poll question with another question. Rather than the moderator saying "suck it up buddy and answer the question", she allowed the whole blessed two hours to turn into a criticism of everything from whether or not biodiesel fumes were safe to breathe to "we need a new poll question to determine if people think that this whole poll was comparing one fruit to another or not". What a waste of time.

One good "extra" question that was posed was "where do you live... urban or rural?" The answer to this was the most revealing of the whole tawdry affair and it was absolutely amazing to me that the pollsters did not have it on their list before they were nudged by an audience member. The majority of the attendees, who live in the core of the city, want commuters from outside the core to pay extra taxes and tolls for the right to drive to work or shop downtown. They could give a tinker's damn for the needs or realities of suburban and rural residents. I wonder what they would think if the Canadian government moved all of their offices to Barrhaven, Munster and Orleans and they, the cool and sophisticated core dwellers, had to commute to the burbs? Want to bet that the poll results would be different.

The city might also want to take a second look at Pace Consulting, the company that was hired to run this "consultation". They covered themselves by saying that this was a first of its kind consultation in Ottawa but does that mean that we have to pay them to test out their techniques? According to their web site, www.paceconsulting.ca, they are very experienced strategic planners with clients like: Ontario Hydro, Medtronic, TD Securities and many other names familiar to this blogger. I suggest that Pace regroup to get their message together before the next consultation.