OC Transpo is out of Council's control

Somebody on city council better wake up pretty soon to the fact that OC Transpo is out - way out - of control.

The cost of bus service is going up and the service is crashing down. 

Just when we are trying to struggle to understand why a new bus barn goes 100% over budget, comes the news that Transpo may buy double decker buses that do not even fit into the $100 million new structure.

Who is running this mess?  It certainly does not appear to be city council.

Civic political parties? Boo, Hiss!

If we want to make civic politics more relevant to Ottawans then we need good and bright people to step forward for office.  We need ideas... not stuffed shirts.

The idea of political parties at city hall is one of the dumbest ideas possible.  It is floated out as a panacea to dislodge the deadwood lifer politicians that clog up city hall in great numbers.  But would it work?

Let's look at those levels of government where parties do exist.  Both the provincial and federal governments are liberally strewn with lifers.  They are kept in power BECAUSE of their party affiliations.  Both the federal and provincial systems are subject to the perversion of parachuting "desired" candidates into ridings even if the local party members don't want them.

Party members meet as a caucus and generally vote as a block.  What happens to local rights if the decision of the caucus is contrary to a riding decision?

The party system is anathema to democracy.  This has been shown time and time again.  When an ego the size of S. Harper can overrule the conscience of all Canadians, such as with the Afgan detainees controversy misunderstanding, it makes one long for a RETURN to independent MPs.

Two thumbs and eight fingers down for municipal political parties.

Living in Interesting Times

Are the insane running the asylum?  Certainly the managers are not.

Consider the blustery demand from OC Transpo's union boss that City Council shut up about labour issues and focus on governing the city.  Well, guess what?  Labour issues are city business and the fact that councillors are discussing it is only right.  Geez Louise, how flipping arrogant can you get.  Wages make up 50% of this city's budget.  Council should tell the union that talks are finished, tell the arbitrator that the cupboards are bare and then announce a wage freeze for one or two years.  If the arbitrator wants to ignore the city's financial problem, then lay-off every Transpo worker by announcing the sale of Transpo to the private sector.  You want to fight the people who actually own city hall, Mr. Union Boss?  We will give you a fight you could never dream of in your worst nightmare.

Don't forget this is the same union that blamed a mother because a bus drove off with her two year old after shutting the door in her face while she struggled to get on the bus with a stroller an another child.

Now I am on a roll.

It is time that city staff were told by council that arts and cultural funding is such a small part of the budget (It represents $7 million in a $2 billion budget.) that it is time that they quit trying to destroy the arts in Ottawa by their constant sniping at it.  Does cutting the $935 allotment to the Torbolton Historical Society sound like it is going to solve the problems of this city?  How about the the $24,000 cut to the Dragon Boat Festival?  The Dragon Boat Festival brings in thousands of competitors and tourists to Ottawa.  They spend money at stores, hotels and restaurants.  Those stores, hotels and restaurants pay taxes to the city.  For every $1 that the city gives the arts, heritage and festivals, they get back $1.50 in direct revenue - they recover their investment, with interest - and another $20 is earned in this community.  Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

When all is said and done, it is beyond the time when the ENTIRE city council must be replaced by new people with new ideas.  New councillors will not be carrying the baggage of past decisions.  It is time to start over.  And it is time that we tell the city unions to smarten up or we will privatize everything in the city including janitors and police service.

Council MUST run this city.  Staff MUST to be told that they work for US not for THEMSELVES!

Health Board for Ottawa?

A word of warning to city council and all Ottawa taxpayers. The idea of an 13 member independent health board (including 6 councillors) to make "non-politicized" decisions may sound like a great idea... and it is... BUT...

Do not let the board get away from you like the Police Services Board did. You may remember the latest fiasco called the city budget wherein the Police Board demanded a whopper of an increase in their suck on the taxpayer teat and council had no recourse other than to say "how high".

I wonder if the same could happen with this health board? I wonder if the board decided that there should be free Wii systems for all kids to counter the spread (no pun intended) of obesity and put a one year price on it of $10 million, would council have the right or the gumption to overturn an "independent" board?

Careful for what you ask... you might get it... in the ear!

Ottawa City Councillor John Baird, MP PC

Separated at birth

Someone on the hill just noticed that John "the screamer" Baird, Federal Minister of All Things that Glow Green, may have interfered in a process at Ottawa City Council in 2006; to whit, he suspended federal funding of a municipal project that he was told not to like. And he did this during the municipal election campaign. Not only that but he freely distributed the contents of a confidential agreement between the city and a private vendor.

We are, of course, talking about the North-South Light Rail project.

Let's get a few things straight. The decision on Light Rail was a municipal one. The federal funding of the project had already been approved, as was provincial funding. Baird had no say in the project.

Let's also understand that the project was the pet child of the then-mayor Chiarreli, who was a former Liberal MPP; and that he was being challenged by a Conservative Party member O'Brien. O'Brien won the race and now the vendor (Seimans) is suing the city for its first born for cancelling the contract and possibly breaking the confidentiality of the contract.

It was O'Brien who asked Baird to review the contract. This is the same Mayor O'Brien that has been charged with influence peddling during the same election; a charge that also has a Baird involvement.

One more example of the transparency and public discourse from Canada's Greatest Government(TM).

Cultural Ottawa?

I received an invite to a three-day symposium being held here in Ottawa beginning April 28, 2008. The Arts and Cultural symposium is being put on by Simon Fraser University in conjunction with the City of Ottawa. From the brochure:

"The international symposium includes keynote speakers, presentations, lectures, and various styles of workshops to examine the role and importance of cultural infrastructure in furthering culture and creativity in cities and communities. "

What I find unsettling is that of the invited speakers there are almost no arts or cultural folks representing Ottawa venues, like Arts Court or the Byward Market. There are speakers from Toronto's Artscape, Nova Scotia's Mermaid Theatre, a bunch from the US and Europe and other parts of Canada. The closest Ottawan, outside of federal political hacks and one city environmental sustainability rep, is the Manager of Manotick Mill Development Corporation.

What's wrong with this picture?

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.

Cure to the drug problem

The Ontario provincial government has found a cure for drug addiction. Give the addict more drugs!

The Government announced that they will fund a "needle exchange programme" for IV drug users, a program that Ottawa councillors rejected. The province and the special interest groups that lobby them see the issue as a public health one and therefore see free needles as curbing the spread of HIV/AIDS. The city, on the other hand, sees the issue as public security; the drug trade and user population are disproportionately involved in crimes against person and property in this region.

Who is right? Nobody and both! It is a public health issue and a public security issue all in one.

You can't have a safe-site programme without a rehabilitation program. It is akin to trying to cure alcoholics by giving them free booze. Without treatment the alcoholic will just continue until she/he dies. Maybe that is the idea?

If the province wants to help addicts, let them go all the way instead of taking tiny steps. A drug rehab programme and centre is mandatory to achieve the goals of both the province and the city.

News to laugh at

I read in this morning's Ottawa Citizen, a letter from a lady who lamented the raise in parking fees in Ottawa. She seemed quite elegant in the way she wrote but kinda blew her point with one comment. She claimed that the downtown was so quiet after working hours that "you could almost hear the dust blowing". Can you say Pulitzer?

Problem is that if the core is devoid of visitors now, how is a 50 cent/hour rise in rates going to kill it?

There are many other examples of overkill letters from earnest writers to the Citizen including a recent one wherein a gentleman was so fed up with a small OC Transpo increase, if I remember correctly it would cost him an extra $10-15 per month, that he was going out to buy a car (minimum of $10-20,000) and drive to work ($60/month for parking plus gas, insurance, repairs, etc) in protest. I suggest that he give up two of the lattes he buys each month to cover the OC Transpo increase and use the money he saves by not buying a car to pay for a badly-needed Economics 101 course.

Ottawa is not such a bad place to live. We grow at a rate of a couple of thousand persons per year, we build new housing, new schools and create jobs at a fair rate. The climate sucks in all but one season of the year and the streets are poorly maintained in winter but generally it is a great place to live.

Costs to run the city are going to rise with time. It is a fact of life in the big, well mid-sized maybe, city. Learn to live with it.

That is not too say that we can't do a better job in running this city. Notice that I said WE?! That's right, we run this city, not city council. They work for us! We hire them once every four years and can, and should, fire them if they screw up or let us down. If city council cannot balance a budget, make cuts to bureaucrats at city hall or put our fiscal house in order then we should fire them in one felled swoop in 2010.

But in the meantime, quit the sniping with the flawed logic.

Man bites meter

On December 5th, I wrote about a transportation consultation/survey that I attended at Ottawa City Hall. In the entry I mentioned that answers given by the downtown core attendees seemed to be unanimous that the cure to Ottawa's transportation woes was to charge road tolls and higher parking fees to those gas guzzling, pollution spewing, grid-lock causing commuters that drove in from the (ugh) suburbs.

Guess what, the city is raising parking fees to $3/hour and eliminating free parking at meters for weekends and evenings. You would think that the centre town folks would be ecstatic including their generally left of centre politicians.

But no. Clive "I cycle to work" Doucet calls it a bone head move. "It's out of control," bellows he. He argues that parking meters were intended to keep traffic moving. His logic befuddles the best of us. I thought that Clive had always told us that we needed public transit to keep the traffic flowing.

"People are just not going to come downtown," cries Diane Holmes. George Bedard calls it "negative, bull-headed". He goes on to say, "If they want to kill downtown, they're certainly doing it."

I have a solution. Just eliminate those pesky polluting buses from the downtown core. They just impede traffic flow when I am looking for a parking spot. Plus those darn bus stops take up so much prime parking space on the roads. Finally, we subsidize the transit system to the tune of 50% of the cost to run it. Take the savings from the bus system and plough it into subsidized parking fees.

Hey, who says that the suburbanites can't come up with ideas for the urbanites?

Give me a call sometime, Clive... we'll do tofu!

Big tax increases to come

Hey, you heard it here first!

There is a note on the MPAC (Municipal Property Assessment Corporation), the folks who establish the value of your property for municipal tax purposes, web site that reads:

"The assessment update of all properties in Ontario was cancelled for 2006 and 2007... Although the assessment updates for 2006 and 2007 have been cancelled, MPAC continues to inspect properties, update values and improve the accuracy of its information."

That means that our city councillors are going to stick us with a minimum 4.9% (probably about 6% when the dust settles) municipal tax increase in 2008 based on 2005 assessment values.

MPAC will report the updated assessments in 2008. You can expect that assessments, based on real estate sales reports over the past 2 years, will have increased by a minimum of 10 or 20%. Therefore, if your home is worth the Ottawa average of $250,000, your taxes will rise by about $400 in 2009.

That's a 15% increase in revenue without even changing the tax rate!

So here is the bottom line as I see it. City Council will bite the bullet in 2008 with a whopper of a tax increase (largest in their history) that will raise your taxes by about $180. Then in 2009 and possibly 2010, due to increased assessments from MPAC, they will freeze taxes at zero percent...

Just in time for the next election!

Je me souviens!

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.