Consultants call for extra council seat
It could get cozier on “councillors' row” at Ottawa City Hall in two years — and more expensive for municipal taxpayers.
A proposal up for debate on Tuesday calls for city council to increase by one ward, requiring another politician at city hall.
The finance and economic development committee will hear deputations before sending a recommendation to council.
The number of wards is proposed to increase to 24, as recommended by consultants Beate Bowron Etcetera, Hemson Consulting Ltd. and The Davidson Group.
With the mayor, it would be a council of 25 municipal politicians elected in 2022 under the consultants' recommendation, which goes against a 2019 council direction that preferred to keep the number at 23 wards.
And what will the provincial government think?
“Our government believes it is in everyone's interest that municipalities are efficient and respect taxpayers' hard-earned money,” Adam Wilson, Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark's director of communications, said in an email. “As municipalities continue to recover from the impacts of COVID-19 and adjust to new fiscal realities, we urge them to prioritize efficient use of taxpayer dollars.”
City clerk Rick O'Connor wrote to Clark in 2019, giving him a heads-up about the ward boundary study and about council's intent to keep the number of wards at 23. The courtesy letter followed the provincial Progressive Conservative government's move to cut the number of wards in the City of Toronto's to 25 from 47.
Clark thanked O'Connor for the information in a reply letter, noting: “Local governments deliver critical services to residents. It is in everyone's interest that they are efficient and respect taxpayers' hard-earned money. I therefore encourage the city to consider this perspective as part of the review process.”
O'Connor's team crunched the numbers. From a purely bottom-line perspective, an extra ward would mean adding another councillor with an annual salary of roughly $145,000 starting in 202223 and an office budget of around $275,000, plus $72,000 in benefits for political staff. About $100,000 in modifications would be required on councillors' row to squeeze in a 24th office. A traffic-calming budget might need to be established for a 24th ward.
Meanwhile, the city is facing a significant budget deficit in 2021, and potentially beyond, because of COVID-19. The city needs upper-government money to send bailout money.
However, the ward boundary exercise has been less about how much it would cost taxpayers and more about balancing political representation on council.
The city needs to redraw the ward maps to account for population changes since the last boundary update was in 2006. The representation levels among the current wards are lopsided.
The work to redraw the lines is impossible if one of the goals is to avoid controversy. The population levels need to be distributed evenly across the urban, suburban and rural areas while respecting the historic nature, geographic landmarks and language demographics in the communities.
Another twist is the political aspirations of current councillors, many of whom, if not all, would be running for re-election under new ward boundaries in 2022. The majority of council didn't like the shortlist of five boundary options in July and directed the city to spend another $16,000 to have consultants create a sixth option, which is the one being recommended to council.
The most controversial part of the redrawn boundaries might be in the east where the rural area of the current Cumberland ward would be fused with the current Osgoode ward, creating one geographically huge ward at 812 square kilometres. The number of rural wards would go to three from four.
The recommended ward map has Cumberland village, but not Sarsfield, combined with much of Orléans. A previous option for a 24-ward map put Cumberland village and Sarsfield into a new rural-east mega-ward.
Sarsfield, like Cumberland village, is currently part of Cumberland ward.
Caroline Etter, president of Sarsfield Community Association, can't believe the village would be in a different ward than Cumberland village and that the city would reduce the number of rural wards when residents have advocated for maintaining the number of rural voices on council.
“We're not happy,” Etter said. “We're very disappointed with the report that was prepared by the consultants.”
Etter said representation is at risk of suffering in Sarsfield when it comes to francophone services.
She said it's possible that, under the proposed ward structure, the largely francophone village could be served by a councillor who isn't bilingual.
“Historically, we were part of the old Cumberland township,” Etter said. “I really don't understand this move at all.”
Communities in Osgoode ward also aren't thrilled about the plan.
Grace Thrasher, president of the Manotick Village and Community Association, said residents who lament the 2001 municipal amalgamation are watching rural influence diminish in the municipal government.
“The rural voice has less and less clout at city hall,” she said.
Thrasher said the focus on keeping the rural wards strictly rural, rather than pulling in parts of suburban communities, is one bright spot in the proposed ward boundary map.
Frustration is spread throughout the city, with some communities in the urban area also dismayed by the proposed ward boundaries.
Residents of McKellar Park are annoyed that the neighbourhood would be chopped from the current Kitchissippi ward map and moved west into Bay ward.
“It's an identity thing as much as anything,” said Sybil Powell, president of the McKellar Park Community Association.
“We identify with the area east of us. We think of ourselves a neighbourhood that's semi-downtown.”
Mayor Jim Watson hasn't shown an interest in increasing the number of wards and, in fact, advocated before his election in 2010 to reduce the size of council and institute a borough governance system for hyper-local decision-making.
Watson's motion this past July to have consultants draft a sixth option reiterated council's 2019 direction to maintain the current number of wards.
As for where Watson stands on the issue now, he wasn't ready to say on Monday.
“Mayor Watson looks forward to hearing from the public on the ward boundary issue at (the finance committee meeting) on Tuesday morning,” said Mathieu Gravel, the mayor's director of issues and outreach.