Budget doesn’t match citizens’ priorities
Mayor Jim Watson used to have a reputation as a savvy politician and a strong communicator. It was difficult to see those skills on display during the mayor’s hourlong, rambling budget speech Wednesday.
Watson said the right thing off the top, when he noted that the city must set a limit to the number of priorities it can achieve, adding “If we have 100 priorities, we really have no priorities.”
Exactly, but the mayor then delivered a 9,000-word speech on his priorities, an oration that touched on everything from wild parsnip eradication to parking-lot paving to specific culverts the city will improve next year. Yes, culverts.
What a lost opportunity to communicate clearly and concisely with Ottawans about the things they think are most important.
Instead, the mayor started out talking about housing, which might have been relevant if he were announcing a plan to reduce development charges to make new homes more affordable for all. Instead, he talked about spending $15 million to build about 250 social housing units. That’s a dribble compared to a waiting list that typically tops 10,000 households. The city simply doesn’t have enough money to have any real leverage on that issue.
Typically, priority setting implies doing more of the things that are important and less of those that are not. Apparently everything the city does is important. While there are tiny savings promised in policing and public health, the mayor didn’t point to any reductions in the city’s core operation. Must be the most efficient government of all time.
The public has priorities, even if the mayor does not. For most, top of the list would be fixing OC Transpo, repairing our decrepit roads, and improving the quality and quantity of policing. There is also public concern about the alarming number of times that the city has no ambulance available for the next call. The mayor’s response to all those issues is simple to summarize — stick with the plan for slow, incremental improvement.
The city’s roads are terrible. The response is to keep plugging away at a plan that’s supposed to make them OK in seven years. It’s noteworthy that the city will spend almost $10 million fixing potholes next year. That’s not something good. Potholes are far more likely on roads that are already crumbling.
Ottawa police discontinued neighbourhood policing because years of under-hiring left them short of bodies for patrol. Now, the police are getting back to what they should do under the direction of a new chief. This is a chance for big improvement, but the city will hire 30 new officers, exactly the number it hired last year and the number it would have hired if things were going great.
The shortage of ambulances is not entirely the city’s fault. There is an unacceptable delay in getting ambulances unloaded at hospitals and back into service. That’s gone on for years.
The city’s response is to hire 14 paramedics, the same number it planned to hire anyway.
Only OC Transpo is getting some unexpected additional funding and that’s more of a panic reaction than a plan. The city will press 40 buses back into service, not because that’s what’s required to improve the lack of reliability that is crippling transit, but because that’s the number on hand.
One would have thought transit would be the first thing the mayor would have spent time addressing in his speech. Instead, it took him about 6,000 words to get to it.
On the same day that the mayor promised tiny tweaks to the status quo, Peter Sloly, the new police chief, spoke about his budget and said, “One of the hardest things to do is to stop doing things. We keep adding on as opposed to taking out.” The chief plans to stop doing things that can no longer be justified.
Maybe Sloly should take the mayor out for a coffee and give him a few tips.
Randall Denley is an Ottawa political commentator and author. Learn about his new book Spiked at randalldenley. com. Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com