Two warm takes about the last meeting of Ottawa's City Council
Dear new councillor, vote on what's in front of you.
Having recently found myself with a lot more free time (and a lot less income), I was able to listen to Wednesday's meeting of Ottawa City Council (April 26, 2023). Here are two quick takes inspired by the noticeable undertone of mistrust for city staff coming from some newly elected councillors.
Take 1: Item 12.2 Cultural heritage evaluation of the former CP railway bridge.
This item proposed to amend a Built Heritage Committee decision to conduct a cultural heritage evaluation on the rail bridge without first conducting an Environmental Assessment, against staff recommendation. Councillor King, the chair of the Built Heritage Committee, brought the item to council for debate, seeking to have the committee decision overturned.
The last council had a tendency to forget that they were allowed to use their judgment and vote against staff recommendations, especially on matters of planning and development. This may have led some to believe that the city was run by unelected bureaucrats rather than elected officials. Maybe that’s why some new members of council are afraid to rely on staff recommendations to inform their votes. Their intentions may be pure, but when it comes to questioning the corrosion index on a certain type of alloy nuts on the light rail vehicles, it’s starting to veer into the ridiculous.
Wednesday, during council’s consideration of the heritage value of the former Canadian Pacific Railway bridge, Councillor Kelly suggested that supporting a staff recommendation to conduct an environmental assessment on the bridge was giving more power to unelected staff than to members of committee. This distrust of staff shows poor understanding of City Council’s governance role and a lack of awareness of what keeps our toilet and drinking water flowing through different pipes (answer: it’s not because someone with a political science degree designed it.)
Wednesday’s consideration of the CP Railway bridge might have risen to council in unconventional ways but it was a vote on conducting an environmental assessment on a piece of infrastructure built in 1898 that still carries living people over a river. I don’t think it’s fair or wise to frame it as an attack on the integrity of the appointed members of the Built Heritage Committee rolled into a power-play by city staff. Council’s role is to direct staff. Staff are the subject matter experts. Council tells staff what to do and staff takes care of how to do it. I seriously question the judgment of anyone who wouldn’t pause to ask a civil engineer for their recommendation on the matter. Giving staff direction to conduct an environmental assessment on a bridge before they conduct a cultural heritage evaluation is exactly what a councillor’s job is about. It’s also why items rise to City Council for consideration rather than ending at committee.
Take 2: Item 17.1 Transportation Master Plan Part 1 (Motion to defer)
The new members of council have a tic, probably born out of insecurity in their new role, to delay or defer every file of consequence “until we can know more about it.”
Students: “knowing more about it” is your job before you get to the exam. Stop asking for extensions because you didn’t study.
This touches once again on the lack of trust and understanding of city staff’s role in implementing council’s directions. It implies that staff goes to council with half-baked ideas and incomplete reports.
City staff come to council with a report when they need a council decision. Wrapped into every report is a question: this or that? Yay or nay? Every staff report is a decision point. There can be several decision points in a file of the size and consequence of the Transportation Master Plan (TMP). Getting Council’s approval on a set of policy directions and priorities before conducting a detailed analysis is not a sign that the TMP is half-baked. It’s a sign that staff need direction before investing the time and resources required to conduct a detailed analysis. A councillor’s job is to vote on what is in front of them. They can vote yay or nay. But to keep asking for extensions is unbecoming. If a councillor doesn’t understand the stakes, the trade-offs, or the “why” of a report, it is upon them to do their homework, make calls, and figure it out.
Every new term of Council brings up long term files that straddle two (or more) terms. When I started working at City Hall, the Château Laurier and the Salvation Army files were well underway and new councillors had to make decisions based on previous votes, often feeling like they had to choose between two bad options. That’s the game they play. The temptation to rewrite history, to right the wrongs of their predecessors is a powerful one but it comes with its own set of ethical and legal conundrums. That’s why reconsideration votes are so tightly regulated.
A city moves like a container ship: slowly and widely, through a series of relatively small adjustments. It’s the hard and sometimes tedious work of governance.