Lansdowne Park has been neglected for years. Nevertheless the public of Ottawa (and Ottawa City Council) is being stampeded to quickly agree to a questionable plan for redevelopment of a valuable piece of property.
The documentation on the proposed "partnership" was made available to the public (and apparently to members of City Council) on September 2. Hundreds of pages of documentation were released. By some miracle, certain members of City Council absorbed all this material and instantly came out in support of the project as presented.
The public is supposed to have an opportunity to express its views about the proposal in town hall consultation sessions during the week of September 21 (i.e. 11 days from the moment I write this). However we have no information on where or when these town hall meetings are to occur.
The city is also planning to set up an online forum to capture views from the public. Apparently the timetable would call for that forum to wrap up by early October.
All this feverish activity (if it ever gets underway) is designed to lead to a Council Committee meeting on October 26.
It took OSEG (the proponents of this deal) from October 20,2008 to March 18, 2009 (150 days) to polish up its first proposal submitted to the City. Then it took from April 22, 2009 to September 2 (134 days) to negotiate the second version of their proposal. The negotiations which were to take 60 days took twice as long as planned.
Against this background it is hard to see why we need to rush quickly through the process of public consultations.
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