Catching up...part 2

My speech text from October 26 continues...

So that is my abbreviated history of the Lansdowne issue. What does it say to me about the conduct of civic affairs in Ottawa?

My first concern is that we no longer have any idea who is running things at City Hall. Council passed a motion to run a competition. Staff began work on such a project. Then the competition was shut down without reference to Council. The City Manager has since apologized to Council saying that it would have been more appropriate to seek Council’s approval.

When questioned the City Manager says the decision to stop work on the competition was his alone. While I think it very gentlemanly of the City Manager to assume that responsibility, it is widely believed that the Mayor (to whom the City Manager reports) prompted the suspension of the competition process.

Indeed there was an exchange at a Council meeting in which the Councillor for this ward asked "who is running things around here?" and the Mayor responded "I am".

There is some concern that the Mayor is not attuned to the procedures of public administration.

At any rate, whether it is the Mayor’s doing or not, the process under which the Lansdowne project has been advanced has raised many questions.

The normal practice in undertaking a significant capital project would be to issue a Request for Proposals for specific work to be undertaken at City expense. This has not been done.

It has been maintained that the City is in receipt of an unsolicited proposal for redevelopment of Lansdowne Park.

You might question whether this is really unsolicited, considering that the Mayor called for it in public statements, considering the competitive process was suspended in anticipation of a proposal (and that process remained suspended for 3 ½ months awaiting the proposal), and considering that the City held the October 20 proposal until March 6, possibly discussing it with the proponent, before asking that the proposal be made definitive for examination.

The City has a procedure for dealing with unsolicited proposals called the "Ottawa Option" That procedure would lead to a form of competition. That procedure has not been followed.

It is suggested that the Lansdowne project is a public/private partnership (commonly called a P3). The city has a procedure for P3's. That procedure calls for competition among private groups interested in forming a partnership with the City. That procedure is not being followed for the Lansdowne project.

No it seems to me that the City of Ottawa is blithely sailing off into the Twilight Zone. There are no procedures; you can do whatever seems expedient.

I don’t think we have had a meaningful debate on the matter at hand. Considering the money involved, Council debate has been less than satisfying.

Of course I can’t blame the Councillors too much, considering the way they have received the material for debate. Normally Councillors and their staff receive detailed documentation in advance of a meeting of Standing Committee. The public also is given an opportunity to be informed because documentation is posted on the internet for all to read. In the case of the Lansdowne, and the wider stadium discussion involving the Kanata project, the documents were only released as the meeting was underway. In the Glebe Report I criticized some Councillors as Olympic-class speed-readers – they came out in effusive praise of the hundreds of pages of documentation they had received minutes before.

But Council had been asked to decide whether a stadium was a priority. It proved possible to sidestep that question and declare that Lansdowne was the city’s priority stadium proposal. This was a convenient way of avoiding any debate about whether other city activities would be sacrificed to permit investment in a stadium project.

Even if Council had decided that a stadium at Lansdowne was the highest priority for the city, even if we stopped purifying the water, inoculating against the flu, halted transit service and stopped paying the police, it would have been possible to consider whether there are alternatives to the plan presented by the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group.

Instead the public discussion in Ottawa has been on the basis of support the Lansdowne Live plan or leave Lansdowne to rot forever.

Even worse, some of the debate has been cast as good citizens of Ottawa versus the selfish inhabitants of the Glebe. The positions of the Glebe Community Association have been distorted. The concerns of the residents living next to the project have been dismissed as illegitimate. Surely it is possible to carry out a discussion about a city issue without getting into a blame game. We have enough divisiveness in this city and should be building bridges rather than emphasizing our differences.

I am concerned that our City which should be acting as a neutral party is deeply engaged in this arrangement. This is not the first time that this has happened. You may recall that the City became a party to the development of land between Kanata and Stittsville. It was in the City’s interest (here I should emphasize short-term interest) to minimize the dangers of flooding and to obscure the possibility that west Kanata development was possible only because of questionable investigation of water levels around the Carp River.

In the much ballyhooed Lansdowne Park Partnership, the City saw itself as a partner, committed to the product of the negotiations held over the summer of 2009.

Finally, I worry about the lack of investigative journalism evident in this matter. Susan Sherring of the Sun has asked sensible questions and Maria Cook of the Citizen has followed up to find out if supposed participants in the partnership have really signed on. The CBC has attempted to remain neutral. But none of the journalists has gone very far in their investigations. I recommended to a reporter from the Citizen that they bring an accounting firm to look at the assumptions in the business plan. Nothing has happened. I guess if I had a business which took out full page ads in the Saturday papers we might get more action.

So in summary my concerns are:
- Is our elected Council running the city or has city staff seized control?
- Do we follow any established procedures in conducting city business or do we do whatever pleases us at the moment?
- Is there some impediment which prevents Council from debating and deciding on meaningful questions?
- Are members of Council being manipulated?
- Is there some reason we fail to consider alternatives to single proposals before us?
- Must the public debate be on a "take it or leave it" basis?
- Do we need to denigrate our fellow citizens to engage in debate?
- Has the City has lost its role of neutrality? Has it become a "partner" incapable of playing a regulatory role?
- Have all our investigative journalists departed the scene, appointed to the Senate or otherwise removed and silenced?

So with all that, over to you. What do you think?