Priorities! Priorities! Priorities! The tradeoffs that we're facing today

1. Zoning By-law

The City is executing its Official Plan and further recent Provincial Policy Statements and Bill 23 by writing out how it will grow and intensify in the Comprehensive Zoning Bylaw Review. If there was a Venn Diagram for how important but how dry this subject is, it would look like this:   

But it really matters! So let me zero in on the part of it that I think can catch your attention: PARKING. The Zoning By-law determines where people can park.  

Do you want people to be able to park in their backyards so that we don’t have to see cars from the front? Widen their front driveways so there's less street parking? Or park on the street because we want to preserve the greenspace of the lawn?  

Think about stormwater management vs. car storage. Paved parking means more water run-off onto the street, onto their neighbours’ property, maybe into basements. When we allow expanded parking areas, we have to consider snow melt and rainwater, too. 

So where do the cars go? Would you be ok with smaller neighbourhood parking garages that served some of the nearby residents? Who would maintain and pay for that garage? Would it be public or private? 

Right now, I think the option of allowing people to widen their driveways seems to be popular, and it’s been happening contravening the bylaw anyhow. If a maximum percentage of a lot was preserved as greenspace that included both the back and front yards, I think it could be managed reasonably. What would you do? Let me know! 

2. City revenues

I am increasingly concerned that we aren’t having a real conversation at the City of Ottawa about what things cost. For example, we were handed 4 new Asset Management Plans last year from the City. Those plans estimate what we need to do in terms of road resurfacing, sidewalk maintenance, public building and facilities upkeep, sewer and water replacement, etc. The absolutely necessary costs of keeping the city running.  

 The forecasted spending over the next 10 years exceeds total planned capital budgets by $3 billion so we need to find that money. Federal or provincial transfers? Increased property taxes? There is no doubt that this is a challenge felt by municipalities across the country and that the solution isn’t solely in property taxation, you can see the numbers greatly exceed what is possible.  

But my concern is that when we get to budget season, we begin by setting a tax cap that is a percentage of last year’s budget, rather than determining what it costs to manage the city and working from there. We have been doing our budgeting like this for over 12 years, making incremental changes from the previous year with no larger adjustments to a dramatically changing outside world. This leaves us underfunded year after year, and it means our most critical infrastructure is crumbling. Ever wonder why the City is so slow to repave your street? Replace wading pools in parks? That’s part of the reason. 

Later this year City Council will be presented with a series of financial strategies to address that shortfall that will include, inevitably, selling off assets.  

I know for some properties this will have been a long time coming but I also worry that we will be criticized for not maintaining our assets over the last 2 decades so that we might be able to hold onto more public assets.  

Similarly, our road resurfacing budget still focuses on arterial road at the expense of local roads. When asked, the Roads team says that they could do more with more budget and ramp up construction over the next 5 years to bring local roads into a state of good repair. In the meantime, further delays in maintenance compound residents’ frustration and personal expense.  

What do you think about the idea of paying more now instead of more later, or do you think we are taking the right approach? 

3. Transportation Master Plan   

The City of Ottawa, post-amalgamation, is now responsible for 6000 km of road. This means we are expected to maintain them, to clear snow from them, to salt and sweep them. Our road services budget for 2025 was over $1.4 billion, which is roughly 25% of our annual budget. The Transportation Master Plan coming to Committee and Council in 2025 will set new mode share targets across our city and suggest that we invest our capital dollars in transportation infrastructure to support those mode share targets, meaning that we will invest in infrastructure that supports more people moving from their cars to transit, cycling and walking for different trips. My feeling is that we need to set aggressive targets for areas that have nearby services to do so, so that those trips needed to be taken by car are clear of people who didn’t need to take a car that day and could walk or take a train. I worry when we talk about a balanced approach to transportation planning in that it costs us money every time we don’t invest in real transportation choice for people: when more people use their cars because they have no real other options, we then have more pressure to spend in our most expensive budget area.  

I would suggest that our neighbourhoods inside the Greenbelt would love more walkability if we had the local shops and services we needed. The future of our transportation network must work hand in hand with our new zoning (see above) to create greater density and more residents that can shop locally and make local businesses viable. 

Some of the most satisfying parts of the job have been solving local problems. Our office loves digging into the details and closing a case. But if I reconnect to the reasons I ran for office, it was to support building a City that we could all be proud of. There is beauty in the small things, but municipalities are behemoths. The larger questions of policy and fiscal management are coming forward, and I believe that I was elected by residents to stay curious, thoughtful, and sometimes challenge the status quo. But I would like to hear from you too. Email me at [email protected] to offer feedback on the Zoning Bylaw, City Revenues and taxation, transportation, and any other policy priorities that are on your mind. We spent the last 2 years in office building a strong foundation and now we are looking forward to expanding our dialogue with our neighbours in College Ward.