East Ottawa Star
Published: Friday, October 2, 2009

Council needs to be restructured

While I was often at odds with the approach of former Mayor Bob Chiarelli, there is no discounting the control and influence that he – and his staff – could exert to keep the shenanigans and personal pettiness of city council’s unique personalities to a tolerable minimum.

 And Bob Chiarelli’s recent comments about the state and tenor of city politics are bang on. The crux of his argument is simple and irrefutable. There is only one member of the council that is elected citywide and that is the mayor. And only the mayor’s role – both official and ceremonial – serves to reinforce this citywide perspective and in theory, result in a broad, inclusive and future-oriented paradigm of representation from the mayor.

As our city grows and we compete nationally and globally with other cities for infrastructure funds, private sector investment, commercial development, human talent, major events, etc., it is self-evident we need others around the council table who share this more holistic perspective on the city’s daily debates and their long-term ramifications for our future.

In fairness, this is not a swipe at our present crop of 23 councillors; they are creatures of the system that gets them, and keeps them, elected. A new community centre, traffic calming measures on local streets, stepped-up bylaw enforcement in a noisy park and seed funding for the local arts group will always yield more votes than rational decisions on underutilized local bus routes or consolidation/closing of the outdated one- or two-truck local fire station.

Ironically, their title is city councillor, not ward councillor, but I digress.

Chiarelli has offered up the old, but tried and true, Board of Control model whose members would be elected citywide and presumably make decisions on citywide issues such as finances, transportation, water, waste management, etc. The problem with this approach is that it will require councillors to give up control of these files so it is basically DOA (dead on arrival).

The other intriguing option is the idea of councillors-at-large elected from across the city, with or without a Board of Control.

To add to this mix, I off my long-held opinion of reducing the size of council with councillors elected from the eight federal ridings that are part of our city’s legal footprint. With some tinkering we could have eight wards with two councillors elected per ward plus a mayor.

The larger wards combined with reduced numbers would force broader coalitions to form – representing more of the city – to get the required nine votes minimum to move issues through council. Combined with a streamlined standing committee structure (finance, planning, infrastructure, services) things could work better.

There is a deep-rooted desire to make council work better, but the biggest obstacle to change is council as an institution in and of itself. Real change in how council works could be the winning ticket in next year’s policy platforms from candidates for mayor and council.