Ottawa Sun
Published: Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Leadership and taxes: Candidates beware; Platitudes for answers won't cut it with voters

As the clock ticks toward the Oct. 25 municipal election, it is clear there will be no shortage of aspirants for the mayor's job or individual council seats. As of close of business yesterday, there were seven candidates for mayor and 20 folks (including three incumbents) seeking seats in 13 of the city's 23 wards.

This list will grow in the weeks and months ahead, which is necessary to ensure that my December prediction of at least eight new faces around council comes true. Although more choice usually means more research for diligent voters, it looks as though the themes of the 2010 mayoral race will dominate the local council races as well.

In reviewing the embryonic websites of several candidates or their introductory news releases, leadership -- a phrase in danger of overuse -- will be a key rallying call for incumbents and newcomers alike. Either in the form of "re-elect my proven leadership on files X, Y and Z" or "this councillor has sat on council for far too long and has abdicated his/her leadership role on files X, Y and Z, so elect me instead."

As well, property taxes will be front and centre. Terms like fiscal sustainability, long-range financial plans, setting priorities, our debt burden and others will become interchangeable for the one question all voters will ask: Can we afford everything the city wants to do? And the price tag, even over a generation of taxpayers, is daunting.

Look at the big-ticket projects under consideration: A mass transit package at $2.1 billion; a central library that could top $200 million; a $252-million sewage cleanup plan; a bus garage worth $97 million; an undisclosed figure for future technology purchases; and some city money for an anticipated $40-million trade show facility. Yes, some of these projects will have federal and provincial funding, but the remaining costs to be siphoned from our property taxes are still big chunks to swallow. Moreover, this list doesn't include the issue of compensation creep due to new hires, negotiated wage settlements or future arbitration awards. And the city's wage bill is its largest yearly expense.

Given that most city residents are lucky if they receive inflationary wage increases and that tax hikes have been at least twice the rate of inflation over the past three city budgets, you have an instant recipe for voter anger and frustration. And to this simmering mix you can add the problems of OC Transpo -- service uncertainty, Christmas holiday snafus, and the 2008-2009 strike -- to bring voter angst to a full-fledged boil.

If there is a sleeper issue, it could be the city's approach to growth management. As I have written repeatedly since the city adopted its 20/20 strategy under the first Chiarelli administration -- and perpetuated in the recent Official Plan review -- its targets for urban density intensification have been overly ambitious and remain largely unrealized. Yes, urban sprawl is a bad thing, but intensification doesn't get a whole lot of love either when you tell someone a new highrise is going up in their neighbourhood.

The issues bin is filling up faster than anyone's green bin and it's only February, so candidates beware, the issues are well known and platitudes for answers won't cut it with voters.