First and foremost, has the city done a good job not a great job of eliminating unnecessary, duplicate/triplicate etc processes? What has the city done to minimize the silos? I rarely see or interact with the city and come away thinking...wow what a modern, innovative anything/anybody. Ever notice that there are lots of city pickups parked on road edges with zero current work in the area? I'll bet they are gathering data for some project decades in the future which is useless because that work will have to be redone as to be relevant to the future situation. Ever notice how whenever the city works on anything, traffic lights, pothole patching, grass cutting, park maintenance, arborists (who always seem to have a contractor or 2 helping/working......pick anything and if it was done by non-city staff there would be typically a 50% reduction in staff involved and the same work outcome in a similar if not faster timeframe. When you have 17,000 staff involving less of them to do the same work would yield massive $ savings and/or allow the city to do more work with the same number of staff. Yes the province takes a piece of the municipal tax pound of flesh but the city unfailingly gets it's 2.5-3% annual increase in municipal tax in addition to the multitude fees, stand alone rates for water, sewer, fire, police, garbage etc and some of those get increases well in excess of 3%. When they switched from pay per use water to the latest revenue model where the majority of the bill is fixed costs no matter the usage, my water bill more than doubled. The latest idea for funding is taxing the water runoff from impermeable surfaces which the city claims overtaxes the sewer system. Hmmm, just how much runoff is there from 6,000 kms of city roadways? And yet we hear the city grouse about not being able to keep up the infrastructure.
Fiscal situation: involve the federal government to pressure the provincial governments to change law so that municipalities all across the country get a bigger cut of the federal tax pie and new ways to be able to raise essential funds besides property taxes. Somehow tie income to property tax? (I am not an economist - I just know that added fees and smaller ways to raise income so property taxes do not have to go up to the levels we really need as fast as we now MUST raise them.)
About municipal dumps: I think the City of Ottawa as well as all other municipalities have another option not discussed: We do NOT have to assume that we just have to accept the amount of single-use packaging or allow construction waste when there ARE ways federal and provincial laws which could be applied to stop, for example, single use plastics. Or to insist that when buildings need to be replaced, deconstruction must be the first option so recycled windows, beams, frames, and other building materials can be salvaged.
Also - a new dump would presumably be further away from city centre. Think of all the fuel used to truck this to a new site! Emissions! Same with incinerating - to spend that much money means we would constantly have to feed the thing which allows people to continue newer habits of ordering in and buying lots of fast food take-out. These habits are raising our emissions and destroying our environment globally.
re. Osgoode by-election: I checked out the Greely Community Association's website and there seems to be a lack of transparency and accountability. Ms. Skalsky was acclaimed as president at the 2023 AGM and according to the website there hasn't been an AGM since. https://greelycommunity.ca/minutes/
First and foremost, has the city done a good job not a great job of eliminating unnecessary, duplicate/triplicate etc processes? What has the city done to minimize the silos? I rarely see or interact with the city and come away thinking...wow what a modern, innovative anything/anybody. Ever notice that there are lots of city pickups parked on road edges with zero current work in the area? I'll bet they are gathering data for some project decades in the future which is useless because that work will have to be redone as to be relevant to the future situation. Ever notice how whenever the city works on anything, traffic lights, pothole patching, grass cutting, park maintenance, arborists (who always seem to have a contractor or 2 helping/working......pick anything and if it was done by non-city staff there would be typically a 50% reduction in staff involved and the same work outcome in a similar if not faster timeframe. When you have 17,000 staff involving less of them to do the same work would yield massive $ savings and/or allow the city to do more work with the same number of staff. Yes the province takes a piece of the municipal tax pound of flesh but the city unfailingly gets it's 2.5-3% annual increase in municipal tax in addition to the multitude fees, stand alone rates for water, sewer, fire, police, garbage etc and some of those get increases well in excess of 3%. When they switched from pay per use water to the latest revenue model where the majority of the bill is fixed costs no matter the usage, my water bill more than doubled. The latest idea for funding is taxing the water runoff from impermeable surfaces which the city claims overtaxes the sewer system. Hmmm, just how much runoff is there from 6,000 kms of city roadways? And yet we hear the city grouse about not being able to keep up the infrastructure.
Fiscal situation: involve the federal government to pressure the provincial governments to change law so that municipalities all across the country get a bigger cut of the federal tax pie and new ways to be able to raise essential funds besides property taxes. Somehow tie income to property tax? (I am not an economist - I just know that added fees and smaller ways to raise income so property taxes do not have to go up to the levels we really need as fast as we now MUST raise them.)
About municipal dumps: I think the City of Ottawa as well as all other municipalities have another option not discussed: We do NOT have to assume that we just have to accept the amount of single-use packaging or allow construction waste when there ARE ways federal and provincial laws which could be applied to stop, for example, single use plastics. Or to insist that when buildings need to be replaced, deconstruction must be the first option so recycled windows, beams, frames, and other building materials can be salvaged.
Also - a new dump would presumably be further away from city centre. Think of all the fuel used to truck this to a new site! Emissions! Same with incinerating - to spend that much money means we would constantly have to feed the thing which allows people to continue newer habits of ordering in and buying lots of fast food take-out. These habits are raising our emissions and destroying our environment globally.
re. Osgoode by-election: I checked out the Greely Community Association's website and there seems to be a lack of transparency and accountability. Ms. Skalsky was acclaimed as president at the 2023 AGM and according to the website there hasn't been an AGM since. https://greelycommunity.ca/minutes/