By Josh McJannett
With the passage of the 2007 city budget, it seems Larry O’Brien has finally found the mayor’s chair. After a shaky first three months in office, Ottawa’s new mayor has rediscovered a measure of the certainty and steadfast confidence that catapulted him past the competition last November.
After weeks of pre-budget posturing from an often hostile council and months of growing scrutiny from pundits and colleagues alike, O’Brien demonstrated his political mettle when councillors passed a compromise budget with little fanfare last month.
By ushering through a budget that breathes new life into his central campaign promise to relieve taxpayers from what had become an annual ritual of higher property taxes, O’Brien has salvaged vital political capital that he’s going to need for the next phase of his tenure.
After years of ballooning city spending, financed by spiking property taxes and little in the way of tangible improvements to services, Ottawans rightly demanded a change in direction when they elected a new mayor to chart a new course.
Had he failed to keep the first of his four-year promise of zero-tax hikes, O’Brien may as well have surrendered any hope of projecting his vision on council’s agenda for the foreseeable future. Failure would have rightly been interpreted as the white flag of weakness to spendthrift councillors unaffected by the electoral tide of dissatisfaction that washed across the city last fall.
This year’s fiscal plan holds the line on property taxes—rates will go up less than one half of a per cent—and avoids cuts to city services. It should be noted, however, that the tools available to the Mayor to craft this piece of creative budgetry – namely a one-time windfall surplus – will not be available next year.
In addition to emptying the city’s reserve fund and spending new water and sewer fees, council also agreed to an unprecedented hike in user fees. By balancing the books on revenues from new user fees on everything from recreation to marriage and death certificates, council is left with little room to manoeuvre next year.
Assuring the budget’s success required the help of veteran councillors like Peter Hume and Doug Thompson who helped shop the budget proposal around a sceptical council. Reaching out for help on council allowed O’Brien to save face on his zero-tax increase pledge and managed to blunt the knives being sharpened by political opponents waiting to pounce on expected cuts
By dropping a proposed transit fare increase from nine to two per cent and preserving existing arts and recreation spending, O’Brien has left little room for criticism from a council that thought they smelled blood only a few short weeks ago.
The mayor even found room for a small increase to the police budget to hire 20 new officers and maintain a level of credibility with law and order voters who helped put him in office.
Despite displaying an impressive demonstration of masterful political strategy, O’Brien faces an enormous challenge. He has yet to prove he has the political capital and steely resolve necessary to tackle the fundamental challenges facing a city in need of a tough, long-term economic strategy.
Voters pointed municipal leaders in a vague new direction last year when they demanded an end to bulging budgets tolerated by a mayor unable or unwilling to put a stop to them.
The onus remains on the newmayor to solve the much larger and more complex challenge of getting city spending under control.
O’Brien won’t have long to celebrate his budget victory, as councillors and city staff gear up for long-range planning sessions next month, where they will be staring down an $80-million budget shortfall for next year alone.
The political challenge for Ottawa’s new reformer mayor remains the paradoxical fact that Ottawa voters handed him the same team of councillors who created the city’s unsustainable spending habit in the first place.
Voters didn’t speak with one voice at the ballot box last November and perhaps understandably, the mayor and council are now having difficulty finding harmony when it comes to balancing city spending and tax relief.
O’Brien’s first budget may not have tackled the city’s creeping spending and certainly neglected the much larger discussion about what services Ottawans can and can’t be asked to provide.
At the very least however, O’Brien demonstrated that he knows how to do what’s necessary to be at the table next year with enough credibility to make the tough decisions Ottawans are demanding of their leaders.
After three months in office with little to show for his decisive victory last November, O’Brien has proven that he’s no longer wandering aimlessly around city hall but at the front of the room and in a position to start realizing his priorities.