Questions are increasingly being raised by a number of groups on city council’s awareness of its environmental programs.
Sabrina Bowmen, of Ecology Ottawa, says an audit on the city’s environmental programs revealed a lack of communication and overall management by the City of Ottawa.
“There seems to be a lack of vision and a lack of commitment to innovation,” she says.
City Council, she says, doesn’t seem to be aware of its five environmental commitments or receive yearly updates on its environmental programs.
In 2003 the City of Ottawa created a growth management strategy after substantive public input, titled ‘Window on Ottawa 2020,’ containing key environmental commitments. The document sets city departments the goal of protecting and conserving green-space, resources and groundwater, as well as improving air quality and ecosystem design and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Bowmen says it’s important the public knows about the issues raised by the audit because many citizens helped to build the city’s growth management strategy.
Last Thursday, the city’s Environmental Advisory Committee heard the results of an environmental program audit from the city’s auditor general. The audit revealed success for a number of programs but substantial problems on the overall strategy and departmental communication.
Committee chair Michael Lascelles says it was quite revealing. “The audit identified major challenges on moving forward on the five commitments,” he says. Lascelles questions how the commitments can be realized without a guide for city staff to follow. “For me if you don’t have a blueprint, how can you build a house,” he asks.
Alain Lalonde, the City of Ottawa’s auditor general says he was concerned with the level of awareness by city staff of the environmental plan.
“Often when we discussed [Window on Ottawa 20/20] with staff, they were not aware of what was or wasn’t in the document,” says Lalonde.
“You can’t blame city staff itself,” says Bowmen. She says providing leadership and direction to staff is the responsibility of councillors. “It’s imperative on them to ask about the five commitments and whether they are being achieved,” she says.
David Miller, an urban planner with the City of Ottawa, says city management is trying to work on building an overall plan and strategy to meet the city’s environmental goals by running workshops for staff that oversee environmental programs.
The plan called a “logic model” will be completed by the end of the year but it will take untill 2010 to develop a roadmap for implementation.
Bowmen says city council needs to receive yearly updates on what environmental commitments are being achieved. This will help at budget time to allocate resources effectively, she says.
The advisory committee plans to dedicate a couple of members to studying the audit results to be able to form recommendations to councilors at an upcoming Planning and Environment Committee meeting.
“Let’s get a coherent vision,” says Lascelles, adding that his committee will appear before councillors to suggest ways to improve environmental programs.