A member of the mayor-appointed panel to examine how well the city is run says she's not surprised by city councillors' reactions to the damning document.
“Although we made the point this isn’t about the current mayor and council, obviously we struck a few tender nerves,” says Katherine Graham, the dean of Carleton University’s faculty of public affairs.
“We weren’t naive in putting this forward,” she adds. “We wanted to get the public’s attention and say, ‘It doesn’t have to be this way.’”
The 36-page final report by the Mayor’s Taskforce on Governance says city council is ineffective and fails to provide the strategic leadership the city needs.
Without some drastic changes, the report says, Ottawa could become a dysfunctional city plagued by poor long-term planning and rising costs, thus running the risk of “sleepwalking into its future.”
The harsh words aren’t sitting well with some councillors.
“If I thought that committee came to council often, if they actually had some hands-on experience about what council did, I would feel happier about their comments,” says Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes.
Her colleague, Rideau-Goulbourn Coun. Glenn Brooks, adds, “There is hardly a business in the world that doesn’t have some part of it that’s dysfunctional and those are the parts you try to improve.”
Members of the task force interviewed the mayor, 18 councillors, senior city staff and governance experts, but Graham says they did not attend any council or committee meetings as part of the review.
Holmes says the recommendation to create an executive committee on council serves the mayor’s desire for more power.
“The mayor has found it difficult to be just one vote on council,” she says.
However, Graham explains the mayor would chair the executive committee, which would comprise of councillors elected by their peers.
The committee would order city business and articulate the city’s vision, but a majority of councillors could overrule any committee decision.
“(Councillors) are clinging to the notion that a $2-billion-plus corporation with thousands of employees can be run communally,” Graham says. “It’s not a viable proposition.”
Governance has been a hot topic as of late.
In addition to the task force’s report, city staffers are currently preparing their own reports as part of the city’s mid-term governance review.
The reports, to be released next month, will look at a range of similar issues, including committee structure, city-wide strategic planning and the operation of council meetings.
Holmes says she doesn't expect council will proceed with any of the task force’s recommendations until the staff reports are submitted.
In the meantime, Brooks has put forward his own model for governing the city.
He is proposing a boroughs model in which his rural ward would have its own council to rule on local issues within a framework set by city council.
“It’s communities governing communities as prescribed by council,” Brooks says, adding the model could motivate more residents to get involved in local issues.
Graham says the idea isn’t new, but it could work in Ottawa.
That is, as long as there's the right balance between the decentralized model and a focused, city-wide approach.
To do that, she suggests wedge-shaped boroughs that integrate the city's rural and suburban areas.
Brooks didn't agree with parts of the task force’s report.
However, he did say it was a good idea for the mayor to appoint the panel.
“They have raised the issues to the level of public discussion and I think that’s positive.”