The slash-and-burn rampage the City of Ottawa will undergo in the next few months to cut its debt and budget down to size boggles the mind. This week, the new city council will review a report tabled in November to streamline Ottawa’s governing and advisory bodies. In the name of saving $362,000 annually until 2006, standing committees will be cut from nine to five (the corporate services and economic development, emergency and protective services, health, recreation and social services, planning and environment, and public works, transit and infrastructure services committees will remain).
The city’s advisory committees are expected to be cut from 24 to 18.
One area of municipal governance must be among the proposed cuts. The Ottawa Youth Cabinet, an advisory committee to the city’s health, recreation and social services standing committee and city council, has done little in the last year – or any year for that matter – to merit its presence in City Hall or earn whatever funding it receives.
The 21-member committee, whose meetings have often been bogged down by appointments to the committee and chairperson and vice-chairperson elections, has proved useless.
Its mandate, according to the City of Ottawa’s Web site, includes “reviewing, commenting on and making recommendations” to city council on matters affecting youth and “identifying and removing barriers that hinder youth from making full use of City services.”
Since 2003, the youth cabinet’s recommendations have included such resolutions as “wholeheartedly support(ing) the community effort to keep the Ottawa Senators in Ottawa and writ(ing) a letter to them to this effect” during their January meeting.
They’ve cancelled three of their last 11 monthly meetings with the health, recreation and social services committee and, aside from the ongoing business of replacing outgoing members who do not fulfill their terms, their meetings appear to be occupied mostly by presentations that lead to no action in the community.
Now, Nathan Hauch, the youth representative for Somerset Ward, has left his post, leaving yet another gaping hole on the youth front.
Unfortunately, Hauch was one of the few on the cabinet to actually propose anything useful in the last year — in April, he proposed the youth cabinet endorse the passage of a federal private member’s bill to extend the Criminal Code provision on hate propaganda regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered individuals.
Hopefully, the city’s councillors will come to their senses and cut what needs to be cut most: a committee of quasi-youths who continue to play musical chairs and who serve in part as a public relations stunt for the City of Ottawa. As much as the city needs someone to stand up for the Senators, it could probably save its money by getting rid of the Ottawa Youth Cabinet altogether.
We don’t need more window dressing at City Hall.
— Trish Audette