Ottawa's municipal ward boundaries

[jleiper]

Originally Posted by Proof Sheet

Having dealt with the two Councillors you named and also rural councillors, I can say that sometimes Councillors get way too involved in the micro details of projects and don't know when to leave it up to the professional staff who are experts in these things.

I think you're downplaying the work of rural councillors.

As long as some decisions like land-use planning decisions are subject to a vote of Council, politicians will get their hands dirty on those. We're pushed by constituents to get involved even in the fine details of proposals by residents who ultimately elect us. A politician who limits their involvement to selling the perspective of City staff has a very short shelf-life, as we've seen over and over again in election results.

That's not a bad thing. While I have tremendous respect for our staff across the organization, there's a reason municipal government is set up with "civilians" having the final say. Residents' involvement through their elected representatives often end up creating better outcomes by pushing hard against constraints and inertia. There aren't actually that many staff working in disciplines at the city where you can absolutely say they have an expertise that is objectively out of the purview of most residents. Engineers, for example, are one. Public health nurses another. They're few and far between.

I'll give one example. There's a building nearing completion at Parkdale and Wellington. One of the preparatory works for that was to install a new Hydro vault on Wellington, which necessitated closing the sidewalk for an extended period. I got a head's-up that this was going to happen, and was alarmed. The Parkdale-Rosemount stretch is a very long one, and the sidewalk traversed by probably thousands of people a day. Residents of Grace Manor frequently have visitors who like pushing them in their wheelchairs to the Parkdale Market. Closing the sidewalk for a couple of months would have a major impact.

Rather than simply accept that this was inevitable, I went back and forth with traffic staff for a couple of weeks looking at options. Finally, I asked them to join me on site. As we spoke I was looking around, and I asked whether we couldn't just remove the fence at the corner, put in a cheap and temporary ramp over a curb, and detour pedestrians through the parking lot. The first reaction was that that was private property, so could be challenging. I pointed out that the entire reason for the project was to permit a re-development of that lot. The end result was that a nice wide accessible pedestrian detour was created through the parking lot parallel to the sidewalk (maybe three times the normal sidewalk width) with virtually no extra effort other than to put up some Moduloc, unbolt a piece of fence, and put in a few feet of temporary asphalt, as well as securing the landowner's permission - the same landowner who would be benefiting from the project.

Residents and politicians bring experience and valid perspectives to the work of the City. If there were truly a class of cognoscenti with unassailable expertise we'd simply set up a technocracy and remove the public from decision-making altogether. But that's not the case. Planners built Pruitt Igoe. They can and should be questioned, even on the small things. Residents are right to expect that their elected reps will facilitate that interchange of ideas and perspectives. The more involved and engaged residents are, the more involved and engaged their elected officials can and should be.