Mayor Jim Watson’s plan to cut council had too heavy a downside.
Mayor Jim Watson might not get a leaner council, but he will get a meaner one. He lost a council vote yesterday on studying the idea of cutting councillors.
The choir-that-sings-from-the-same-songbook council wasn’t so happy with seeing Ottawa City Council dropped from four to six wards from its current 23 … particularly not the members who feared they would be expropriated. But that’s what Watson was proposing.
I’m trying to think of the winning political strategy on this one and am hard pressed to find it. Watson promised to do it during the election campaign? A lot of people voted for Watson, but I’m not sure it was to reduce the number of councillors. It was more about getting rid of the divisive former mayor Larry O’Brien.
Still, points to Watson for following through on his promise. However the problem is that the promise was probably not a good one. Twenty-three councillors work rather well in this community. That number allows residents to call their elected representative and get a personal response. Direct democracy is very valuable and council is hardly so large as to be unwieldy.
The move also hurts his legislative agenda. He’s not likely to get votes from councillors who thought they might not have wards in 2014. But maybe his majority support is so large on council that he doesn’t need those people. And many will be gone next term anyway.
My guess is that Watson needed a diversion right now, wise old politician that he is. He’s spending huge amounts of money on Lansdowne Park and that figure is dwarfed by the $2.1 billion being paid out for his light-rail plan. Watson has a reputation for being frugal but is spending on a grand scale. Ottawans hate spenders. They are the most conservative of fiscal conservatives. Furthermore, His Worship also knows he is facing a resident war in the old west end over driving light rail down the Byron linear park. The council issue could have drown out the Byron Park screaming at least for a while.
So by wanting to cut back on the size of council, Watson could appear as an effective money manager — even if he is spending at a vicious clip. Why cutting six councillors saves just less than $2 million. That doesn’t even cover the shovel budget for light rail billions in cost. But for Watson, this is not about dollar amount, but appearance.
Who knows? This might be a winning political strategy with the public in the long run. But the move is unnecessary, anti-democratic and saves very little in the big picture of the civic landscape. A bad idea.
And worse, if rural councillors were cut, the alienation of residents outside the urban boundary would rear its ugly head. And if urban councillors were cut, the rurals would be over-represented. Not a whole lot of winners in this equation.
Did I mention divisive as a downside to this idea?
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E-mail Ken Gray at kengray20@gmail.com Gray welcomes these e-mails for possible publication in The Bulldog.
