Hello neighbour,
It was an intense couple of days at the joint Planning and Finance Committee meeting to discuss Lansdowne 2.0 last week.
Hello neighbour,
It was an intense couple of days at the joint Planning and Finance Committee meeting to discuss Lansdowne 2.0 last week.
Hello neighbour,
It was an intense couple of days at the joint Planning and Finance Committee meeting to discuss Lansdowne 2.0 last week. We heard from nearly 90 delegates and there are more than 20 amending motions to consider. We’ll pick it up again tomorrow as a full council.
This is the biggest financial decision we will make as a council during this term. It represents nearly half a billion dollars in city spending/debt. And this is happening in the midst of a housing/homelessness crisis.
We have not been provided with financial estimates to fix the stadium and arena that we already own. Or to consider a future where a publicly owned asset is operated and maintained publicly.
It’s important to remember that the motivation for renegotiating Lansdowne is not coming from the city, it’s coming from the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group. OSEG has hinted that they might reconsider their involvement if the finances are not rebalanced, underlining the central problem of public-private partnerships. Understanding that profit is a key motive in this deal should force us to be more exhaustive in our deliberations.
This deal is premised on ludicrous financial assumptions, including nearly a billion dollars in retail revenue over 40 years and contributions of at least $20 million from other levels of government. As it stands, the proposal would provide ZERO affordable housing on site and only contribute 10% of the value of the air rights in residential towers to the city’s affordable housing fund.
With this proposal, it’s the city that will bear all of the financial risk. Meanwhile we KNOW that if we marshalled the same resources to end homelessness and massively scale up affordable housing, that there would be tangible financial and moral benefits for every single person in our city.
In today’s Ottawa Citizen, I have a piece co-authored with Councillors Jessica Bradley and Sean Devine, calling on council to delay a final decision on Lansdowne until the Auditor General can release her audit of the project, which will be presented to Council in Spring 2024. I hope our colleagues on council will join us in advocating for more time and more information before we make a decision that will have an impact on city finances for decades to come.
Ariel with Councillors Jessica Bradley and Theresa Kavanagh, at the Purple Tie Gala last month, in support of Cornerstone Housing
Thank you, as always, for your engagement and commitment to a better city.
Ariel
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Office-to-residential conversions
At Planning and Housing Committee last week, Councillor Troster put forward a motion to introduce incentives for developers seeking to convert empty office buildings into housing in the downtown core. This was in addition to a suite of city-wide recommendations made by staff. Councillor Glen Gower wrote an excellent Substack post, explaining the new incentives and how we hope they will stimulate more residential development in parts of the city that are suffering from the loss of 9-5 office workers.
Budget 2024: Your priorities
We want to hear from you! This month, our office launched a city budget survey with Councillors Leiper and Menard, to help us better understand the needs of residents across the city and how you want us to spend your tax dollars. This survey is open to residents across Ottawa – fill it out on our website today.
Help choose the design for the St. Luke’s Park basketball court
Great news! The basketball court at St. Luke’s Park is getting completely re-done this summer. We worked with the local basketball community to come up with two design options. Check it out and vote on which one you like best.
Resources for residents dealing with trauma
Many residents have reached out because they are rightfully upset after a shooting occurred on Bank Street yesterday afternoon. Others have been in touch expressing deep upset about a rising level of hate in our community and deep worry for loved ones living in Gaza or in Israel. Here are some free resources that are available to you if you need support:
You know what they say, there are two seasons in Canada: winter and construction. And just as all the snow is finally drying up, you can expect to see cranes, diggers and other heavy equipment all over Centretown. Living through construction can be enormously frustrating, but the benefits of major infrastructure investments in the downtown core will improve our quality of life for generations.
I have been hearing a lot from people in Chinatown, who are very concerned about a dramatic increase in public drug use over the last two weeks. Two issues have really created a perfect storm – one where the cause and the solution are entirely in the hands of the provincial government.
To the OCDSB Board of Trustees:
As you can imagine, I have heard from many parents and members of Centretown school communities on the impact that the proposed new elementary boundaries would have on their families. This is not a matter of municipal jurisdiction, and I respect that both OCDSB staff and trustees must make difficult and often unpopular decisions.
I am also aware that this is all happening in a climate of austerity, where decades of underfunding have left our school communities in increasingly precarious positions, limiting the ability to substantially respond to many of the challenges we see in our schools.
I would be curious to know why the board has chosen to only hold in-person consultations outside of the urban core, given the profound impacts that the school boundary proposal has on urban families, as well as the board’s expansive portfolio of available spaces within downtown Ottawa.
While I have heard from community members on a range of issues, and profoundly empathize with the challenges that this review poses for their families, I’ll confine my comments to issues that intersect with my position as a city councillor representing Somerset Ward.
The key theme I’ve heard about from families is about the walk to school. One of the things that brought me to Centretown years ago was the idea that my child would be able to get to school on foot or on a bicycle. In my time as a councillor, I’ve worked with families at Devonshire who loved that their kids could walk an easy 400m to school, but wanted to make sure all students were safe as possible crossing Preston and Somerset. We were able to secure a crossing guard for this intersection, but it took a long time.
The reality is that the Ottawa Safety Council simply will not have the resources to meet the need for crossing guards at the many major intersections that children in my neighbourhood are being directed to cross. I’m especially concerned about the traffic safety concerns that children who are being redistricted to Mutchmor from Devonshire will see, having to cross Preston, Carling, and Bronson.
I’m hearing from parents that the new route is something they would not feel comfortable sending their school-age children to walk or bike since it crosses three major streets. While Carling and Bronson will eventually be re-constructed by the city, we’re still years away from these projects being designed, funded, and built. Moving them up the list would still leave us years away from the kind of structural safety improvements that would make the kind of changes that would make parents feel safer sending their kids to school on foot.
Our Official Plan and our Transportation Master Plan support the expansion of active modes of transportation, including walking and biking. I have heard from many parents who love that Devonshire provides them with the opportunity to foster their child’s independence by sending them to bike or walk to school, either on their own or as part of a bike bus.
I’m very concerned that the impacts of this review in Ward 14 would put more kids on school buses or in cars, not fewer. This would seem to run counter to the boundary review’s stated goals—to mitigate socioeconomic disparity across schools, to keep kids in their communities and to bring high quality French and English education to every neighbourhood.
Regardless of the choices that trustees take, I want to be sure that the concerns in my community are fairly accounted for in the review and we that can reach a consensus. It seems that MPP Catherine McKenney’s request that the boundary for Devonshire be moved from the LRT to Preston Street may help mitigate many of the transportation safety-related concerns that we have both been hearing about.
I would be pleased to discuss any of the feedback I’ve received and wish you luck as you continue to tackle this incredibly challenging issue.
Sincerely,
Ariel Troster
Councillor, Somerset Ward