What you really get when you vote for Watson
By Randall Denley, The Ottawa Citizen October 21, 2010 8:21 AM
It certainly looks as if Ottawans are about to anoint Jim Watson as their next mayor. Before you do, it might be useful to review just what you get if you elect Watson.
At a superficial level, one could say that a vote for Watson is nothing more than endorsing a pleasant chap who says he can bring some kind of order to city council while restraining your property-tax increases to 2.5 per cent a year.
Sounds OK, but that's not the whole package. The candidate comes with quite a mixed bag of campaign promises. Some of them are troubling.
Watson proposes to shrink the 23-member city council to as few as 14. Fewer politicians sounds good, until one realizes that it means that wards will be far larger and your access to your city councillor will be even more limited. That's not the worst of it, though. Watson plans to leave in place the four seats for the rural area.
That means 13 per cent of the population could have 28 per cent of the seats. Urban and suburban residents would be substantially under-represented at the council table.
The plan might win Watson a few votes in the rural area, but his borough proposal will leave rural people worse off than they are today.
Various candidates are touting some version of this plan, saying it will make your city government far more local by giving you community control over things like stop signs and small planning decisions.
That's not what Watson is proposing at all. He envisions four boroughs: east, west, central and south.
This will roll together vast rural areas with suburbs that share nothing in common. It's not local by anyone's definition, except Watson's.
Then there is Watson's social-housing policy. He proposes to spend $14 million a year on a series of affordable-housing initiatives. It is his biggest spending promise. Is it his biggest priority? And if so, how did housing get to the top of his list? Is it the top of yours?
The three policies Watson features are taxes, transit and trust. Let's look at each of those.
Watson says he will limit tax increases to 2.5 per cent a year, but how will he do it? His tax platform lists a number of actions, but they will only reduce spending by a few million dollars. It takes far more than that to keep taxes to 2.5 per cent. He has partly adopted the "no new money" slogan, saying that new programs should be paid for by cuts elsewhere. Good, but that won't slow the relentless inflation in what the city does today.
The harsh reality is that tax increases at the rate of inflation imply some service cuts. Watson hasn't said what those would be.
Watson champions the city's light-rail plan with the zeal of the newly converted. It's quite an astounding feat to turn O'Brien's main achievement into one of Watson's own campaign planks. Watson likes to point out that he was present as a cabinet minister when the provincial government announced $600 million in support of the plan.
But after that, as a candidate, Watson was still dithering, questioning the need for the tunnel that is the heart of the concept. Is he really committed to the idea, or did he just realize that supporting it was politically expedient?
Then there is the issue of trust. Watson is not Dalton McGuinty, but he was a key member of the McGuinty government that has rather spectacularly broken its promise not to increase taxes. And that was with majority governments. In this campaign, Watson has flailed O'Brien for not keeping his own tax promise, even though doing so was beyond the mayor's control. Given Watson's own involvement in a promise-breaking government, it's pretty rich to run on a campaign of trust now.
The most curious part of Watson's campaign is that he is almost running as an incumbent. The candidate endorses every major policy of this city council including light rail, Lansdowne redevelopment, the official plan, the fix for our overflowing sewers and the cycling plan. It sounds as if this city council must have been doing something right, although Watson routinely refers to its four-year term as "chaos and confusion."
Finally, there is the issue of vision. At a meeting with the Citizen editorial board, Watson said his ambition was "to help operate the most efficiently run city in the province." It would have been a good pitch if he were running to become city manager.
If your view of Ottawa is that it should be a modest little town that hums with quiet efficiency, then Jim Watson is definitely your man. Just remember all that you are endorsing when you vote for Watson.
Contact Randall Denley at 613-596-3756 or by e-mail, rdenley@ottawacitizen.com
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