Ottawa Life magazine endorses O'Grady
COUNCIL’S OVERHAUL: THESE CANDIDATES CAN SAVE US FROM THE “PARALYSIS OF PARTISANSHIP” THAT HAS OVERTAKEN CITY HALL.
The term 'dysfunctional' or ineffective has become a trademark of Ottawa’s current City Council. Citizens have been subjected to four years of ineffective governance, over-the-top partisanship and poor decision-making. Council’s latest report card is littered with failed projects from complete incompetence on light rail to a bus strike that shut down the city for two months, to the inexcusable dumping of billions of litres of raw sewage into our precious waterways. To add insult to injury, we have a parking ticket office that has parking by-law officers driving around in $30,000 plus vehicles dolling out the most expensive parking tickets in the country as they discourage people from shopping downtown and kill small business in the process (why don’t they use public buses to get around?).
Council piddled away an obscene amount of time and resources on studies pertaining to revitalizing Lansdowne Park, a project that is a no brainer for anyone with any common sense. For their part, city Managers are properly labeled as unresponsive, incompetentandoverpaid.The7City Managers are paid more in annual salaries and benefits than most federal Deputy Ministers. In the private sector, based on their performance, they would have been fired long ago. The City Managers seem to think they report to Council and not to the Mayor. In fact, they have been insubordinate to the Mayor on more than one occasion. The Council, being inept and dysfunctional, has not had the unity to control or reign in the unelected management team and has not supported the Mayor in his attempts to control unaccountable bureaucrats.
Hopefully this can change. Thus far, eighty-seven candidates have officially entered the race for a seat on Council – many of them are fresh faces ready to implement change. Of the potential pool of candidates, Ottawa Life Magazine endorses a select few. Vote for these people and Ottawa may be able to get its house in order.
James O'Grady
Gord Hunter’s retirement after 30 dedicated years of serving the Knoxdale- Merivale Ward has opened the doors for fresh new thinking. James O’Grady, born and raised in Nepean, has answered the call and hopes to get more people involved in the process along with him. Citizen participation, he believes, is key. “The dysfunction we are experiencing at City Hall is directly related to a decision-making process that no longer includes the residents and communities of this city asitoncedid.”Headds,“Theproblems associated with amalgamation have never been resolved”.
“I’m proposing a number of solutions to correct the problems, without going down the path of de-amalgamation,” O’Grady added. “This starts with getting residents, community associations, business improvement associations and all other appropriate stakeholders involved in the issues that concern them from Day One.”
O’Grady also believes that better accountability for councillors and bureaucrats is also critical. Noting that City Hall’s bad decisions have cost taxpayers, he said he wants to put an end to the dysfunctional management.
O’Grady has worked closely with community associations in Nepean for many years. Currently, he is an elementary school teacher in the Ottawa-Carleton and Upper Canada District School boards. Before teaching, O’Grady worked in the private sector for 15 years in sales, marketing and communications, providing organizational and leader- ship expertise.
Article courtesy Ottawa Life magazine, September 2010 issue.
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