October, 2007 - Glebe Report

12 Glebe Report October 12, 2007 COUNCILLOR’S REPORT
Coping with climate change
By
Councillor
Clive
Doucet
Cicadas singing
in the evening
carry us into autumn
consoling with the thought
the caress of soft nights
will come again
Glebe Business
Improvement Area
Glebe business owners are busy
working on the incorporation of a
business improvement area (BIA).
This is a local organization that is
present in most other vibrant business
areas of the city–Westboro, the
Byward Market, Centretown. They
have proved to be an important tool
for improving the attractiveness of
shopping areas through festivals
like WestFest, street redesign, street
decoration and making sure development
occurs to the advantage of
all. BIA directors carry weight at
City Hall because it’s clear who they
represent and they tend to come with
well researched positions. Bank
Street in the Glebe is one of the last
shopping areas of the old city to be
incorporated in this way. I certainly
support a BIA for the Glebe and my
office is busy assisting the organizers
to prepare their proposal for city
council’s consideration.
Ward council budget priorities
and current city spending
As the 2008 city budget process is
about to begin, I convened representatives
from different parts of the
ward to get a sense of the sorts of
things that would be most valued in
the upcoming budget. Some common
themes emerged from most neighbourhoods:
community centres or
field houses in need of upgrades or
renovation, missing park amenities,
inadequate sidewalks in high traffic
areas, lack of funding for traffic
safety studies, and so on. For the
Glebe, the list of requests included
restoring funding for traffic safety
studies, graffiti management, adequate
staffing for by-law enforcement,
the Farmers’ Market, and a
program to ensure planters are
watered. All these suggestions are
very reasonable and in the scale of
the overall city budget relatively
inexpensive. They represent good
value for the money. These are the
things I will push for in the 2008
budget for the community.
However reasonable these requests
are, it will be tough. In order to limit
tax increases and sustain Ottawa’s
disproportionately high spending on
new roads, smaller items like the
requests coming from communities
will be regarded by some as
‘enhancements’ instead of ‘needs.’
Alliance for Resilient Cities
I attended the first meeting of the
Alliance for Resilient Cities. On the
success side of the ledger, I learned a
lot. The idea behind the Resilient
Cities organization, which was
organized by Toronto’s Clean Air
Partnership, is to share lessons
learned about adaptive strategies to
cope with climate change driven
events. The mayors of Peterborough
and Port Moody as well as the
deputy mayor of Halifax were
among the speakers. Peterborough
recently suffered a crippling flood.
You could canoe down the main
street. Port Moody had three winter
storms in less than a month that shut
down local power. Halifax has had so
many weather-driven crises that it is
no longer possible to sue the city for
fallen trees, storm water damage, etc.
Halifax has set up command
centres for all principal community
stakeholders, with back-up power.
They made solar radios available to
people. Redundancy is the key to a
robust response in an emergency.
You can’t assume anything will
work, so there have to be alternative
response possibilities. In Halifax,
they are now burying all wires as
they rebuild the city’s streets. This I
found sensible and welcome news,
given our own interest in burying the
wires on Bank Street.
Halifax was clearly at the head of
the class in terms of emergency
response, but King County, which
surrounds Seattle, led the pack on
carbon reduction. They have capped
airport construction. All future transportation
expansion will be surface
light rail and since 80 per cent of
their air travel is 300 miles or less,
this shouldn’t be a problem. They’ve
signed on to Kyoto. Their buses run
on locally produced biodiesel, for
which they provide free biosolid fertilizer
to the farmers who grow it.
Thirty per cent of all new housing
construction is green and they’re
working with builders to make it 100
per cent. Their city planning is
inspiring while being very practical
and down-to-earth.
I came away from the meeting
convinced of three things:
1) Cities have to start growing and
governing themselves, not for today,
but for the world that climate change
is quickly bringing our way;
2) The battle to stop the carbon
loading of the atmosphere is local. If
we win the local battle, where 80 per
cent of the greenhouse gases are produced,
we will win the war;
3) There are many, many successful
carbon reduction and adaptive
strategies we can implement to create
a sustainable and more secure local
landscape.
Coffee with Clive
Coffee with Clive continues at the
Wild Oat on Bank in the Glebe on
the third Thursday of the month from
9 to 10 a.m.
My apologies for missing the last
Coffee with Clive at the Wild Oat on
Sept. 20. I was in Toronto at the
Alliance for Resilient Cities. Normally,
one of my constituency assistants
would have attended in my absence
but we had some miscommunication
in the office.
Clive Doucet
City of Ottawa
110 Laurier Avenue West,
Ottawa, ON K1P 1J1
tel.: (613) 580-2487
fax: (613) 580-2527
Clive.Doucet@ottawa.ca
www.clivedoucet.com