Council is embarrassment to Ottawa
I am staggered by the epic and grotesque stupidity of Mayor Larry O’Brien and the gang of 12 councillors who voted to kill the light-rail transit project. They have singlehandedly: thrown away $62million in getting the project going; left the city vulnerable to lawsuit that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars in damages; left $400million in senior government money up in the air; shown contempt for the integrity of private-sector contracts worthy of Soviet-style apparatchiks, and allowed a federal minister to get away with a ludicrous intervention in the municipal affairs of Ottawa to pay off an old political score with the former mayor.
They have also left the public transit planning in Ottawa, or, for that matter, any reliable form of transportation planning, in tatters.
I note the federal provincial governments were smart enough to supply letters to the city shortly before the vote-to-kill decision restating their commitments to fund the originally approved project. That should be sufficient to get them off the legal hook, leaving the mess Mr. O’Brien and the “Gang of 12” have made.
Congratulations. For the first time in my life that has stretched over more than five decades, including 25years of paying property rates, I am embarrassed to be a citizen of Ottawa.
JOHN MERRIT, Ottawa