Weekly newsletter: July 23, 2024
Hi everyone!
My wife and I finally replaced our 30-year-old air-conditioner over the weekend. Even the people replacing them were surprised it was still running! The new machine is a lot quieter, but the house is freezing now, probably because the old machine became so wildly inefficient. We actually had to adjust our thermostat settings up.
Oh yeah, I also got to take a riding lawnmower for a spin around Larkin Park last week while spending a morning with public works staff and crews who take care of our parks and roadside grass. Fun!
Community BBQ
Hey, how about we celebrate the summer and our community with some free recreation activities and barbecue?
Join Councillor David Hill, Mayor Sutcliffe, me, and your neighbours at the Minto Recreation Complex this coming Saturday July 27 from noon to 4:00 pm for skating, swimming, gym activities, and barbecue — all free!
Please RSVP here so we can ballpark the number of people to expect.
Councillor Hill and I will have a table set up, so stop by and chat! Hope to see you there.
Sprung shelter update
One of the short-listed locations is in Barrhaven, but nothing is proceeding right now. I’m working to ensure the best outcome for everybody involved, because sprung structure shelters are an unacceptable form of housing for anybody, including refugees.
In my July 9 newsletter, I mentioned the update City Council was to receive on its housing strategy (known as the Integrated Transition to Housing Strategy, or ITHS). The ITHS report made mention of using temporary sprung structures to house refugees.
I spoke about how the sprung structures don’t meet Council’s goal of supplying dignified housing options, is a poor use of valuable City-owned land, and addressed some claims about the funding these projects are tied to.
My position remains the same.
Since then, we’ve let it be known that one of the short-listed sites for a temporary sprung structure shelter is in Barrhaven. Staff have agreed to share a long list of sites considered and scoring criteria that led to the short-list, so I’ll give them the chance to fulfill that request.
Over the last two weeks, I have been engaging with different people like the Mayor, our MPP and MP, the business association, and organisations with expertise in housing and social services to bring attention to a truly bad idea for Barrhaven and for the city.
Sprung structure shelters do nothing to effectively address our concurrent housing and homelessness crises and perpetuates the vicious emergency shelter cycle to practically guarantee a future need for more space again and again.
Barrhaven West Councillor David Hill has shared his first-hand experiences living in these types of structures while deployed across Canada and the world. How demoralising would it be for asylum seekers/refugees to come to Canada only to be placed in another semi-communal shelter situation?
It’s better than the conditions of a warzone refugee camp, but that does not mean we can subject them to conditions we would never subject ourselves and our loved ones to.
Additionally, staff’s readiness timeline for the sprung structure is 12 to 18 months, but Kitchener-Waterloo proved it’s possible to conceptualise, design, build, and open a dignified, permanent, modular structure in under a year.
It’s logically deficient to claim it’s a crisis while ignoring better solutions with shorter timelines and higher return on taxpayer investment.
Staff have collaborated with different stakeholders to properly house hundreds of emergency shelter users, add to the supportive housing stock, and resolve hundreds of encampment cases, so we know they can come up with better. There’s been a lot of success with the ITHS so far, so why take five steps back?
The City has acquired/retrofitted vacant buildings, continued to use hotel rooms, and made use of new funding from upper levels of government to support and expand different housing options. We will continue to do so, but public funds must be used to their fullest potential, regardless of if it’s federal, provincial, or municipal money — it’s all one taxpayer.
We can and must take your money the furthest it can go, produce the best return on investment for the refugees and the community, and set up future success by being able to repurpose into affordable housing once the temporary use is no longer needed. The solutions noted earlier do just that.
For as long as there’s been Barrhaven, there has been a community that contributed in different ways to ensure the success of refugees and newcomers, through donating money and time, through opening our hearts and even homes, and through supporting organisations like the Barrhaven Food Cupboard.
Their success is our community’s success, but we cannot ensure their success and prevent negative downstream effects if we place refugees in stressful communal living environments (there are partitions planned for the sleeping areas, but everything else is communal).
The good news is despite my failed motion at Council to withdraw staff’s authority to use sprung structures as shelters, the engagement and advocacy Councillors Hill and Kitts and I have done so far has made City staff revisit some of their baseline assumptions of the project. There is a lot more advocacy to be done, including with the non-profit sector, but the start has been encouraging.
However, the advocacy and engagement from us alone isn’t enough.
The Mayor needs to hear where our community stands on providing refugees with proper, dignified housing to ensure their success.
The Mayor needs to hear sprung structures are not an acceptable form of housing.
The Mayor needs to hear the impact prolonged communal living and poor supports will have on the mental well-being of those refugees.
Most importantly, the Mayor needs to hear it from you. Please consider writing an email to Mayor Sutcliffe. We need your voice to help us.
For now, please know that nothing is proceeding, but I will continue working hard over the summer to achieve the best outcome for everybody involved (existing residents, community partners, businesses, support networks, etc.).
I will share updates through my newsletter and social media as they become available. Depending on how far it all gets in the process, there may also be opportunities for formal public consultations in the future.
Perhaps the lack of concrete information from staff is a good sign that I have some runway to impact their decision before it’s finalised. However, if Councillor Hill and I learn that the project will have an impact on Barrhaven, we will organise multiple public engagements to ensure its implications are discussed as soon as possible.
I’m grateful for your continued engagement on the issue.
Targeted police enforcement continues
Ottawa Police issued 41 tickets and 20 court summonses in targeted enforcement Friday night.
Excessive speeding and noise, dangerous driving, and street racing continue to be major issues in our community.
In response to community demand, Ottawa Police launched the Residents Matter enforcement campaign earlier this year (same as Operation Noisemaker in past years, but under a different name with a wider scope).
Officers focused their efforts on Strandherd Drive last Friday evening, stretching into the early hours of Saturday. In a four-hour window, 41 tickets were issued, including but not limited to:
Speeding – 16
No/improper muffler and noise – 8
Incorrectly displayed, invalid, or unauthorised licence plates – 7
Failure to present insurance and/or driver’s licence – 3
Unaccompanied G1 – 1
Additionally, 20 court summonses were issued, including five stunt driving charges, two motorists operating with suspended licenses, and one impaired driver. The stunt charges include:
Strandherd/Kennevale – 181 km/h in a 70 km/h zone
Strandherd/Aura – 125 km/h in a 70 km/h zone
Strandherd/Chapman Mills – 112 km/h in a 70 km/h zone
Strandherd/Claridge – 126 km/h in a 70 km/h zone
Limebank/Tom Roberts – 141 km/h in an 80 km/h zone
Evidently, there is still a long way to go until these issues are resolved, but I believe the police are trending in the right direction.
Targeted enforcement will continue to rotate across communities across Ottawa throughout the summer and into the autumn, focusing on hot spots based on feedback from police reports, frontline observations, intelligence gathering, and other information.
To file a report with the Ottawa Police Service, you may call their non-emergency line at 613-236-1222 ext. 7300 or by completing an online webform.
Fallowfield/Transitway traffic signals
Signals should be fixed by Wednesday morning.
Motorists who use Fallowfield Road crossing the Transitway may have noticed the signals have been cycling much quicker since Friday night.
Normally, the light stays green for Fallowfield unless Transitway traffic triggers a change (and overridden by the railway, of course). However, due to a fault in the in-ground loops, the light has been cycling on its own, which has caused traffic slowdowns and back-ups during peak periods.
The first fault was actually reported by a few residents on Thursday. Crews were dispatched Friday morning to make minor repairs to the faulty in-ground loop.
Although the repair held for Friday’s afternoon peak, the loop unfortunately became faulty again at night, and has been that way since.
As a result, crews will replace all the in-ground loops and wiring at those traffic signals — the work is currently scheduled for later tonight.
Staff may make a short-term cycle length adjustment to alleviate traffic pressure for the peak periods today, but will also monitor the intersection remotely. No safety concern with the railway crossing lights has been identified, as they override the traffic signals.
Apologies for the continued inconvenience!
New bike posts at Longfields Square
Nine new bike posts have been installed on the sidewalks on Via Modugno and Via Campanale along the retail frontage, providing cyclists with proper locations to secure their bikes when visiting Longfields Square.
Their locations were selected to be off the main sidewalk, but also in consultation with the shops at the plaza to ensure we did not take away from their patio space.
Thank you to the residents (and students) who requested them! New posts will also be added into the sidewalk on the other side of Via Modugno in front of the plaza currently under construction once it’s complete.
Thanks to resident K.B. for the photo!
Thank you for your continued readership and engagement! You are the free barbecue to my late-July weekend.
-Wilson