Ottawa should sell Hydro, outsource: mayor

Contracting out city services and selling off Hydro Ottawa are two of Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien's ideas for digging the city out of its financial woes.

"There is no magic bullet," O'Brien said Wednesday during a speech at a breakfast meeting at city hall.

"But it will be hundreds and hundreds of small initiatives like I've just identified that will make the difference."

Recently, the mayor had been publicly promoting the breakfast meeting as the place where he would reveal his plan to save the city money as itfacesa projected $100-million shortfall for its 2008 budget.

Some fear the budget will include deep service cuts when city staff table it in draft form next week.

In the end,the ideas that O'Brien offered were to:

• Appoint a task force to help the city reduce administrative costs by $42 million a year.
• Contract out services such as parking enforcement; he thinks that service alone could save the city $3 million.
• Sell off Hydro Ottawa for $300 million.

Gail Logan, president of the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce, saidthe business community is all for the idea of outsourcing some city services.

"Smart mayor equals smart management,"she said. "He's taken a leadership role. He's set the tone. He's following through on exactly what he said he would do for the City of Ottawa."

City gets $12M from Hydro Ottawa yearly: CEO

Hydro Ottawa CEO Rosemary Leclair was more measured in her response to the proposal to sell the company.

"Is it a long-term view that you have to take? Absolutely. Is it a public debate that has to be had? Yeah,you know what? Itdoes," she said.

But she added that thecity reaps $12 millionin annual dividends from the utility andthere are millions more in an endowment fund created when the company restructured in 2004.

"When you keep the ownership of the company as the company continues to grow in value, that's a value for the future."

City councillors also gave the plan mixed reviews.

Coun. Jacques Legendre praised the mayor's long-term approach.

"He underlined that big time and that frankly needed to be said," he said, but he wasn't sure it was enough to allow for a zero per cent property tax increase over the next three years as O'Brien has promised.

Plan won't help with 2008 budget: councillor

Coun. Alex Cullen was lessimpressed with the long-term approach, calling the speech "a big to do about nothing."

"It's not going to help us for the budget we're going to determine in December," he said. "So that's a big disappointment."

Coun. Diane Deans saidshe was disappointed by the lack of detail.

"My initial reaction to today's speech is that [it appears] there is no plan," she said. "We have already given city manager Kent Kirkpatrick direction to save $100 million in efficiencies over three years. He will look at all of the areas that the mayor talked about this morning and many more."

Kirkpatrickhas saidthat in order to balance next year's budget, city services must be cut even if property taxes are hiked4.8 per cent.

O'Brien has proposed atwo per cent infrastructure tax levy and an increase to the city's police budget, but wants no increase in regular property taxes. During his 2006 election campaign, he promised to keep property taxes frozen for four years.