One out of two ain't bad

Congratulations, Ottawa City Council - 50% is a good start. To start, they voted against removing bus shelters on Rideau Street yesterday, something I am sure public transit riders are relieved to have learned today. Some bright person finally reached some sort of ephiphany and realized that removing bus shelters might not have a large impact on people who travel on OC Transpo in June but would seriously jeopardize the well being of passengers in February. Why did it take a week and some public outrage to understand this?

Councillors did, however, vote in favour of launching a "public education campaign" to show Ottawans the perils of wearing scented products in public. I wrote a letter to councillors when the motion to move forward with some sort of initiative was passed at a Health, Recreation and Social Services meeting earlier this month. In the letter I suggested that the City had bigger challenges on its hands (ie: annual budgetary follies) and should dedicate more of its time and resources towards them. Evidently Council believed that the committee recommendation had merit and thus passed it.

One member of Council did contact me privately to remind me that the City of Ottawa does has an obligation to promote public health. Sure it does. It also has an obligation to spend tax dollars as soundly as it can. It is obliged to prioritize where precious resources are best spent at any given time.

You may have noted that I launched a new blog earlier today on the subject of my life living with allergies. What started innocently twenty or so years ago as simple hayfever symptoms has mysteriously evolved into anaphylaxis over and above the more mundane allergies - a potentially fatal allergy to pine nuts. Over the coming days and weeks I'll go into more detail on that subject in that blog. I mention it here because I am sympathetic to a point when it comes to the pleas of those who believe that they are (and those who actually are) allergic to scented products. They claim that the chemicals that are dispersed into the atmosphere when someone who wears perfume or washed their hair with Head and Shoulders shampoo can debilitate them.

I am going to research this phenomenon a bit more once my wedding next week is written into the Mason family history books. Having had the pleasure of being put through allergy tests a half dozen times in my relatively short life, I have yet to be tested for some compound that is in my shampoo that unleashes itself on the world around me as I walk around. What I don't understand is how the scent free version of a given product (such as deodorant) doesn't "silently kill" those who are allergic to the alleged chemicals as carbon monoxide does without smelling up the place. Surely the same chemicals in Arrid "regular" are present in Arrid "non scented".

All this to say that while I can understand that public health is a City duty, putting tens of thousands of dollars or more into what likely will be an ineffective "public education campaign" is a waste of money. If it's not a clear waste, then it clearly cannot be priority #1 at City Hall. Just ask anyone who lives in an older part of town and keeps being told that repairs on their street are delayed again until next year because the capital budget was reduced to finance operational costs elsewhere... We elect these guys to represent us and make the tough decisions. When another watermain breaks next winter, we can all ask ourselves "what if we had fixed it last year?"

Why not discuss removing Rideau Street bus shelters in January?

I ask those of you who might think that Ottawa City Councillor Georges Bedard's request to the City's transportation committee to remove bus shelters from Rideau Street is a good idea: 1) Do you take the bus? 2) Do you take the bus in the winter? 3) Do you ever wait for the bus on Rideau Street? 4) Do you want to wait 20 minutes on Rideau Street in January when it's -23 degrees outside with a 20km/h wind that just won't go away?

Just like it's easy to cut grass cutting from the budget in November in order to ensure that property taxes don't go up too much, I think that this close-minded "FIX THIS PROBLEM NOW" motion Councillor Bedard successfully attempted to get through committee yesterday is myopic and possibly irresponsible.

The shelters are there for a reason. They are there to shelter waiting passengers from the elements. These elements are a mere inconvenience at this time of year, but when the winds are howling and a driving snow storm is pounding people who sit there waiting forever for their bus to arrive, they'll want those shelters.

How much money are we going to spend taking the shelters down or removing the glass walls from the existing structures? How much will we spend to put them back in February when hundreds of people complain of the cold? How much will we spend at the conclusion of a negligence lawsuit if a senior or a disabled person needs to be carted away in an ambulance or dies because of a case of frost bite or exposure? Again, the shelters are there for a reason.

To members of City Council who will soon deal with the motion from transportation committee: THINK.