One more time...what would you do differently?

 

What I'd Do Differently — And the Paper Trail That Shows Why

I've written a "what I'd do differently" post before. This one's different. Every item below isn't a promise — it's a response to something I've already documented, with dates, numbers, and votes attached. I'm going to tell you what I'd do differently, show you the record it's responding to, and then tell you again why it matters, because in a ward this size the only thing more important than saying the right thing once is making sure it's heard.

Here's the short version up front: Ward 13 doesn't have a shortage of statements from its Councillor. It has a shortage of follow-through. Every gap below is the same gap — someone says the right thing in public, and then the file goes quiet. I'd close that gap. Here's the evidence for why it needs closing.

Oversight you show up for, not oversight you announce

Councillor King called for stronger LRT oversight three separate times — 2020, 2021, 2023. Public statements, on the record, each one. What he didn't do, in any of those years, was sit on the Transit Commission or the Light Rail Subcommittee — the two bodies where oversight actually happens. You can call for scrutiny from the sidelines forever. It doesn't cost you anything and it doesn't fix anything.

What I'd do differently: if I think a file needs oversight, I put myself on the committee that does it. That's not a slogan, it's a PM instinct — you don't manage risk by issuing a press release about the risk, you manage it by being in the room where the decisions get made and the schedule gets tracked.

Resigning from a problem isn't the same as fixing it

In 2022, King resigned from the Police Services Board, framing it as taking a stand. Since then: the independent workplace investigations office was closed, the Auditor General found the board's own reporting was inaccurate, and this spring brought a fresh misconduct crisis. The walkout made a statement. It didn't leave anyone in place to catch any of what came after.

What I'd do differently: stay on the file when it gets hard, not just when it's comfortable. Accountability isn't a gesture you make once and then step away from — it's a maintenance job. You keep showing up, you keep asking for the numbers, you keep being the person who checks whether last year's promise happened.

A $95 million file that got 20 votes and barely a question

The Taggart landfill land was assembled for $8.15 million, appraised at roughly $23 million, and the city ultimately paid $95 million once permit value was folded in. Twenty councillors voted yes. Five voted no, and I've got all five of their reasons on the record. This is the kind of file a project manager is trained to catch — a valuation that moved 4x past appraisal without anyone in the majority treating that as the red flag it is.

It also exposed something structural: the usual 15-9 urban/rural voting split inverted on this vote. That's not a personnel problem, it's a map problem — Ward 13 and wards like it get outvoted by geometry, not by argument. I'd rather fix the incentive structure than just be one more vote hoping to land on the right side of it.

Data you can audit, not data you have to take on faith

I went through Ottawa's 311 dataset — 372,029 service requests — looking for the flood and sewer story in Ward 13. What I found first was a data integrity problem: bulk-closure dates that don't reflect real closures, address fields suppressed, missing severity ratings, records with no ward assigned at all. You can't manage what you can't measure, and right now the city can't produce a clean measurement of its own infrastructure failures in this ward.

What I'd do differently: push for open data the public can actually audit, not open data that technically satisfies a disclosure requirement while hiding the fields that would let anyone check the city's homework.

The flood that was foreseeable

This year's Canada Day storm dropped 118mm of rain and flooded more than 3,200 basements across the city, with West Rockcliffe and Manor Park sitting on documented combined-sewer exposure — the kind of infrastructure risk that shows up in reports years before it shows up in someone's basement. This isn't a story about one storm. It's a story about a known risk that didn't get resourced ahead of the storm.

What I'd do differently: treat known infrastructure risk the way a PM treats a known project risk — resourced and tracked before it becomes an incident, not investigated after residents have already paid for it in flooded basements.

Transparency you don't have to file a request to get

815 St. Laurent and the wider Rideau Community Hub properties are still sitting in provincial supervisor Robert Plamondon's disposition authority, and getting a straight answer about what happens to them has required drafting a formal MFIPPA request. Residents shouldn't need a freedom-of-information filing to find out what's planned for property in their own neighbourhood.

What I'd do differently: default to disclosure, not default to residents having to extract it.

Why this all comes back to the same thing

Look back over everything above and it's one pattern, not seven: a statement gets made, and then nobody stays on the file to make sure it turns into something. LRT oversight promised, not attended. A resignation delivered, not followed by fixes. A $95 million vote passed with barely a challenge. Flood risk documented, not funded. Property disposition happening quietly instead of openly.

I'm a certified project manager. My job, for twenty years, has been the unglamorous work of tracking whether the thing that was promised actually happened on the date it was promised, at the cost it was promised, with the person responsible for it still in the room when it's time to check. That's what I'd bring to this Council seat that isn't currently there: not better speeches, but someone who treats "we'll look into it" as the start of a task, not the end of one.

That's what I'd do differently. And if you remember only one line from this post, make it this one: I'd rather be the Councillor who's still checking the file a year later than the one who made the strongest statement about it the day it broke.