CBC
City manager says COVID-19 has strained resources but hopes for permanent change
City supervisor Steve Kanellakos is touched by the before-and-after images he is seen of the individuals who’ve used Ottawa’s daytime respite centres. “Some of our residents who’ve come in, after they have not had a haircut, and so they’ve bought lengthy beards, and also you see photos of them after with a haircut and their beard has been trimmed — and it is only a great story of simply treating folks with humanity,” Kanellakos advised CBC. “It’s a implausible factor that our employees have completed in our neighborhood.” The daytime drop-in centres, the place folks can use washrooms and showers, get a heat meal and join with social providers, had been the results of the COVID-19 emergency. But they have been a “a recreation changer in phrases of the well being of all of those people who find themselves requiring these providers,” says Kanellakos in a current — and uncommon — wide-ranging interview. The service has been so successful that he is advocating for respite centres — areas and funding nonetheless unknown — to be made everlasting. The Tom Brown Arena has served as a respite centre for folks experiencing homelessness, offering a spot to relaxation, bathe, get some meals and join with social providers. The metropolis must discover a option to make respite centres everlasting, says Ottawa’s metropolis supervisor.(Jean Delisle/CBC) It’s an sudden optimistic consequence from a difficult yr. An entire lot has occurred because the province imposed its first lockdown 12 months in the past, a couple of week after the City of Ottawa’s first confirmed COVID-19 case. “It was round that time I noticed that this is not going to be another person’s drawback — that is going to be our drawback,” says Kanellakos. The metropolis’s emergency operations centre went into excessive gear, assembly nearly for the primary time ever. Internal “job forces” had been struck to supervise the monumental efforts wanted to deal with all the things from reaching out to weak residents, to aiding small companies, to preserving the enterprise of City Hall afloat. And, in more moderen weeks, the vaccine job drive has required a monumental logistical effort, together with 1,000 workers, lots of them part-time metropolis staff who had been briefly laid off final yr. Like different group, say Kanellakos, the town was scrambling to reply to the ever-changing COVID-19 suggestions, attempting to determine tips on how to maintain workers secure. But not each group has to pivot a ship of 17,000, about solely 4,000 of whom may do business from home. Thousands continued to ship the necessities wanted daily, from ambulance providers, to scrub working water, to rubbish disposal. While the one-year mark of COVID-19 had Kanellakos reflecting on how the pandemic strained capacities, he was equally recreation to debate the alternatives it offered for everlasting change, in addition to the challenges forward post-pandemic. City providers on-line earlier than their time COVID-19 compelled the town’s technological hand nearly instantly. Online improvements that might have been performed by way of years-long pilot tasks had been achieved in weeks. Council, committee and neighborhood conferences all went digital with remarkably few glitches. An replace on how elected officers will meet this fall is coming quickly. And with bodily info desks closed, the town shifted many providers, like getting a parking allow or marriage licences, on-line. Kanellakos says that “made an enormous distinction to the security of our employees and to the convenience that the general public would nonetheless entry to those providers.” This was significantly true in the planning division, the place paperwork had been in a position to be delivered — and paid for — electronically for the primary time for a lot of builders. City employees migrated their constructing allow purposes — and cost choices — on-line in a matter of weeks, as an alternative of getting to point out up in individual at a service counter.(Andrew Lee/CBC) According to Kanellakos, the town “zeroed in” on the construction sector as a result of it was allowed to maintain working throughout a lot of the pandemic. Staff realized that if the town put its allow system on maintain, hundreds may lose their jobs needlessly and the system can be backed up for months. “And that by no means materialized,” he says. In reality, the town issued 2.6 per cent extra permits in 2020 than the earlier yr. Local economic system wants boosting Of the duty forces Ottawa has relied on to reply to the pandemic, the one on “financial restoration” is probably the most novel — the town had by no means earlier than created an emergency group to handle the native economic system — and probably the most fraught. There is little the town can do to help particular person companies. Municipal governments aren’t allowed beneath provincial regulation to supply firms tax cuts or different monetary help. Still, there have been some efforts to assist, from deferring property tax payments, to offering COVID-19-related messaging and knowledge for retailers. The out of doors house obtainable for some eating places was expanded, a transfer many hope will turn out to be everlasting, and patio hours had been prolonged. But these are minor measures contemplating the wrestle to outlive that many mom-and-pop retailers face. “This is a neighborhood drawback in phrases of what is taking place with lots of our small companies and our predominant streets,” Kanellakos advised CBC. “Lending the town assist and voice to getting the neighborhood to rally round our companies, that is most likely the most important factor we are able to do.” To that finish, he says, metropolis employees plan to convey a report back to council’s finance and financial growth committee subsequent month that can lay out a public relations marketing campaign “to rebuild confidence in the neighborhood that … it is OK to return out and store, and do issues and do it in a secure method.” The metropolis will work with Ottawa Public Health on reassuring customers about tips on how to safely return to patronizing native companies. Tourism, Ottawa’s third-largest financial generator, can even want particular consideration when restrictions on journey ease up. “We want some runway and assist for them to try to entice occasions to return,” Kanellakos says, noting the 2 hundredth anniversary of the ByWard Market in 2027 would possibly now demand the form of hoopla that surrounded Canada’s 2017 sesquicentennial. “Maybe we’ll plant one thing greater there than we might have usually thought, just a little bit 2017-ish type, the place we begin making some actually particular occasions.” Mayor Jim Watson has mused about the potential of bringing La Machine, proven right here in a 2017 photograph, again to Ottawa for the 2 hundredth anniversary of ByWard Market. (Matthew Kupfer/CBC) On the nearer horizon, the town has left open the chance that particular occasions or small, physical-distanced festivals may happen later this yr. ‘Period of unbelievable development’ Kanellakos is aware of his insistence that the pandemic has opened up potentialities flies in the face of loads of naysaying about Ottawa’s future, together with gloomy predictions about folks fleeing downtown, massive cash being wasted on the LRT, and new condos missing patrons who need to stay in them. He is not shopping for any of it. At least not but. “I actually do not see an emptying of the downtown,” says Kanellakos. Sure, some downtown places of work is probably not as full as pre-COVID-19, however folks will discover different makes use of for that house. “I believe that hole’s going to get crammed by different generations who, as soon as the pandemic is past us and individuals are getting vaccinated, need to be in the motion.” That’s to not say working life will not change, together with for the town administration itself, which has tentative plans, when it brings employees again to its places of work later this yr, to implement a system the place workers can guide a workstation in the municipal constructing closest to their houses, inside strolling or biking distance. Responding to ideas that the town ought to pause its LRT plans till post-pandemic commuter plans are clearer, metropolis supervisor Steve Kanellakos says the O-Train system is ‘incomplete’ and must be completed for future generations. (Simon Lasalle/CBC) As for the LRT, Kanellakos says the O-Train is an “incomplete system” and must be prolonged in the long run to all sections of the town for it to make sense. “It’s a game-changer if we get Stage 3. We want transportation to these outskirts of the town as a result of that is the place it is rising. “It’s not for the following 10 years. It’s for a number of generations in the town.” There are loads of pressures going through City Hall this yr. The treasurer’s division remains to be crunching the numbers that the federal and provincial funds meant to shore up municipalities will likely be sufficient to cowl income shortfalls for 2021. The federal authorities has but to determine what its return-to-work plan appears like, and its 150,000 workers drastically have an effect on the transit system’s operation in addition to the native economic system. When it involves paying for the LRT, the second stage now beneath construction is totally funded, however Stage 2 out to Kanata and Barrhaven — at a value of just about $5 billion — is not on the town’s long-term transportation plans till after 2031. Recent hopes that timeline may very well be hastened is likely to be dashed as each provincial and federal governments wrestle in the approaching years with multibillion-dollar deficits compelled far larger by the pandemic financial stoop. Kanellakos will get that. He’s additionally aware of how exhausting the final yr has been on residents and enterprise. Still, he is optimistic concerning the future. “I believe we’ll enter a interval of unbelievable development in Ottawa and financial growth that we have by no means skilled, regardless of the pandemic.”
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