For incoming mayor Mark Sutcliffe, the hard part starts now
Mayor-elect has a slew of priorities for 1st 100 days, but bringing city together may be the hard part
Now, the hard part.
Mark Sutcliffe is coming into this city's top office after a decisive victory over his closest opponent, Catherine McKenney. It was an exacting campaign — with five debates in the last 11 days alone — that offered different visions for the future.
One promised $100 million on roads over four years, the other $178 million to expand transit.
And yet, their plans were not so wildly divergent. Their tax promises were a half-percentage-point apart, their climate plans not so dissimilar. Sure, McKenney vowed to end chronic homelessness in four years, which isn't your usual mainstream platform plank, but Sutcliffe promised to provide an extra $4 million on social agencies.
The biggest difference between them was the packaging. Sutcliffe framed himself as the middle-of-the-road candidate while casting McKenney as a "hard left turn." Exhibit No. 1: the downtown councillor's $250-million pledge to front-end load 25 years of bike-lane building — a marketing mistake for McKenney and a successful wedge issue for Sutcliffe.
In the end, our mayor-elect came out on top as the centrist candidate in a centrist town.
And as gruelling as the campaign may have been, it pales in comparison to what's coming next.
Big learning curve, big budget challenge
Nearly half of the 25-member council that will be sworn in three weeks from now will be new to political office, including the next mayor.
To be fair, Steve Desroches — who was elected in the new ward of Riverside South-Findlay Creek — previously served two terms, but returns eight years later to a very different council that includes only two of his former colleagues: Allan Hubley and Tim Tierney, each now elected to their fourth term.
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There's a huge learning curve for a large swath of council. It's a transition that's not easy at the best of times, and is now two weeks shorter thanks to new provincial rules. Institutional memory is marching out the door, and Sutcliffe has made promises on a host of priorities in his first 100 days.
Among the most challenging will surely be the line-by-line review of spending ahead of his first budget.
Sutcliffe may already be at a disadvantage even before he starts. Just last Friday, the city issued its latest quarterly financial numbers forecasting a $13-million deficit for 2022 due to derecho and convoy costs. If additional funds don't come through from upper levels of government, the shortfall will have to be made up somehow by the new council by year end.
The mayor-elect has boldly asserted he could find $35 to $60 million in savings, cut 200 positions without layoffs, keep the tax hike to well below the rate of inflation, and fund his election promises, all without reducing any services.
He has about three months to table his first draft budget.
LISTEN | Mayor elect Mark Sutcliffe's interview with Ottawa Morning on Tuesday
Fixing a fractious council
And while his various leadership teams and task forces are crunching numbers and drafting recommendations, Sutcliffe will have to establish a more harmonious tone at council.
During the campaign, the key candidates received kudos for debating the issues and keeping the personal attacks to a minimum.
Indeed, the one-on-one congeniality between Sutcliffe and McKenney seems to be the real deal. Behind the scenes at one debate, Sutcliffe chatted with McKenney about where they bought a particularly cool backpack. The two made a Beavertail date after a round of the game "Never Have I Ever" at another debate revealed that McKenney had in fact never indulged in the fried-dough confection.
But the campaign was also punctuated by negativity. And the Sutcliffe team hit first, and hit hardest, on that front.
About a quarter of Sutcliffe's statements were solely concerned with criticizing McKenney, a few of them released even before the councillor had made a single platform announcement. The most egregious was Sutcliffe's news release entitled, "Catherine McKenney's record demonstrates clear opposition to building new housing" — their record shows no such thing — claiming McKenney said the city didn't need to build new housing.
In fact, they were talking about a small group of people who have housing but might need a rental subsidy to keep them from falling into homelessness.
Now, the negativity was by no means one-sided. After the Thanksgiving weekend, McKenney called a news conference to charge that Sutcliffe's fiscal plan was going to lead to cuts. That was followed by a series of back-and-forth arguments that few could follow over whose financial plan had the biggest hole.
But last night, with the competition of the campaign over, Sutcliffe extended an olive branch to McKenney's voters, saying he had heard their concerns and expectations, and that he'll continue to listen.
For someone who is new to office, he already sounds like a practised politician — and not just because he is a skilled communicator in both official languages. In his speech, he promised to "respect every part of the city, the rural areas, the suburbs, and the urban areas."
The council voters are sending to city hall is a similar mix of progressive, centrist and small-c conservative representatives who often clashed.
But Sutcliffe persisted.
"I believe there is common ground for us," he said. "And I promise to continue to listen. I will be a mayor for all of Ottawa."
And that may be his hardest promise to keep.
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