Orléans councillor says east end losing out on road funding

An Ottawa city councillor says Orléans is losing out to other suburbs on funding for road infrastructure even as its population balloons.

"We have a congestion problem in Orléans South," said Orléans South-Navan Coun. Catherine Kitts. "We've had explosive growth and we have not had the supportive infrastructure that's kept up with that growth. So it's a feeling that we haven't seen the investment that other major parts of the city have received, and I wanted to do the homework on that."

So Kitts asked for a report on how the city spends development charges from new housing builds on arterial roads. After she added up the projects in Orléans to compare them with others, she noticed what she described as a regional imbalance.

"The east end has received over $100 million less in road infrastructure investment than the west and the south, despite growing in lockstep," she told a meeting of council's planning and housing committee on Wednesday.

Spending in Orléans lagging

Her calculations showed that over the last decade, the city spent $174 million in new road infrastructure in Barrhaven and Riverside South, $131 million in Kanata and Stittsville, and $20 million in Orléans. That's despite the fact that roughly the same number of building permits were issued for Ottawa's east and west ends, which each had far more than Barrhaven.

Kitts said it's unfair that buyers of new homes in Orléans are effectively footing the bill for citywide infrastructure spending through development charges on new builds, but seeing little in return to relieve their own congestion headaches.

"I often feel like I'm the only one who's banging the drum on what I see as a serious quality of life issue that is bad and getting worse," Kitts said. "The response to this inquiry reveals that I am not crazy."

'Tremendous growth' in east end

Vivi Chi, interim general manager of planning, development and building services, acknowledged that there is "tremendous growth" in the east and that the update will consider growth rates in divvying up infrastructure spending.

Kitts introduced a motion asking city staff to phase in projects to get started more quickly, instead of waiting until funding for all the work is in place. Other councillors supported her, even as they insisted that their communities also need funding.

"Certainly the feeling that infrastructure isn't keeping up with growth is not unique to the east end," said Stittsville Coun. Glen Gower. "In fact, I had an email on the weekend from a resident who told me, 'Why doesn't the west get any investment? Everything goes to the east.'"

He said the infrastructure pains across Ottawa are really the symptom of a "broken financial model for cities."

"We do not have the financial tools to invest in all the infrastructure we need to keep up with the massive growth that we're seeing," Gower said.