I’ll find out!

Here's the info I was provided with today: "The outage over the weekend occurred due to a customer transformer issue. The outage was compounded by a tree on the line. Ultimately all issues were isolated and resolved within ~ 2 hours."

There are certainly smaller pockets of un-serviced areas within the urban boundary, including in my ward. But local residents would still have to pay a significant levy to get that new infrastructure installed. It's possible, but it's hard to get consensus from residents on whether to pay for it.

There's a difference between the city limits (i.e. what's in the City of Ottawa) and what's in the urban boundary. The city's size is vast, with 80% of the city's area being rural. It would be astronomically cost-prohibitive to make all of that area serviced by City of Ottawa water supply. 1/

While this is ultimately a private homeowner concern - a risk of living in unserviced areas - an overall change in conditions resulting from climate change is something that all levels of government need to respond to.

While the bulk of dry and low wells were outside the urban boundary, there were and are impacts within the urban boundary, too. In Ward 9, Merivale Gardens gets its water from wells, and there were impacts to that community. 3/

The drought conditions for 2025 showed historic lows in terms of rainfall. One bad thing about drought that compounds the groundwater problem is that extra-dry soil deters infiltration, which leads to more runoff that doesn’t seep back into the groundwater. And that leads to flash floods. 2/

For this? No, it's simply 33 townhomes, two-storey (maybe three-storey). Originally I had urged the City to think much bigger (i.e. multi-unit residential building with ground-floor retail / grocery), but they want to hold onto the land for future transit plans. That's as far as I got.

The City has a stated goal of using surplus municipal land for housing. And so, I worked with City staff to turn over a segment of that large parcel to be developed as housing. Better yet, transit-aligned housing. And now, 33 more families will live in proximity to future transit. Huzzah!

I'm particularly proud of that last item. Originally, the City's plans for this municipally owned land was exclusively for the future LRT Stage 3. The site would have space for the station, obviously, as well as a large "promenade" area. I thought we could do more. 4/

Today's 2nd announcement was for a new Habitat for Humanity project coming to Ward 9, which will see 33 new townhomes on Beechcliffe Street in Craig Henry. Under this "attainable home ownership" program, 33 qualifying families will now own their first home. 3/ news.ontario.ca/en/release/1...

The big announcement was the $400 million joint federal / municipal partnership for the development of 3,000 affordable housing units, to be constructed on federal land. Details on the where and when will come in early 2026. But this is a major step in achieving our housing goals. 2/

Well, there was a pretty significant announcement on a $400 million joint federal/municipal partnership to accelerate affordable and non-market housing.

A few moments later Mayor Sutcliffe quips how Ottawa’s about to pass our 2026 budget while the feds are still working on theirs for 2025. All good-natured, but I’m impressed by their relationship. Great work by the Mayor on building this rapport.

Hi John, I think Michael may been making reference to this, and he was trying to find info on it. Not familiar with this. Can you email me any info about this proposal to [email protected]?

Daniel Boyer is a former citizen member of Ottawa’s Disability Advisory Committee. He still loves municipal politics and wants to run for Council one day. Go for it, Daniel! More power to ya!

Michael Lifshitz is a disabled comedian and motivational speaker, and we sat next to each other for dinner. As a former performer myself, it was fascinating to hear his take on comedy as a disabled artist. 2/