Weekly News Review: Museum workers, Lansdowne Live (again), composting and one year until elections!

All the news that's fit to print.

The Museum of Civilization and the War Museum workers have now been striking for more than seven weeks. The sides have not budged much and in an effort to make things move, the strikers occupied a constituency office of Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon in Buckingham on Friday. Talks broke down on September 18 and by visiting Mr. Cannon’s office they hope he can use his clout in cabinet to bring back management to the bargaining table.

According to a Nanos Research poll, Ottawa residents are ‘neutral’ regarding Landsdowne Live. What does that exactly mean? The research indicates that 49.6 per cent of residents have a neutral impression of the proposal, while 9.1 per cent are unsure. Of those who have an opinion, 22.5 per cent have a negative impression, while 18.7 per cent have a positive one, the market research company found. Some, like 67′s owner Jeff Hunt, see this as positive and want to get moving on Lansdowne Live asap; others like city councillor Diane Deans do not, claiming: “I think they would like to see us revitalize Lansdowne Park, but what I take from this survey is they would like us to keep it in public ownership and public uses, not private uses.”

The City of Ottawa is considering a move to change the city’s waste-collection system to a model where homeowners will pay more and businesses will become exempt from charges for the services. Currently, home owners pay $86 on their annual utility. According to this plan, the cost would jump to $195. City councillor Peter Hume explains that it wasn’t fair to have commercial property taxpayers shoulder part of the cost, since they would not use the service and they pay for their own waste collection. Some wonder if this is a dis-incentive to composting and just frustrating citizens more. What have other cities done?

November 8, 2010 is the date of Ottawa’s next municipal elections. With 365 days to go, the Ottawa Sun’s Susan Sherrings shares some of the stories that have dominated City Hall in the past year.