The “unofficial” Ottawa Lynx blog

Guess I don’t have to write that letter to the City now - the Lynx have brought the parking issue to the front burner very nicely, thank you.

Lynx sue Ottawa for $10.75M. I’ll have more, relatively uninformed, biased comment later.

Okay, it’s later now. I’ve read through the Citizen article, and surprisingly, apart from the headline, I found little to find fault with. It will be interesting to hear what the City’s side of this story is via their official comment. I don’t think anyone will dispute the disappearance of the parking spaces. Further, I think if the City had some - i.e. ANY rationale for it’s part in the loss of the parking we would have heard it by now; the Lynx have been making noise about this for years.

The timing of the suit could not be worse for Mr. Chiarelli. He’s currently fighting the O-Train funding issue, the loss of $30M in Federal funding for the Congress Centre, and is trailing not one, but two candidates in an election which is just a few weeks away (November 13).

But politics aside, I think this presents a fantastic opportunity to hold all incumbents’ feet to the fire: Where do you stand on the parking issue with respect to the Lynx? Are you prepared to live up to the original agreement? The same questions should be asked of the challengers - particularly Mssrs. O’Brien and Munter.

Ottawa Start has a great website located here listing all the candidates for each ward in the City. Most have websites and email and are seeking input from their constituents. I will press my councillor, Gord Hunter, as well as the O’Brien and Munter campaigns on this issue - quite simply, “Where do you guys stand on this issue? Does the City honor its agreements, or not?”.

I think the Lynx have done the right thing; if anything, I think they would have been justified in taking out their action years ago.