City of Ottawa Takes Care of its One Percent Friends

Occupy Ottawa protests cost city $39,000

By Neco Cockburn, The Ottawa Citizen December 7, 2011

OTTAWA — Responding to the Occupy Ottawa protest in Confederation Park cost the city about $39,000, staff say.

The city’s emergency and protective services department — city paramedics, firefighters and corporate security and emergency management personnel — provided additional and overtime services such as site visits and support during the eviction of protesters on Nov. 23, according to city staff.

That work cost about $15,000, while the Ottawa Police Service has reported its costs to be $24,000.

Costs associated with public health officials working in the park “were considered part of regular duties with no extra costs attributed to the demonstration,” says a staff response to an inquiry made by Innes Councillor Rainer Bloess. The protest in the park began Oct. 15.

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Occupy+Ottawa+protests+cost+city/5827144/story.html#ixzz1iL7zDVvo

Ottawa City Council Takes Care of Its One Percent Friends

Anne T. Trust and Daniel Godson, The Ottawa Civilized Paper, December 8, 2011

OTTAWA — Shutting down free speech and freedom of assembly may have cost the City of Ottawa 39,000 dollars, but paying off the “One Per-center” friends of the Ottawa City Council is costing local citizens millions of dollars says the OCCUPY Ottawa movement.

The city’s taxpayers shelled out $800,000 in severance pay to former city manager Bruce Thom who said he was “too stressed” out to keep working at his $263,000 a year job yet he managed to move to a Western law firm the next day.   “I guess the 800K helped relieve some of the stress,” said Anne T. Trust of the OCCUPY movement.  Another $130,000 went to the head of OC Transpo who worked for the City of Ottawa for six months before leaving the job under mysterious circumstances. The taxpayers were nailed again when human resources manager David Bray gota  $300,000 payout on the way out the door.

But the most amazing thing of all, says Daniel Godson, was that Larry “the Mayor Guy” O’Brien managed to give away $37 million dollars to Siemens after he arbitrarily cancelled a transportation project that had been approved by City Council.  “It is great to be a One Per-Center friend of city council, but not so great to be a taxpayer here. They got nothing."

“It is no wonder the City Council was willing to spend $39,000 dollars to shut down the OCCUPY movement" adds Ms. Trust.  “It is a cheap way to silence legitimate criticism.”