2. You like restaurant patios in Little Italy

3. You want professional baseball in Ottawa

4. You want something to happen with Lansdowne Park

5. You have a water and sewer bill

6. You care about mental health services in the city

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Follow City Hall reporter Jon Willing on Twitter at @JonathanWilling

The first thing that struck me is the use of the Peace Tower. One of the things Mayor Jim Watson and others have mentioned over the last several weeks is the need to diversify the economy so we aren’t relying so heavily on the federal government as our economic engine.

I fully admit I have no expertise in branding, but I find it interesting we are still using the Parliament Buildings as the visual connection for investing in our city economy. There is no doubt Parliament is probably the most recognizable representation of “Ottawa,” and we will never not be associated with being primarily a government city, but I wonder if this just further reminds us we are economically dependent on the feds, too.

I have no alternative logo to offer. It’s just an observation.

Invest Ottawa provides this explanation:

Invest Ottawa’s new logo features a rising graph icon made from the shapes of two private sector buildings and the Peace Tower, an internationally known Ottawa landmark. A curved overlay of color highlights the growth that the City of Ottawa has experienced and projects positive, dynamic changes for the future.

It seems a number of members are making allegations against two executive members, vice-president Mike Aldrich and treasurer Jim Haddad, related to finances.

I just got off the phone with ATU president Garry Queale and he told me the membership was making these allegations before he took office about a year ago and it looks like the beefs won’t go away. Queale said the union even hired KPMG to go over the books and everything was found to be honest.

“There are some disgruntled members,” Queale said. He accepts the findings of the KPMG report and Aldrich and Haddad continue to be members of the union executive.

Queale said there is a general membership meeting March 13 where members will be asked in a vote if there should be some kind of internal investigation. He wouldn’t get into what precisely these allegations are, but he said it’s not a police matter and everything will be handled internally within the larger ATU organization.

So, while the union is in the middle of trying to negotiate a long-term contract with OC Transpo, it has an interesting internal feud on its hands.

It was a bit of a #letsgetdougtweeting campaign that started in the afternoon.

The Twitterverse misses Thompson, who might have broadcasted the most perfect tweet in the history of City Hall tweeting:

It’s friendly (“Hi”), it tugs at our heartstrings (why would the bus leave Doug, and where??) and it has a quick, simple sign-off (“Doug”).

He hasn’t tweeted since July 9. So we ask now, will Thompson rejoin the list of tweet-friendly councillors? Will he let us know if the bus came back?

We’ll be watching.

Mayor Jim Watson discussed transportation concerns at a new Lansdowne Park with reporters after the meeting. He acknowledged there will be some traffic and parking challenges along Bank St., but he noted the ByWard Market seems to work fine with limited parking. He noted he will even have to change his own travelling habits to visit his parents in the retirement home across the street from Lansdowne. “I’m going to have to make the decision: I’m either going to park at a park and ride and take the No. 1 or 7 down from Carleton perhaps, or farther afield,” he said. “But I will visit my parents.”

Watson was asked his thoughts about a CBC story that pointed out there are no drinking fountains a the CE Centre but visitors can buy expensive bottled water. The city contributed $8.5 million for the exhibit hall’s construction and has been very concerned in recent years about promoting its drinking water. Watson said he would follow up. “I don’t know what leverage aside from moral suasion we have to sort of push them in that direction, but one would think a public facility like that would have drinking water fountains as a given and if we can encourage them to do that, that would be a good gesture on their part,” he said.

Richard Billings of Beacon Sports Capital Partners was caught a little off-guard by a throng of reporters waiting for him outside council chambers after committee approved the Ottawa Stadium lease with his firm. “The initial support today was excellent,” Billings said, and he noted the baseball business has changed for the better since pro ball last failed in Ottawa. “Ottawa would be one of the largest cities in the Eastern League,” he said. He wouldn’t get into what team would come to Ottawa.

On that last point, city solicitor Rick O’Connor gave a very thorough explanation to committee about why the team and possible affiliation are so hush-hush. The detailed explanation even seemed to overwhelm another lawyer, Coun. Keith Egli, who then joked to O’Connor that he hoped the solicitor would also explain the bunt rule in baseball. O’Connor, a self-described Blue Jays fan, started out by saying it’s not often used in the American League and, well, that’s where the fun ended.

I don’t know if former mayor Jim Durrell is trying to compete with Watson for being the most active politician/resident in the history of Ottawa, but he has another endeavour to add to his resume. Business executive David Gourlay told committee he’s starting a Baseball Champions for Ottawa group to promote minor league pro ball and Durrell will serve as “honorary patron.” Durrell is also vice-chairman of the police services board and chairman of the Ottawa Convention Centre board, plus he’s the owner of Capital Dodge Chrysler Jeep. He was also one of Watson’s honorary campaign chairs during the 2010 municipal election and has held other various organizational positions since leaving office.

The officer was in Confederation Park around 4:10 p.m. on Oct. 26 when a complaint about illegal parking came in. The complaint seemed to be in relation to media vehicles in the park. The report makes mention of both RDI and TVA news agencies.

The officer got the go ahead from another staffer to remove two trucks from the park.

But hold on!

A call came in on the officer’s cell phone from NCC senior media relations manager Jean Wolff at 5:28 p.m. He asked the officer to leave the trucks alone “for now.”

Because that’s just what the NCC needed: Footage of its officers booting the media when protesters were being allowed to have a campout.

Planning: Policy wonks will be interested in Tuesday’s planning committee meeting. Councillors will be asked to approve guidelines for deals between developers and communities when the developer is asking for more height or density above what zoning allows. The tradeoff for the community could be more park space or transit station improvements, for example. These kinds of deals are allowed under Section 37 of Ontario’s Planning Act, so this issue is often simply referred to as “Section 37.”

Community and protective services: The health board has approved a recommendation to ban smoking on restaurant patios and in city parks and beaches. Since it’s a bylaw issue, the community and protective services committee also needs to sign off Wednesday before sending the report to council. Also at the meeting councillors will be asked to endorse a proposal to turn one wing at the Peter D. Clark long-term care home into a special behavioural support unit, something the facility’s family and friends council is against.

Finance and economic development: It’s expected to be such a popular meeting Thursday the city is holding it in council chambers. The latest Lansdowne Park redevelopment reports are on the agenda, so is the lease recommendation for the Ottawa Stadium.

We’ll have lots to talk about during the City Hall video week in review on Friday.

They will be asked to approve spending $5.7 million to upgrade the ball park to make it playable for a Minor League Baseball team. They only know the team would come from the double-A Eastern League and it would play at least 71 home games each year.

The team, however, is a mystery to councillors and the reasons are set out in a report about the proposed deal with Beacon Sports Capital Partners: “The governance rules of the Eastern League preclude the acknowledgement of a specific franchise and potential Major League affiliation until the relocation and designation has been approved.”

Now, although never publicly discussed, but discovered through interviews behind the scenes, we know Beacon Sports has been representing the Binghamton Mets, an Eastern League team currently affiliated with the New York Mets. In writing about the issue last week, one baseball source told me there could be other Eastern League teams eyeing Ottawa, too. It looks like the most likely, though, is Binghamton.

And councillors, unless they’ve been briefed behind closed doors, which is entirely possible, won’t know this, based strictly on the report they’re asked to approve Thursday.

The chess game south of the boarder muddies the waters a bit. The owner of the ball club in Binghamton “angrily” denied the Ottawa rumours, and the commissioner of the Eastern League told the same newspaper no team has asked to relocate.

And then there’s this affiliation matter with the Toronto Blue Jays. The National Post asked Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos about the news out of Ottawa and he said the team intends to renew its double-A affiliation with New Hampshire. Councillors who have worked closely on the stadium issue, namely Bob Monette and Rick Chiarelli, both acknowledge a Jays affiliation is the only way to make baseball work in Ottawa.

I’m guessing baseball people are more in the know than they make it sound. One thing I’ve learned covering this story over the past year is the business of baseball is a highly sensitive matter. It’s a complete no-no to discuss publicly which teams might relocate or flip Major League Baseball affiliations.

All this to say, Ottawa councillors will be making a decision on the future of the stadium without having all the information on the table. If council approves the lease, the city could be spending money on stadium upgrades before knowing for sure which team is coming to Ottawa, whether the Eastern League approves and if the Jays are willing to play ball on an affiliation.

While I do take the point that the relationship between advisory committees and council has sometimes been rocky, unclear and frustrating I do not agree that the City is ‘strangling’ advisory committees or that they’re “influence has evapourated”. As a former chair of the Environmental Advisory Committee and currently its lead on the governance review I can tell you that while the EAC has felt ignored and left out of city decision making at times, we have, in far more instances, seen great success in working directly with city councillors and staff and we welcome the current review process. I would also characterize the relationship between the EAC and current council as the best since I started on the committee in 2004.

EAC has worked closely with council and staff over the years and just a small number of the things we’ve achieved together include: a new pedestrian area in the byward market, an anti-idling bylaw, an update to the way bylaw services enforces the property standards bylaw as it relates to natural gardens, bi-weekly garbage collection, implementation of the green bin, purchase of hybrid busses for octranspo, fulfilling the city’s corporate greenhouse gas targets, working directly with GBA and enermodal to ensure the revised landsdowne plans last year included a LEED Gold designation and the list goes on. Hardly strangled and hardly no influence. Could and should advisory committees be more integrated into the policy planning process, absolutely, but with this must come stricter codes of conduct to avoid some of the inappropriate actions taken by some committees and their members in the past. In the end, influence can be had by any advisory committee willing to duly execute their mandate, work hard, engage with elected officials and staff, and remain persistent.

With respect to the review itself EAC has welcomed the process as it is quite clear there may well be too many advisory committees, some ACs whose mandates may not longer be relevant in the current council structure, some should perhaps be amalgamated and others may need to be created. The point is that EAC has been at the forefront of engaging in this and previous reviews and has even developed an advisory committee governance white paper which has been well received by members of the governance renewal sub-committee and the mayor’s office. EAC believes strongly in the advisory committee model, but taking stock of what works, what doesn’t and what needs to change is a healthy endeavour and one we are proud to be playing a leading role in.

Here’s how you can support Egli in Shave For A Cure 2012.