Kate Porter

Nearly a year after a destructive wind storm knocked out power for days on end, the City of Ottawa is writing guidelines for distributing food and checking in on vulnerable residents during the next emergency.

A longtime advocate for Ottawa’s greenspaces says the city’s new tree protection bylaw appears to have failed one of its first big tests, now that Tewin partners have been allowed to resume cutting on a swath of land in the rural southeast end.

Even as City of Ottawa officials look into dozens of hectares that have been clear-cut without a permit at the future suburb of Tewin, one neighbour says heavy equipment continues to do loud overnight work behind her house.

The chair of Ottawa’s environment and climate change committee wants staff to explain how hundreds of trees were cut down without a permit at the future suburb and what could happen next under the tree protection bylaw.

The partners behind the future Ottawa suburb of Tewin say they’ve been cleaning up brush and trees felled by last year’s wind storm on a parcel of land just outside the urban boundary, but aerial images appear to tell a different story.

Ottawa’s light rail system is safe for riders but short-term fixes can’t be used for decades, the city’s transit general manager said Thursday, one day after the Transportation Safety Board warned about the light rail vehicles.

A small working group that includes Mayor Mark Sutcliffe could soon be charged with overseeing several targeted reviews of City of Ottawa’s services and programs to assess whether they’re best done in-house, by a contractor, though a public-private partnership or another setup.

Two of the most important staff jobs at the City of Ottawa are expected to be filled by May, after hiring panels made up of councillors approved paying an executive search firm to find candidates.

The business case and funding for OC Transpo’s big shift to electric buses have been updated, and now the City of Ottawa expects to get 350 buses instead of 450 for the previously announced billion-dollar price tag.

The hybrid work model rolling out in the federal public service comes as the federal government has been on a hiring spree and is rethinking the way it uses its office space.