You'd almost think my good friend Claudette Cain and I scheme together once a week to cover off local political issues in our respective columns. (Note to Claudette: Are we still on for a Tim Horton's coffee at the usual location and usual time? I've got a free donut from my roll up the rim to win from last week.)

But seriously, Claudette's column this past Sunday pointed out the folly of area rating taxes across 21 different wards that is now under consideration by your council. Reading between the lines, she was telling council to "think outside the box" as it tackles its first budget this spring. Picking up from my column last week as well as Claudette's challenge, yours truly will now offer up some outside the box suggestions.

Nowhere are these suggestions more urgently needed than in the infrastructure challenges which plague the city. To start, congestion through the core on the Queensway, to the East on the 174, across the bridges to Quebec, or West through Kanata to the Corel Centre has become a real byproduct of and potential nemesis if not a lethal threat to Ottawa's continuing economic prosperity. As a transplanted true Toronto boy, even I will admit that we now have big-city traffic problems.

But the political and editorial response of our opinion leaders to date has been one of more money for more roads (read more sprawl) and/or more buses or light rail systems (which can also promote sprawl).

But as any sane urban planner will tell you, congestion (especially in Ottawa's case) is for the most part not an issue too few roads, it's an issue of too many cars on the road at specific times. Roads are like public utilities, yet we build them and never charge users directly for them again. If we can electronically and effortlessly toll Highway 407 near Toronto, surely we should at least consider and debate the merits of tolling our major highways and regional roads.

As one former Nobel Prize-winning economist said back in 1963, "in no other major area are pricing practices so irrational, so out of date, and so conducive to waste as in urban transportation." Variable rates could be set for different classes of vehicles traveling at different times (read: rush hour premiums versus off-peak hours) of the day. Hmmm, sounds kind of like OC Transpo or Bell Canada for that matter.

Almost immediately you'd see a more efficient use of roads and highways as workers and companies would schedules accordingly to minimize long-term tolling costs. And with tolling technology come smarter roads, meaning better traffic planning and expansion measures. The monies collected could then be plowed back into roads and further transit initiatives, not to mention proper life cycle maintenance of the existing infrastructure extending road life. Talk about a virtuous circle.

As for other needed infrastructure (community centres, libraries, etc.), the Mayor and council need to - here it comes again like a Careers section nightmare - think outside the box.

Simply calling for more joint tri-government funding programs is insufficient. Indeed, last November, at the annual meeting of the Canadian Council for Public Private Partnerships, we learned that if we add all of Canada's infrastructure needs for schools, hospitals, water and roads, etc., the public sector simply does not have the capacity to fund everything.

Engaging the private sector is no longer an option; it's a necessity. Compared to the consideration of tolling roads, as irksome as this user fee may be, asking the private sector to fund school construction or run libraries, not to mention buses or ambulances is ideological heresy for some who now sit on council.

So it's up to you, the citizens and taxpayers of Ottawa to drive this message home. It's not about what's "left" or "right", but what works.

Outsourcing contracts can easily be structured to reconcile private profit motives and public policy imperatives. Employees should also be allowed, to form companies and bid for their own jobs. International evidence, as well as local experience a few years back with the National Capital Commission, shows that this strategy for better, innovative, and cost-effective service delivery does work.

Better and truer market-based pricing for road use and public services combined with alternate service delivery should be council buzzwords as it begins Budget 2001 deliberations. City council has a governance role to ensure that equitable and accessible services are delivered. It does not necessarily follow that Ottawa must in turn actually deliver these services.

This "outside the box" thinking is essential for this and future year's budgets. By following this path, the Mayor and council also strengthen their hand at the federal and provincial bargaining tables for more traditional (inside the box) demands for better access to traditional funding sources.