Road budget an unclear path

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Ottawa once again blew through its Roads Operations budget, forecasting a $14 million shortfall for 2017. Yet the city hopes to buck a deficit trend with a $5.5 million increase in the 2018 budget.

According to draft budget notes, $2.8 million of this increase will go towards simply maintaining current services. Another $400,000 will be dedicated to a 5.4% increase in the Asphalt Repair program and $20,000 to winter maintenance of bike lanes. But the largest increase will be $2.3 million to Winter Operations, which falls under Roads Operations.

The 3.5 per cent raise will bring the total budget of Winter Operations to $68.3 million.

In eight of the ten last years, Ottawa has run a deficit on Winter Operations, averaging around $9 million. In the 2018 draft budget notes, 2017’s shortfall was attributed to increased snow accumulation and higher than normal precipitation.

The $2.3 million is credited to recommendations made by a KPGM consultation completed in 2016. Part of these recommendations include partially outsourcing snow removal to private organizations. According to an email statement by Luc Gagné, director of Roads and Parking Services, 22% of the 2018 winter budget is allocated to external services.

Kitchissippi Couns. Jeff Leiper is unconvinced the increase will be enough to avoid another shortfall.

“This year’s budget proposes to increase the amount of funding that goes into the snow budget, but that funding is still well short of what we have historically spent,” he said over phone last week.

When budget lines run a deficit, money is taken from a reserve made up of previous surpluses. But Winter Operations has not had a surplus since 2011.

“They will scramble at the end of the year to find programs where you have surpluses and apply those surpluses to the snow clearing budget,” said Leiper. “But it doesn’t strike me as a very honest way to budget.”

Mayor Jim Watson nonetheless defended the increase during the initial draft presentation.

“We feel the additional $2.3 million, bringing it up to $68.3 million, will suffice and obviously if we have another bad winter we’ll have to re-examine that next year,” Watson was quoted as saying in the Ottawa Citizen.

“It’s not uncommon that we budget one thing and our forecast is another thing,” said Kanata-North Couns. Marianne Wilkinson in a phone call Wednesday.

Wilkinson had attached her name to a proposal by Leiper to include a one-time 0.5 per cent infrastructure levy on property taxes.

The proposal would have broken Watson’s promise not to increase property taxes more than 2 per cent but would have generated approximately $8-million to maintain assets like roads.

“The amount of money we’ve been putting into maintaining our assets is well under what you need each year,” said Wilkinson. “We have noticed in the last few years we’re getting behind more every year.”

She said the goal of the levy was to begin to narrow the gap between the current budget and required maintenance costs over five or six years.

The proposal was withdrawn when Watson presented a surprise $10-million budget surplus. A motion declared the windfall will be earmarked for infrastructure maintenance.

But Leiper and four others nonetheless voted against the budget in council.

Somerset Couns. McKenney, Vice Chair of the Transportation Committee, was one of the opposition.

In a phone call Thursday, she said she does not support the 2 per cent property tax cap.

“I’ve always said if we can meet our service levels with 2 per cent that’s great,” she explained. “But if history is showing us we can’t… we have to look at either cutting services somewhere, which I don’t agree with, or raising taxes by a nominal amount.”

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