Councillors Can Cover Senior Fare Hike: CRERAR
How to stop the 60-per-cent transit-fare hike for seniors? The councillors can cover it … really.
Here’s how.
Most people realize that small numbers add up to big numbers in a hurry. Just look at your the bottom line on your monthly Visa statement when it exceeds $1,000 and realize most of the line items are $60 or less.
While I’m not an economist, I do know that there are two basic ways to reduce corporate debt: increase revenues and/or decrease expenditures. Ottawa city councilors are trying to balance this year’s budget by using tactics such as increasing transit rates and will probably end up cutting back on or eliminating programs or increasing their costs. These moves will just upset the residents councillors are supposed to be serving.
Let’s take a look at another approach to balancing this year’s budget.
Today’s research brought to light the fact that in 2017, each councilor had $257,723 at his or her disposal for discretionary expenditures. I wasn’t able to find more current information but the number for 2024 will be greater. Ottawa currently has 24 city councilors so simple arithmetic shows that reducing their discretionary spending budgets by $50,000 would put a $1.2-million dent into the $36 million budget deficit. This 20-per-cent decrease is far smaller than the 120 per cent or 60 per cent increase council is planning to impose on senior transit riders. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Further research shows that the City of Ottawa currently employs 17,000 people. If city council and city management is serious about balancing the budget it’s time to get rid of the workers who spend the day surfing the internet and texting on their cell phones. The message to city management is a simple “physician heal thyself”
Howard Crerar is a project manager and has worked in the software industry for three decades.
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The info about Council’s discretionary spending budget is on p. 7 of the budget book for the Finance and Corporate Services Committee. I won’t put a link here but if you go to ottawa.ca and then follow City Hall > Budget, finance and corporate planning > Budget 2025 Information, you’ll see Draft Budget 2025. If you click on that, it will give you a list of all the budget measures broken down under the Standing Committee responsible for that area of the budget and includes actuals for 2023; forecast and budget for 2024 and the draft budget amount for 2025. In most cases, these are the figures that will go to Council on December 11th for approval but in other situations, such as the seniors’ transit pass, what will go to full Council is the amended amount approved by the Transit Commission last week. I’ve given the figures below but that path will get you to the budget numbers for any part of the draft budget you want to look at.
If you look on p. 6, there’s a written explanation of what services this section of the budget covers.
The draft budget gives you the increase/decrease from 2024 to 2025 but you’ll see below that I’ve also included the 2023 to 2025 increase/decrease since, as you’ll see, it’s an ‘interesting’ amount on some of the budget lines. You should note that the 2023, 2024 and 2025 budgets are the work of the current Council which was elected in the fall of 2022. I will also draw attention to the explanation of what the ‘Elected Officials’ budget covers which is on p. 6. It cites the role of Council under the Municipal Act which includes: “Maintain the financial integrity of the municipality”.
Here are the figures for ’23, ’24 and ’25 – in the budget book, they appear as thousands of dollars and I’ve put the extra three zeros in to make it easier to follow:
Mayor’s office:
2023 $910,000; 2024 $1,001,000; 2025 $1,022,000
Difference 24>25 $21,000; 23>25 $112,000
Constituency Services and Admin: “used for such things as community events, sponsorships and donations, advertising and office supplies.” p. 6
2023 $12,875,000; 2024 $13,591,000; 2025 $13,885,000
Difference 24>25 $294,000; 23>25 $980,000
Provision for Surplus: This is money unused in the budget when various councillors haven’t spent their allocation. For example, in days gone by, people like Gord Hunter who was on Nepean, Regional and Ottawa Councils between 1980 and 2010, was known for consistently spending only a fraction of his expense budget. The balance used to just rollover back into city coffers but they are now anticipating that recovery with this “surplus” line in the budget.
2023 $0; 2024 $550,000; 2025 $550,000
Difference 24>25 $0; 23>25 $550,000
Salaries, Wages and Benefits: I suspect this includes the figures for Councillors and the Mayor but I’m not sure. This money used to have a wall around it so that politicians couldn’t use it for expenditures other than personnel but I’m not sure if that’s still the case. I hope someone can confirm or correct those two points.
2023 $11,951,000; 2024 $12,429,000; 2025 $12,744,000
Difference 24>25 $315,000; 23>25 $793,000.
Just to save you the time of going through the numbers looking for a decrease anywhere, there isn’t one. Using the term “increase/decrease” is just force of habit since it does occur on occasion, just not here! Looking at the numbers in the difference between 2023 and 2025 compared to 2024 and 2025 demonstrates there were large increases in some lines in the 2024 budget.