An on-line budget consultation tool was recently piloted to support the City’s 2017 budget process. Citizen Budget provided residents with an overview of budget allocations by service, an opportunity to explore the budget, see impact of changes at a high level, and to submit feedback. This tool, which is bilingual and meets Ontario’s accessibility requirements, went live on 25 August. It is still available for information and interaction, but the ability to provide feedback and submit results was disabled when the draft budget was tabled on 09 November 2016.
The feedback received is not statistically valid and did not directly inform the creation of the proposed budget. Community feedback/results were provided to Council during the budget process.
Results
During the 77 day period when the tool was live, both the French and English versions of the website were viewed 1499 times and the survey was completed by 242 visitors.
The survey consisted of four distinct sections, and the results of each section have been summarized as follows:
- An opportunity to propose changes to budget allocations and then examine service impact and monthly costs to the taxpayer. The tool allowed users to simulate adding or decreasing funding to a list of 15 tax‐supported areas. The tool displayed the amount of their taxes per month going to each service area, based on the actual assessed value of their property, if the participant inserted the value, or the default value for a typical Ottawa home. The results are as follows:
Proposed Increases to Services
- Long-term care – increase by 4.2 per cent
- Roads and Traffic – increase by 1.7 per cent
- Social Services – increase by 1.6 per cent
- Paramedics – increase by 1.6 per cent
- Housing – increase by 1.3 per cent
- Public Health – increase by 0.7 per cent
- Parks, Recreation and Culture – increase by 0.1 per cent
- Transit – increase by 0.04 per cent
Proposed Decreases to Services
- Planning, Economic and Environment – decrease by 3.4 per cent
- Library – decrease by 2.8 per cent
- Police – decrease by 2.5 per cent
- Fire – decrease by 2.0 per cent
- Program Support – decrease by 1.2 per cent
- Garbage and Recycle – decrease by 1.0 per cent
- Child care – decrease by 0.7 per cent
- An open-ended feedback section to provide comments on the City budget and/or the simulated budget exercise. Observations on the open-ended feedback are as follows:
- Overall, residents are happy with the Citizen Budget tool, citing that it provided them with an opportunity to learn more about the City budget and budget process.
- One common suggested enhancement is for the tool to provide more details, so that each spending area could be further broken down.
- There are no consistent themes regarding spending more or less on each of the City’s services.
- There are many suggestions on ways to improve the various City services.
- An evaluation of the use of the tool and residents’ level of understanding of the budget process. Results show that the tools was successful in increasing understanding of the City’s budget and engaging residents who may have not otherwise participated in the budget discussion. The majority of respondents indicated that the tool provided them with an opportunity to learn more about the City’s budget and City services overall. Nearly half of respondents have had limited experience with City budgets and most have never or seldom provided feedback to Council in the past. The following is a breakdown:
- 61.6 per cent somewhat agree or agree that they have been able to learn more about City services.
- 72.1 per cent somewhat agree or agree that through the simulated budget exercise they have been able to learn more about the City’s budget.
- 51.9 per cent indicated that they had beginner or limited experience with municipal budgets.
- 74.3 per cent have never or very seldom delegated/provided feedback to City Council and staff about the budget.
- 85.8 per cent have indicated that they would use the tool or another simulator in the future, 3.8 per cent would not and 10.4 per cent didn’t know.
- A “tell us about yourself” section.
Are you a homeowner or renter?

213 responses were received for this question, of which 185 respondents indicated that they were homeowners, 25 were renters and 3 identified as “other”.
Age range of respondents

214 responses were received for this question. No one identified as being under 20 years of age, 24 people indicated that they were between 20 and 30 years of age, 64 people were between 31 and 40 years old, 30 people were 41 to 50, 41 respondents were between 51 and 60, and 55 respondents were 61 years of age or older.
Participation Rate
By comparison to other Canadian municipalities who are using the tool as part of their budget consultations, Ottawa’s viewing and participation rates were lower. For example the City of Edmonton, with a similar population to Ottawa’s of 899,447, had 4267 views to the website and 1409 completed surveys in 2015. The results for 2016 have not been published yet but 2016 represents the fourth consecutive year that Edmonton is using the Citizen Budget tool as part of their budget consultation process. The participation rate went from 600 completed surveys in 2013 to 1409 in 2015. It is believed that this year-over-year increase can be attributed to increased awareness of the tool by residents.
Despite the participation rate, the tool has been successful in reaching Ottawa residents who may have not otherwise provided feedback. The experience of other municipalities indicates that there is the potential to increase the use and participation of the tool as part of a range of options to engage residents