The 2017 Budget was adopted by City Council on December 14, 2016, when Mayor Watson delivered his annual Budget address. A transcript of the Mayor’s Budget address is available.
2017 Operating and Capital Budget - Tax and Rate Supported Programs
Corporate Operating Budget Summary 2017
The 2017 Draft Budget was tabled at City Council on November 9th, 2016. As part of the pre-budget consultation process, Councillors conducted information sessions from mid-September to mid-October, providing information on the municipal budget process to residents and getting views and ideas on the priorities for this draft budget.
In addition to the Councillor-led sessions, online resources were also developed to raise awareness on how the budget process works, including an interactive consultation tool that allowed residents to plan a simulated municipal budget and submit additional comments. While the tool is now closed for comments, it remains available as an information tool.
The following is a summary of residents’ feedback from the interactive consultation tool:
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.
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:
Proposed Increases to Services
Proposed Decreases to Services
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
