Budget day at city hall on Wednesday broke from tradition.
Councillors and staff did gather around the horseshoe-shaped table at 10 a.m. to hear the mayor’s speech and to absorb a presentation from the city’s chief financial officer, who wore a striking new pair of budget shoes.
But by then the big details of the budget had, unusually, already been revealed.
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe had given a similar speech to reporters an hour earlier outside his office, where he laid out the details of how the city planned to deal with a $120 million deficit for transit costs in 2025. A half dozen council members came by to hear the highlights there, instead of from their usual council seats.
The morning news conference – held while the police were still down the hall presenting their own finances – was to help journalists meet their deadlines, explained the mayor. Sutcliffe is, after all, a former longtime journalist and knows the business.
But this announcement was the latest in a number of unexpected steps the mayor has taken over the past 12 months to pave the way for what he’s long warned would be a difficult budget.
Sutcliffe has approached the challenging task in his own way, and had to make calculations of many kinds.
A different kind of campaign
Last December, when council voted on its 2024 budget, Sutcliffe was already messaging to the public and council colleagues to expect tough choices for the next one.
That’s because Ottawa faces a $120 million problem. The imminent opening of the north-south Trillium Line, to be followed by LRT extensions east and west, will lead to extra operating costs and debt financing that will continue year after year. Ridership revenues aren’t what they used to be.
After many years of budgets that kept tax increases low – and allowed Sutcliffe, and Mayor Jim Watson before him, to keep election promises – this budget needed to somehow tackle that growing cost.
The mayor often mentions he has regular talks with Ontario and federal cabinet ministers about Ottawa’s financial picture, which one would expect. Such conversations led to the $543 million deal signed with the Ford government in April. (That deal didn’t involve transit money).
But in August, Sutcliffe took the unusual step of launching a formal campaign for extra money, dubbed “Fairness for Ottawa”.
He argued Ottawa was being shortchanged by both the federal and provincial governments, and sought to educate the public about it. He even launched an online petition.
Sutcliffe had his council colleagues sign on, too, by tabling a motion in September that all 24 councillors supported.
Nowhere near worst case
The routine-sounding budget directions report in September was also given a new spin. It didn’t set out specific targets to close this transit deficit, as it normally would.
Instead, that report laid out wide-ranging ways the city could deal with its $120 million shortfall: a transit fare hike of up to 75 per cent, a transit levy increase of up to 37 per cent that led to a 9.9 per cent overall tax bill increase, $120 million from upper levels of government, or deep transit cuts.
The worst scenarios – also detailed in a news conference – would be too devastating to OC Transpo to be seen as realistic. The city said they didn’t intend to pursue any option to the full extent, anyway.
Now that the draft budget has arrived, transit riders face a five per cent fare hike and the transit levy could go up eight per cent, for a total tax bill increase of 3.9 per cent.
Those increases are not nearly as dramatic as they might have been, but they are higher than the 2.5 per cent increases of the last budget.
Asked Wednesday if the bad scenarios were presented ahead of the budget to prepare the public for higher-than-usual taxes and fares, Sutcliffe reiterated what he had said in September.
Those scenarios were meant to help the public understand the scope of the city’s problem, he said. City staff also described spending hundreds of hours analyzing where the figures should land.
Council calculations
Even the choice to split rising OC Transpo costs between riders and property taxpayers involved careful calculation.
The mayor was elected on a promise to build a more collegial council. Suburban and rural councillors typically say their residents don’t want to see property taxes rise, while many urban councillors say fare hikes will deter riders and hurt those on low incomes.
Sharing the pain between both groups will make everyone somewhat unhappy.
Meanwhile, the strong mayors’ legislation of 2022 allows Sutcliffe to craft his own budget. Instead, he formed a couple of working groups to tackle financial issues.
A handful of councillors help him and city staff look for “efficiencies”, while a group that includes transportation committee chair Tim Tierney, transit commission chair Glen Gower, and planning committee chair Jeff Leiper, have been working through the transit dilemma.
Despite those months of collaboration, there will still be debate in the many meetings before a final vote on Dec. 11.
Some councillors are uneasy about yet another calculation made for Wednesday’s draft budget: there’s a $36 million hole left for upper levels of government to fill.
The $36 million hole not plugged
The mayor and city staff are calling that a “placeholder” amount.
Municipalities are not allowed to run deficits, and this draft budget counts on $36 million materializing from Queen’s Park or the federal government at some point in 2025.
To be sure, $36 million is a smaller request than $120 million.
And Sutcliffe told reporters Wednesday that, based on his conversations, getting $36 million from the other levels of government is an achievable target.
The thing is, he needs to secure that money for 2025 at the same time as he embarks on this process all over again to balance the books in 2026, which is projected to be worse.
Could this year of advocacy, tight budgeting, and political calculations be the new normal for Sutcliffe?
He says he hopes not. Municipalities across the country are calling for a new fiscal arrangement that lets them tap into revenues other than property taxes. Running a modern city requires it, the mayor says.
But for now, Sutcliffe appears to have to stay in “Fairness for Ottawa” campaign mode.