City of Ottawa Finances

October 17, 2008

In recent weeks, Canadian citizens have witnessed the bursting of the financial bubble in New York and London. Stock markets, banks and insurance companies etc. have been affected the world over. It happened because “heads were buried in the sand”. The bubble would not burst they insisted, but it did. The blame game is now underway.

Well, Ontario municipalities are living under a similar financial bubble and even though I and others have been warning of this for several years now, the powers to be have had their “heads in the sand”. The media has paid lip service to the unfolding events by simplistically pointing out the need for more municipal revenue. What we really need is more direct control of municipal wages and benefit costs and productivity enhancements.

Total Ontario municipal revenues have been increasing at a healthy annual average of near 6 percent while the Ontario population growth for the majority of municipalities (there are some notable exceptions like Barrie and Guelph) was in the 4 percent range over the period 2001-2006. That’s less than 1 percent a year. So if the population was growing at a snails pace, where did all the revenue go! Basically, unwarranted compensation increases used up the majority of the revenue.

The Ontario Municipal Act bestows the power of ruling individual municipalities to the elected councillors. It also provides an obligation and duty on the councillors to utilize the resident taxpayer’s money in a manner that benefits the taxpayer. This has not been happening.

In the case of Ottawa, municipal councillors have disregarded their responsibility to the taxpayer and allowed others to control the spending of taxpayer’s money.

The current structure of control at the City Of Ottawa is as follows:

Unions
Senior Managers
City Councillors

The Ontario Municipal Act dictates the following structure:

City Councillors
Senior Managers
Unions

You will be hard pressed to ever hear the word “union” coming out of the mouths of our councillors or senior staff. You may hear that employee compensation is comparable to other Ontario jurisdictions, the arbitrators in Toronto settled outlandish wages for Ottawa union workers and the like.

You will not hear that 81 percent of all new revenue generated since amalgamation has been expensed for wage and benefits to City of Ottawa Union employees. The City of Ottawa is basically “stuck” in the year 2000 as the remaining balance of new revenue generated since amalgamation has, for the most part, only covered the additional inflationary cost of purchasing necessary materials used in maintaining the city infrastructure and other services.

The City of Ottawa's annual employee compensation expense is currently at the 1.1 billion dollar level. Property taxes account for approximately one billion of the total annual revenue of the City. A five percent resident property tax increase will not even cover employee compensation increases at the City of Ottawa in 2009. This is the problem the has to be resolved.

Most other Ontario municipalities have had a similar spike in compensation levels without comparative population growth. However, Ottawa’s compensation increase since 2001 to 2007 is by far the worst of similar sized jurisdictions in Ontario compared to revenue.

The problem does not belong only to Ottawa. It starts with the Ontario Government Public Sector salary policy. For example, you can recognize it in the illogical compensation increases for the Ontario Provincial Police.

Public sector workers have the greatest of job security and substantial wages and benefits above the private sector. Why? Because our elected politicians do not carry out their responsibility of controlling compensation levels in relationship to the majority of private sector workers. Period.

In Ottawa’s case, city councillors must take back the responsibility for controlling union employee compensation and make certain that it is on the basis of affordability of the resident taxpayers of Ottawa, not on compensation settlements in other Ontario communities.

Arbitrators in Toronto need to be re-educated. They have caused financial hardship on many municipalities in Ontario and have irresponsibly created the compensation “bubble” in Ontario municipalities. City councillors like the fact that they can blame the arbitrators, but it doesn't get the councillors off the hook. They are ultimately responsible for this mess.

The Unions will always take the best that they can get. In the present structure of wage negotiations, I don’t blame them. However, some sanity has to come into the equation.

The councillors have the choice now of reducing the workforce to save taxpayer money; restricting or roll-back wage and benefit increases; negotiate productivity improvements; closing "nice to have" departments and services and/or obtain additional revenue from the Provincial Government. The councillors must keep in mind that there is only one taxpayer.


Comments would be appreciated to:

wmomalley@gmail.com


Bill O’Malley
Ottawa

How Many Employees Work At The City Of Ottawa?

Good question!

The question should be: How many authorized Full-time Equivalent employees (FTE) at the City of Ottawa?

According to the list provided by Kent Kirkpatrick to Stittsville-Kanata West Councillor Shad Qadri, the City of Ottawa has a total of 19,000 jobs. The 2008 budget according to Qadri authorized 12,100 full-time equivalent (FTE). This information was published in the Ottawa Citizen September 17, 2008.

Kent Kirkpatrick informed resident taxpayers in the 2006 City of Ottawa Annual Report that there were “nearly 17,000 City Staff”. Even the Auditor General uses this figure in 2007 reports. Does this mean the city added 2,000 staff in 2007 and to-date in 2008? Somebody better get their act together soon.

What are the real numbers as confirmed by the Ottawa City Treasurer?

As of December 31, 2007 the City of Ottawa Treasurer confirmed to the Provincial Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Jim Watson, the following breakdown of employees:

Full-Time Funded Positions: 13,461 (including Boards)
Part-Time Funded Positions: 1,634 (including Boards)
Seasonal Employees: 50 (including Boards)

The 2008 Adopted City Budget authorizes 13,839.68 FTE, not the 12,100 as referred to by Councillor Shad Qadri in the Ottawa Citizen article. This may be due to excluding the Police Budget which has a total of 1,836 authorized FTE for 2008. Even so, accepting these figures would still result in 97 FTE positions over the 2008 authorization. Councillor Quadi’s FTE figure should be 12,003.

81 percent of all new revenue generated by the City of Ottawa since Amalgamation in 2001 has gone to employee expense. Shouldn’t this be a reason for management to know at any given time, the number of employees working at the City and how this number converts to FTE? The fact that Kent Kirkpatrick provided figures to Councillor Shad Qadri that Quadri indicated were “useless” should be enough to get the attention of every single Councillor.

Kent Kirkpatrick acknowledged the discrepancies, but indicated that the City of Ottawa Council is provided with the “best information” of any municipality on Canada. This statement, to say the least, is inaccurate and Kirkpatrick should know better. The employee figures provided to Ottawa City Council simply would have a failing grade compared to other municipalities in Canada.

First of all let it be said that it is the “duty” of the City Manager and other senior staff to provide accurate and timely information to City Council and to furnish reasonable information requests from the Mayor and any Councillor at any time. Providing the employee information in December 2008 is not timely.

Kent Kirkpatrick dictated that the new and complete employee information requested by Shad Qadri would be disclosed during the December 2008 budget discussions for 2009. This is completely unacceptable. The Auditor General states that the compensation budget process is flawed. It is time to get it fixed now.

The cost of employee overtime is still a problem at the City of Ottawa and this overtime expense must be contained within the authorized FTE.

The Auditor General has pointed out many, many problems within the Employee Services Department in 2007 and also on the employee compensation budgeting process within Ottawa City Hall. It is troubling to see such inept management.

The Municipality of Ottawa “TEA Party” is looming on the horizon

Bill O’Malley
Ottawa
September 28, 2008

Municipality of Ottawa is out of control

Municipality of Ottawa is out of control.

August 24, 2008

In my research data published on July 22, 2008 reference was made to City senior staff interfering in the political decisions of Council. (The Mayor and all Councillors were directed to my website). By the third week of August several councillors challenged staff on previous directions that were not carried out. The relative Staff Managers have since apologized and those directions are now being implemented.

Further, the City Manager, Kent Kirkpatrick, issued a direction to all senior staff to report on all outstanding Council directions. The resultant report will be provided to Council in the coming weeks. This subject was covered extensively in the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Sun in the past several days.

We are now seven and a half years into amalgamation and it is only this past Friday that the City Manager publicly took ownership of what should be the most important function of the job. That is, administering the operations of the City of Ottawa as directed by Council. The fact that he has not had control of this aspect of operations is totally unacceptable by any professional standards.

The lack of control at City Hall is also evident as it has taken Committee Chair Councillors and Councillors at-large, especially in one case, several years to realize that directions to Staff were not carried out. There is a responsibility of the Committee Chair to track the implementation of directions and report on same to Council in general. It isn’t only the responsibility of City Staff.

The Ontario Municipal Act clearly dictates the responsibility and duties of city council. The elected Mayor and Council have, as a body, the duty to exercise all of the powers of the municipality provided to it. This doesn’t seem to be the case as I will explain.

Who is running the City of Ottawa? Is it the Mayor and councillors or the City Senior Staff? Or is it the unions and arbitrators in Toronto? We as resident taxpayers better find the answer soon.

The City of Ottawa is a good city and its residents are the best. However, the operations of the city are letting its residents down by not living up to its great potential.

There are several important changes that will have to be made by the City of Ottawa elected politicians.

Number one is the election of ward councillors by all resident taxpayers of Ottawa while maintaining the ward system. Currently, only residents within a ward elect their representative. Council has the power to make city-wide voting for councillors a reality now, just as the City of Oshawa has done. This would ensure that councillors would put the issues of the city at-large first and foremost before their ward. As it is now, the ward comes first and the City of Ottawa second. This will be the subject of my next blog.

The second most important issue is to repatriate the power of Council to maintain control over all union contracts rather than shun the responsibility and give the power to some unknown arbitrator in Toronto. It is a fact that the City of Ottawa has spent 81 percent of the new money generated since amalgamation on compensation to its employees. The audited statements of the city reflect this percentage as 72. Now, it may be that the union contracts negotiated by the Toronto arbitrators are ok, but the decision must be taken back into the hands of councillors in order that councillors are collectively held responsible. Councillors make pretty good money, but I would challenge the remuneration they receive if they continue to allow almost 50 percent of the annual revenue of this city to be controlled by outsiders.

The third issue deals with staff. The majority of staff is deemed to be conscientious in performing the duties of the job, but amalgamation and the slow growth of the city over the past seven years does not account for the current number of employees working for the city. A real effort must be made by council to make efficiencies if senior staff continues to stack the numbers and information provided to Ottawa residents.

The fourth directive would require the Auditor General to do away with an annual report on audits of various departments. Whether an individual audit result is good or bad, it should be reported to council and the public immediately on completion of the audit. This would provide council with the necessary tools to maintain better control and provide the public with factual information. As the auditor general has access to all city departments and information thereof, it would be beneficial to the operational control of the city by our councillors.

The fifth issue relates to public disclosure of external contracts to consultants, other individuals and companies. Ottawa is one of the few cities that do not disclose this information in a clear format on its website. This should include the publication of the request for bids for materials or services and the winner of same. It is always said that the more information publicized the less chance for problems to arise. The residents of this city need to know the names, purpose and amount of contracts over $10,000 similar as to what is disclosed by departments of the federal government and other provincial and municipal governments.

The sixth issue relates to grants to various organizations and individuals in the City. The amount of taxes spent in this area has increased beyond logic over the past seven years and councillors must take a look at the situation. The resident taxpayers should be able to access on the city website the names of the individuals and organizations that receive the grants and the amount and purpose of the grants.

The last priority, but not by any means unimportant, is for city councillors to continue to pressure the provincial government to repatriate social and health costs, as these expenses have no business being part of the resident property tax system. We already pay provincial taxes to cover these costs.


And to put everything into perspective, where there is a will, there is a way.



Bill O’Malley

Ottawa

Municipal of Ontario Surprise

Municipal Surprise

The City of Ottawa was the second largest amalgamation (2001) of jurisdictions in the history of Canada and the NUMBER ONE screw up.

Even Toronto, for all intents and purposes, a financially bankrupt city, managed to better control employee expense during its reorganization term (between 2001 and 2007) than Ottawa, by a long shot.

Well, they say, “If the shoe fits, wear it.” Ottawa has the shoe horn now.

The big question is this. What Ontario municipality utilized the largest percentage of its New Revenue generated since 2001 to 2007 for Employee Expense?

Well, that was the City of Mississauga. Employee Expense devoured 104.56 percent of all new revenue generated since 2001-2007. That leaves the question as to the source of funding for the amount that exceeded 100 percent of revenue. Was it borrowed or was the savings account raided?

What Ontario Municipality utilized the largest percentage of Total Revenue in 2007 for Employee Expenses?

Well, that was the City of Mississauga. Employee Expense was 57.70 percent of 2007 Total Revenue. The City Council better shake its head.

Hazel McCallion has been Mayor of Mississauga since 1978. It looks like she and Council have been asleep at the switch. Despite the general impression that Mississauga is a well managed municipality, the above facts would question that reputation.

The average utilization of Total Revenue in 2007 for Employee Expense in the 19 largest Ontario jurisdictions was 38.80 percent. Now keep this percentage in mind.

Of the eight jurisdictions in Ontario with New Revenue over 1 billion dollars for the period 2001 to 2007, the City of Ottawa had the highest percentage of usage of that revenue for New Employee Expense. A whopping 72.24%! This is according to the audited financial statements, but differs from the Financial Information Report (FIR) where the results tabulate 81%.

The average usage of New Revenue for New Employee Expense during the same period for these eight jurisdictions was 43.59 percent.

Do you get the picture here? We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars more for the City of Ottawa Employee Expense than other similar sized jurisdictions.

Ottawa entered amalgamation in 2001 with a percentage of 38.15 of Total Employee Expense to Total Revenue. In the year 2007, this percentage had climbed to 47.10 percent. There would have been over $500,000,000 (1/2 a billion dollars) to look after our roads and sewers and beautify the city etc.if the City of Ottawa had maintained that percentage throughout the period 2001-2007. Or heavens forbid, property tax or user fees increases could have been reduced. You get the picture. Employment Expense is the largest expense, but other spending remains to be scrutinized.

This $500,000,000 represents 50 percent of the current 2007 Property Taxes levied in the City of Ottawa. You can easily calculate the annual decreases in property tax that the city could have implemented if employee expenses had been maintained at amalgamation level. Don’t forget about all the other sources of revenue that the city has at its control. Refer to my July 22nd, 2008 report.

Toronto entered amalgamation in 2001 with a 46.55 percent of Employee Expense to Total Revenue and this percentage has remained relatively firm throughout the period 2001-2007. But wasn’t there to be a leaner, more efficient government? It didn’t happen in Toronto, or Ottawa or Peel or Halton, or Durham or Waterloo or Niagara Regions. York Region appears to be more disciplined.

Financial Data is reviewed for the following Ontario jurisdictions:

Toronto, Peel R, York R, Ottawa, Hamilton, London, Niagara R, Windsor Brampton, Thunder Bay, Halton R, Kingston, Mississauga, Barrie, Sudbury, Chatham-Kent, Durham R, Waterloo R, and Guelph

Financial information will be released on the individual jurisdictions in the future months.

When one looks at all of the financial numbers of these municipalities, you just want to shake your head, like perhaps the Mississauga City Council should have done. But a picture does come clear. Financial reporting in all Ontario communities must be standardized for the good of democracy and proper governance. I also wonder if councillors and mayors should be required to be certified by an educational institute prior to running for office. Incompetency is active.

Direct questions or comments to wmomalley@gmail.com


Bill O’Malley

Ottawa

Ottawa Municipal Transition Board

The Ottawa Transition Board
2000-2001

What did Amalgamation of the 12 jurisdictions do for Ottawa? Well, you can’t do much if you spend 81% of the new money on Employee Expense. No amalgamated jurisdiction won and resident taxpayers lost big-time.

There are a majority of residents that would like to see the rational for amalgamation revisited. However, amalgamation is not going to go away, so certain critical changes will be required in order to address the Employment Expense fiasco and other spending habits of Senior Management and Council.

Your thoughts would be appreciated.

It is priceless and golden to read the final report of the 2001 Ottawa Transition Board in the year 2008.

In retrospect, the report was encouraging for resident taxpayers as a leaner and more efficient city was about to emerge, saving money for all of us.

The then Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Tony Clement, appointed Claude Bennett as the Chair of the Transition Board along with a number of very qualified individuals. That was in the year 2000.

The mandate of the Board was:
-Determine the organizational framework and hire key senior staff
-Resolve transitional Human Resource Issues
-Implement new City Budget
-Restructure Municipal Electric Utilities and Public Works
-Oversee the November 2000 Election process
-Establish the City’s new governance model
-Exercise control over the then current municipal spending
-Include citizens in decision making process
-Ensure transparency of the process with open communications

Claude Bennett issued the Final Report of the Transition Board on January 25, 2001. He declared the implementation of a leaner more efficient municipality was underway. There was a reduction of 1,100 employees to prove it. The Board had also identified annual savings of $86.5 million. The resident taxpayer would see these savings after the third year of amalgamation and annually thereafter.

This was something resident taxpayers could appreciate. It didn’t last long, if it even began. Currently the city structure is a mess, one region against the other. Then we had Staff with their own agenda tending to get into the political nature of the amalgamation beast. Rather, Council should have been flexing its muscles and giving detailed direction to Staff. It seems Council did not want that responsibility. Between Council and Staff, in many cases spending habits were simply not logical.

If you look at my July 22, 2008 report on City of Ottawa revenue and employee expense, you will find that none of Claude Bennett’s declarations come to fruition. Most are not his or the Board’s fault, but I do question his declaration that 1,100 employee positions had been eliminated.

One would not be able to recognize the current structure of the City versus the organizational structure implemented in the transition period. There was no reduction in Full Time Equivalent staff as the Board pronounced and while the number of FTE has not increased dramatically since amalgamation, Employee Expense has skyrocketed.

Residents of Ottawa really have to wonder why the amalgamation process was allowed. This city has a highly educated population, but it appears that participation in the political process is not something that the educated do.

It is too late to go back to the jurisdictional structure prior to amalgamation, but it is not too late to downsize the city operation as it was meant to be. It is better late than never.

The former Mayor and the current Councillors (elected since Nov 2000) are responsible for the financial mess that the City is in. Senior City Staff aren’t receiving any bouquets either. Staff has been reluctant to be transparent in the financial aspect of the City Operations and I presume that they have been able to confuse some of those long term Councillors without difficulty. However, the buck stops at the former Mayor and Councillors.

Keep tuned for disclosure of areas of excess that require the attention of the resident taxpayers now.

Note: If you want to read the final report of the Transition Board (2001), log onto the Ottawa City site and search for “Ottawa Transition Board Final Report.”



Bill O’Malley

Ottawa

Comments to: wmomalley@gmail.com