Community leaders are hailing this year’s budget, passed by city council last week without many of the proposed downtown cuts, as a victory for Centretown.
The downtown councillors convinced their colleagues proposed cuts to urban services would not result in long-term savings.
Despite maintaining services, council managed to keep the property tax increase below the four-per-cent goal, coming in at 3.77 per cent. The city expects to increase a range of user fees, for things like arena rentals and taxi licences, instead.
Somerset ward councillor Diane Holmes says she is fairly satisfied with the budget. Holmes was particularly focused on four items she wanted to see in the budget: to save the tree and forestry maintenance, avoid a 7.5-per-cent transit fare increase, approve a universal transit pass (U-Pass), and reinstate funding for Crime Prevention Ottawa (CPO).
“Centretown got almost everything Centretown needs, so I’m satisfied,” Holmes said in an interview.
She said that many councillors are so afraid of tax increases that they will cut anything despite its importance.
Holmes said that while she is generally satisfied with the budget, council still rejected some initiatives that had long-term value.
She said she was disappointed that council rejected hiring more inspectors to enforce a city bylaw requiring residents to seek city approval to cut down trees with a diameter of 50 cm or more.
Holmes said it would have only required a 0.01-per-cent increase in property taxes and that it currently takes at least three months to inspect residents’ trees.
“Trees are valuable to the city, they provide shade and oxygen and improve the air quality of the downtown, but suburban councillors are terrified by a number they plucked out of the air,” she said.
Holmes said the new budget ignored a downtown initiative to hire more health unit employees to monitor communicable diseases, such as meningitis and tuberculosis which pose significant public safety issues.
Overall though, Holmes said the 2010 budget reflects a better balance of suburban and urban interests.
The most divisive item to be reinstated was the $500,000 for Crime Prevention Ottawa which was approved 15 to nine.
Holmes said that the lion’s share of the organization’s funding goes towards projects in the urban core.
“Suburban councillors have very little sympathy for urbanites in terms of crime like drug abuse.”
While Holmes did note that several rural and suburban councillors supported the CPO, she said that the division in the votes was fairly evident.
The city changed its budget making procedure this year.
Instead of city staff drafting a budget proposal, council committees brought their requests to a new audit, finance, and budget committee, who then decided on a draft budget which was presented to public delegations for feedback.
“Without residents coming down and talking about how important programs are to them we wouldn’t have gotten money back for CPO or the U-Pass. Those programs definitely wouldn’t have happened.”
Besides getting programs reinstated, Holmes said that involving the public in the budget process made it more transparent and more reflective of what residents want the city to do.
“The public had time to digest the draft budget and then come to the final meeting. It was spread over enough time so that the public didn’t feel like they were being shoved along without being able to think.”
Sean Menard, president of the Centretown Citizens Community Association, also says the budget delivers for Centretown.
“We got almost all the items we were pushing for, and things like the U-Pass, which we’ve been working on for years.”
While Menard said all the funding is important, he says he identifies the U-Pass as the initiative that will have the greatest impact on Centretown residents.