The city’s auditor general has made waves with his annual audit, this year targeting OC Transpo’s lost and found contract and infamous last-minute bus cancellations.
The document suggested that city hall should pay attention to these flaws and take action to improve upon OC Transpo’s customer service.
OC Transpo’s lost and found has been contracted to Heartwood House for the past 14 years. The non-profit organization and community centre provides its space and services to a variety of other groups such as The Boys and Girls Club and EcoEquitable.
Ken Hughes, the city auditor, made his first suggestion based on a report he received through the city’s Fraud and Waste Hotline regarding the nature of the sole-source contract with the group.
“We were informed there was an actual or potential conflict of interest…of a personal nature,” said Hughes.
This conflict of interest originates in a 2004 re-writing of the organization’s contract with the city that increased the value of the agreement from $29,200 to $49,000. One of the city employees involved in the justification of the change in funding was supposedly the individual with the conflict of interest, as they had a personal relationship with an individual involved with Heartwood.
The potential conflict of interest was enough to prompt Hughes to recommend OC Transpo scrap its current deal with Heartwood House and propose either a new plan with the organization or another group.
“Basically what we suggested is that they start from the beginning,” says Hughes. “They should develop a business case to look at all the costs and benefits of all the alternative forms of delivery, and then submit a proposal.”
Since 2001, Heartwood has made more than $600,000 from the city for the contract, as well as money that the organization makes from selling unclaimed items.
The audit also criticized OC Transpo’s poor management of cancelled bus announcements.
“Cancellation alerts are not issued as promptly as they could be, and at times, are issued after the next scheduled bus should have gone by,” Hughes concluded.
Carleton student Justin Melenblancher says these cancellation problems “are not exactly news” to him.
“Me and my girlfriend call them phantom buses – every now and then we’ll text the stop and it’ll tell us there’s one coming, sometimes in a couple minutes,” says Melenblancher.
“We’ll wait at the stop and of course it’ll say the bus is no longer in service only five minutes after it was supposed to be there. It happens all the time, it doesn’t surprise me anymore.”
During the period of the auditor’s investigation, 33 per cent of bus cancellations were announced 20 minutes or more after the route was scheduled to begin. Hughes said that this came to his attention more gradually than information about the lost and found services.
“It would’ve come from discussions with city council and riders over the years. There was no one particular source for [the reason for] this audit,” he says. “It was more to address a problem that kept coming up for transit users.”
OC Transpo did not provide a comment on the issue.
The city has accepted all of Hughes’ recommendations, meaning OC Transpo will be responsible in the following year to account for the changes he has asked for.