$10M budget ‘miracle’ will fill city’s potholes

Ottawa’s potholes will get an extra $10 million worth of fixes next year, Ottawa taxpayers won’t have to pay an extra infrastructure levy to cover the cost, and Mayor Jim Watson got to show a group of eight rebellious city councillors on Wednesday what happens when they cross him.

All thanks to several million dollars the city’s finance department found in city hall’s couch cushions last week, just in time for the final vote on the city government’s 2018 budget.

The usually mannered debate over the city budget turned nasty late last week, when those eight councillors, led by Kitchissippi’s Jeff Leiper and Gloucester-Southgate’s Diane Deans, shared publicly a plan to hike taxes 2.5 per cent instead of two per cent. The $8 million that would raise would be dedicated to fixing Ottawa’s crumbling roads and sidewalks.

Watson opposed it. He’s sunk a lot of his political capital into keeping each year’s tax hikes to two per cent and wouldn’t stand for having that challenged. After a lot of to and fro on the idea over the past couple of days, the idea of a special infrastructure levy never got close to the 12 supporters it would have needed to get through city council.

But the mayor had a secret. Watson began the debate by criticizing dissenting councillors who’d questioned the city treasurer’s estimates of the money the city needs to spend in 2018 on things like snowplowing. It’s gratuitous and wrong to challenge the treasury’s numbers, he said. He didn’t name Coun. Rick Chiarelli, who declared this a “fake budget” weeks ago while city treasurer Marian Simulik was literally still in the middle of presenting it, but there’s nobody else he could have meant.

Then he handed off to Simulik, who informed city council that she and her department had made some estimates for 2017 that turned out to be incorrect.

It was good news, though: After finishing the city’s books through to the end of November, they’d discovered that numbers they’d used to make up the 2018 budget earlier in the year were faulty. Numerous departments had spent a little less than expected, or brought in a little more than expected in revenues. The bigger surprise was a $10-million windfall from an unexpectedly large number of new taxpaying households, people who owe the city partial-year taxes after moving into new houses and condos.

It all turned the $5-million deficit for 2017 that Simulik’s department had previously projected into a $15-million surplus. The numbers are, she allowed, “significantly better than we were expecting.”

This is the closest thing to free money as you can find in government. By default, the money would go into a reserve account, but these dollars “are available for your use in the 2018 budget,” Simulik reported.

When exactly did we find out the sack was on the way down the chimney? Well, that’s the tricksy part. Gloucester-Southgate Coun. Diane Deans pressed both Simulik and Watson about it.

Simulik said the treasury staff detected the good news as they finalized the November books last week. Friday morning, they were pretty sure they had it right. They told city manager Steve Kanellakos on Friday, spent the weekend doubleand triple-checking, and informed Watson on Monday. City council’s standing instructions are for the finance department to work on the budget with the mayor’s office, she said, and that’s what they did.

“I started sharing it with a number of councillors over the course of the last two days,” Watson told Deans.

After the meeting, he added in a scrum with reporters that he wanted to bring into the loop councillors who’d support him, not the ones who already had a half-cocked plan to raise taxes. The in-group got to plan for the final budget meeting with current financial information, the rest got blindsided in the meeting’s first minutes.

“I believe that information needs to be shared in a fair and even manner, evenly with all members of council,” Deans objected.

Nah, members of Watson’s clique said.

“I think that opens a whole can of worms we don’t want to get into today. I don’t think that’s constructive,” Knoxdale Merivale Coun. Keith Egli said, from his seat at Deans’s right elbow. You guys shared your tax-levy motion on Twitter a few days ago, so away with your hypocrisy.

Orléans’s Bob Monette agreed: Nobody had a chance to consult the public on the levy, which is just unfair. “Consultation is not finding it out on Twitter or finding it out through the media,” he said.

Of course, there’s a difference between finding out that some councillors had written up a motion days before a meeting, when they all shared it publicly and reporters reported it, and finding out that the finance department had $10 million of free money and told just one politician.

But that’s what you get when you cross Jim Watson — even when you all actually agree on the outcome you want.

Ultimately, all the councillors welcomed the sack of cash, voting unanimously to adopt Watson’s plan. Leiper withdrew the motion to impose a special levy.

“The lesson here is to check your lottery numbers on your way to city council,” Chiarelli said, with a sort of pleased sarcasm. “It’s a Christmas miracle.”

With this windfall, councillors got to avoid a debate on whether to do anything that’s actually difficult about the roads that are visibly deteriorating, the sidewalks patched with asphalt, the rec centres that need repairs. The best Christmas present of all.