City of Ottawa

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by phil235

Again, not rare. I've lived in Toronto and Montreal and those kinds of trips are very common for people in the urban area who don't commute every day. Those people are not going to have a pass, but they do tend to buy a 10-trip card or equivalent to use when they need it (of course that option isn't available in Ottawa because OC Transpo completely lacks imagination).

As for covering the fare, you are right it would not cover the full operating costs. But no transit fare does, in Canada at least. The point is that these types of rides and riders cover far more of the operating costs than a long distance commuter does, and they do it throughout the day. This is less about adding extra buses and more about refocusing transit where it is used regularly and as an all day service and where it is more economically viable.

2km is basically Front to College. Under most traffic conditions a bus is not going to beat a pedestrian by much if at all. I can’t see a lot of people who don’t have mobility challenges or carrying luggage, etc. to pay a full fare rather than walk.

It might be a different calculation in the suburbs

[DTcrawler]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

I know what you mean some of the dicsussions overlap.

I will say I don't disagree with any of your points. The amount of money we need to change this is really not in the cards. Even as a downtown dweller I probably don't want to pay another $500 a year in property taxes for better bus service. We are a suburban city and there is no amount of money that can stich them into the network especially outsdie of commuting hours and the service they do have as you say is hardly used. We should therefore be realistic. Let's discuss some realistic ways out of this mess for example a dramtic increase in parking rates and a parking tax on private parking might be a good revenue generator and help encourage transit trips. Straightening routes to increase time and lower costs.

I agree a tax-only solution to this problem would be hugely unpopular and unfeasible. I do think you need to start at the very least by looking at property tax increases that actually reflect the city's needs and greater economic conditions, as other CDN cities have done, rather than arbitrarily picking a figure like 2.5%.

That alone won't be enough to fix the system, as years of neglect have compounded the issue. You need to create a business case and part of that case will present itself organically as the city grows, congestion and gridlock increase, and transit goes from being (in suburbanites' eyes) a nice-to-have to a necessity. At that point more nuclear options such as a congestion charge which you've previously suggested will be on the table.

In the meantime, Bank St. is the perfect example of where to start. Eliminate street parking from 7am-7pm + during special events at Lansdowne. There are plenty of side streets to park on along with a largely underused parking garage on Second Ave. We need to look past the short-sighted pushback from BIA's and residents and realize that creating marginal inconvenience to drivers would open the door to massive benefits to transit via low cost measures such as signal priority and bus lanes. From there you slowly increase ridership and the business case continues to build itself for the next round of improvements.

You say Ottawa is a suburban city which is true but you don't have to look that far back, to the period from the 80's to the 2000's where we had great ridership with a smaller population. The last decade of cuts have made it feel impossible to imagine a return to that era but it's possible, albeit through incremental improvements over a long time.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by acottawa

2km is basically Front to College. Under most traffic conditions a bus is not going to beat a pedestrian by much if at all. I can’t see a lot of people who don’t have mobility challenges or carrying luggage, etc. to pay a full fare rather than walk.

It might be a different calculation in the suburbs

2 km is actually more like Front to Wellesley. Right now (rush hour) Google says that is a 29 minute walk vs a 10-minute drive. Even if a bus is more like 12 minutes, a good number of people will make that choice. Particularly in the winter.

I know this for sure. For a while I had almost exactly a 2 km commute from Bloor and Christie to Bloor and Avenue. I never had a monthly pass, but I’d take transit about half the time. I promise you that people do that kind of thing regularly where transit is frequent.

[DTcrawler]

The City is running a poll until September 13 in preparation for City Budget 2025. Scroll to the bottom of the linked page for the poll link. Ultimately complaining on this forum is pointless unless we actually make our voices heard when given the opportunity.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by phil235

2 km is actually more like Front to Wellesley. Right now (rush hour) Google says that is a 29 minute walk vs a 10-minute drive. Even if a bus is more like 12 minutes, a good number of people will make that choice. Particularly in the winter.

I know this for sure. For a while I had almost exactly a 2 km commute from Bloor and Christie to Bloor and Avenue. I never had a monthly pass, but I’d take transit about half the time. I promise you that people do that kind of thing regularly where transit is frequent.

I would think it highly improbable that a bus could get from Front to Wellesley in 12 minute in the winter. It certainly doesn’t align with my experience with Toronto transit. The subway would struggle to make that trip in that timeframe.

It sounds like your Bloor commute would have been entirely by subway (and a shallow subway with little time on escalators), which would not be a good comparison for for a bus in mixed traffic, which would be what Ottawa would have if it focussed on trying to attract very short haul transit users.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by acottawa

I would think it highly improbable that a bus could get from Front to Wellesley in 12 minute in the winter. It certainly doesn’t align with my experience with Toronto transit. The subway would struggle to make that trip in that timeframe.

It sounds like your Bloor commute would have been entirely by subway (and a shallow subway with little time on escalators), which would not be a good comparison for for a bus in mixed traffic, which would be what Ottawa would have if it focussed on trying to attract very short haul transit users.

Yeah, my trips were generally by subway in that case, except later at night or on Sunday mornings. Pretty much the same as the Yonge example. Over 2 km, the type of transit doesn’t really matter. The subway can be more of a pain, depending on how far the climb down is etc.

What I think you underestimate is how versatile transit becomes with good frequency. There are all sorts of people who will choose transit over walking 2-3km if it’s a real option. And not just the mobility challenged. It could be weather that is too cold/hot/rainy/snowy/generally depressing. Or if you are wearing business clothes or going out clothes or you have a heavy school bag or you are uncomfortable walking at night. Or if you are drunk or tired or tired from drinking. And remember that these people generally do their shopping on foot, so they are often carrying purchases. That all adds up to a lot of potential ridership that OC Transpo basically ignores.

[DTcrawler]

Originally Posted by phil235

What I think you underestimate is how versatile transit becomes with good frequency. There are all sorts of people who will choose transit over walking 2-3km if it’s a real option. And not just the mobility challenged. It could be weather that is too cold/hot/rainy/snowy/generally depressing. Or if you are wearing business clothes or going out clothes or you have a heavy school bag or you are uncomfortable walking at night. Or if you are drunk or tired or tired from drinking. And remember that these people generally do their shopping on foot, so they are often carrying purchases. That all adds up to a lot of potential ridership that OC Transpo basically ignores.

You are hitting the nail on the head. Capitalizing on these types of usage patterns is the key to success for OCT or any transit agency. I can make it work sometimes but way too often it's not feasible. This type of usage is the total opposite end of the spectrum from gov workers who leave their Presto cards in the same lanyard as their work ID cause that's the only time it's needed.

Line 1 is what it is as far as alignment, station spacing, station depths, etc. It's still a very useful line for popping a neighbourhood or two over east or west. Slashing off-peak frequency is the real kicker that will drop it off many people's list of options.

Issues with bus service is more than just frequency (although frequency and reliability are by far the main factors). Routes keep being redesigned to meander and try and touch every nook and cranny instead of following relatively straight paths to speed up travel times. I know Ottawa's street geometry has been cited as a challenge but you still have a good skeleton with E-W corridors like Somerset/Wellington/Richmond, Rideau/Montreal, Gladstone, etc. and N-S you have Bronson, Bank(!!), Elgin/Main, etc.

[rocketphish]

Financial 'fair share' — Ottawa and other cities deserve a better provincial funding model
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe worked out a 'new deal' for Ottawa with the province back in March. Heralded as a 'big win' at the time, it now looks more like a baby step.

Joanne Chianello • Ottawa Citizen
Published Aug 29, 2024 • Last updated 2 hours ago • 4 minute read

For the last three weeks, we have been hearing about how the City of Ottawa is on the precipice of a dire financial crisis. Get ready for plenty more of the same.

As council gears up for its fall session, at the top of its to-do list will be putting parameters around how staff draft the 2025 budget. But before they do that, council is expected to be briefed on a wide number of complex fiscal issues: from the long-term financial outlook for transit, to the city’s contention that the federal government is shortchanging us regarding payment-in-lieu-of-taxes for their buildings. All this may happen as early as next Wednesday’s council meeting.

These updates will undoubtedly show that we are in trouble. And expect many calls for the province and feds to step up and “pay their fair share.”

As indeed they should. For years, municipally minded organizations, leaders and advocates have been arguing for an updated blueprint that spells out which level of government does what — and who pays for what.

Consider how, for the last quarter-century, Ontario is the only Canadian jurisdiction where local government is responsible for managing social services. Our cities are also on tap to deliver and co-fund a host of health services, despite “health” being a definitive — constitutional, in fact — provincial responsibility.

And while the province does provide funding for these services, it’s never enough. In Ottawa’s 2024 budget, for example, this city’s property taxpayers will be paying for local childcare costs to the tune of more than $19 million. That’s after accounting for all provincial transfers, user fees and other revenue.

To deliver long-term care, the property tax roll is providing $30 million. And for housing, more than $130 million.

These are only a few of the services that are essential in helping make a city a bit more inclusive, compassionate and livable for all. But they are being funded by a property tax system created two centuries ago to pay for roads and pipes (and schools, on behalf of the province).

And so, mayors fight for more funding, with varying degrees of success. Mayor Mark Sutcliffe worked out a “new deal” for Ottawa with the province back in March. Heralded as a “big win” at the time, it now looks more like a baby step.

Which seems to be the way of these one-off deals. No one faults any mayor for accepting whatever funds may come their way, or for fighting for more for their own city. Should the province pay for more of Ottawa’s LRT, the way it has for Toronto, Mississauga and Hamilton? Of course! But asking for our “fair share” from issue to issue, project to project, crisis to crisis, is not a sustainable way to finance a modern city.

As the nation’s capital, and the province’s second-largest city, Ottawa should be leading the charge in advocating for a new fiscal deal for all of Canada’s cities. (To that end, it might have been a better look for the mayor not to have held his city-in-financial-freefall news conference on the same day his colleagues from the Ontario Big City Mayors group made their public plea to the province for a more strategic approach to the homelessness crisis.)

At the same time as they make the case for a modernized funding model, municipalities need to show that they are doing their part to run their own shops responsibly. For Ottawa, that might mean updating our seven-year-old long-term financial plan for capital projects, especially as staff recently revealed that we are $3 billion short for what we are planning to build in the next decade. Or better managing the light-rail file, with far more transparency. Or even coming up with a responsible succession plan for senior staff: in the middle of a housing crisis, we are now two years without a permanent head city planner.

Sutcliffe didn’t create Ottawa’s fiscal crisis, but he and his council colleagues didn’t help. Nor did many previous councils. For years, politicians approved budget increases that were more about meeting campaign promises than matching the real needs of this city.

That’s about to change. Grappling seriously with urgent challenges — fiscal, societal, structural — can no longer be kicked down the road. But Ottawa shouldn’t be facing these problems alone. It’s time to forge a real partnership among cities that are fed up with the status quo that’s long been inadequate and has now become indefensible.

Joanne Chianello, a senior adviser with StrategyCorp, is an award-winning former journalist who covered Ottawa City Hall from 2010 to 2023 for the Ottawa Citizen and CBC Ottawa.

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/ch...-funding-model

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by DTcrawler

Issues with bus service is more than just frequency (although frequency and reliability are by far the main factors). Routes keep being redesigned to meander and try and touch every nook and cranny instead of following relatively straight paths to speed up travel times. I know Ottawa's street geometry has been cited as a challenge but you still have a good skeleton with E-W corridors like Somerset/Wellington/Richmond, Rideau/Montreal, Gladstone, etc. and N-S you have Bronson, Bank(!!), Elgin/Main, etc.

The opposite has been true over the past decade or so: OC Transpo has been, overall, de-meandering its routes, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.

Meandering routes are bad, for sure, but as long as this city keeps approving street layouts that make meanders mandatory, despite decades of experience telling us that those kinds of street layouts are bad, actually, what are we gonna do?

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

The opposite has been true over the past decade or so: OC Transpo has been, overall, de-meandering its routes, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.

Meandering routes are bad, for sure, but as long as this city keeps approving street layouts that make meanders mandatory, despite decades of experience telling us that those kinds of street layouts are bad, actually, what are we gonna do?

It's not only the street layouts. In order to get the Transit tax there are minimum requirements for service. As others here point out frequently we all benefit from transit users. I agree truly rural residents should get a pass but exurban suburbs where they are driving to the city certainly shouldn't. Changing that is difficult with the exurbs looking at a huge tax increase and councillors willing to die in a ditch over it. Sutcliffe does have strong mayor powers though and could change that rule not so much with the purpose of raising taxes but saving some of the wasted dollars on those routes.

[rocketphish]

City council backs mayor's Fairness for Ottawa campaign amid bleak financial outlook
Without a doubt, the most challenging part has been transit.

Blair Crawford, Ottawa Citizen
Published Sep 04, 2024 • Last updated 3 hours ago • 5 minute read

City council threw its support behind Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s “Fairness for Ottawa” campaign Wednesday after hearing a long and detailed accounting of the city’s financial outlook, particularly the red-soaked books of OC Transpo.

Council voted unanimously in favour of a motion to support the campaign and to petition the federal and provincial governments to pay their fair share of the city’s costs.

“This is about fairness. It’s simply about fairness,” Sutcliffe said. “As a council, it’s absolutely critical that we are united in our call to other levels of government.”

As she introduced the nearly two-hour staff presentation, City Manager Wendy Stephanson described the past several years as “amongst the most challenging the city has ever faced.”

Without a doubt, the most challenging part has been transit. In just a year since council’s last detailed briefing on OC Transpo’s financial future, its projected deficit over the next 25 years has grown by $2.3 billion. In a September 2023 briefing, OC Transpo’s deficit was forecast to be $6.6 billion by 2048. On Wednesday, Deputy Treasurer Isabelle Jasmin said that projection had grown to $8.9 billion.

The culprit? A single stroked-out line on OC Transpo’s balance sheet labelled “Federal Permanent Transit Funding” that a year ago the city thought would be worth $2.3 billion.

“The situation we’re in is the equivalent of buying a new house based on a salary that you were expecting to earn and a mortgage you can afford and then losing your job and living on a reduced income when at the same time interest rates are going up,” Jasmin told councillors.

For the LRT to make economic sense, OC Transpo forecasted a ridership of 112 million in 2023. The actual ridership in 2023 was 64 million, just 57 per cent of what’s needed. While other cities have seen ridership rebound after the COVID-19 pandemic, OC Transpo use hasn’t recovered largely because of the continued work-from-home policies for federal public servants.

That’s a double hit since those commuters pay full fare while many of the riders who have come back are students and other groups that have discounted fares. Overall, the decline of ridership cost OC Transpo $100 million in revenue in 2023 alone.

Fare freezes in 2020 and 2023 added another $430 million hit on expected revenue. In addition, the city’s below-inflation rate tax increases of 2.5 per cent for the past two years were less than the 3.5 per cent increases OC Transpo predicted and was banking on.

Meanwhile, the city is hamstrung by deals it struck with the federal and provincial government in which each would pay one-third of LRT construction costs. But, when costs ballooned and revenues plummeted, Ottawa residents were left holding the bag. While other cities negotiated deals where senior levels of government would carry all or nearly all of the cost of transit, Ottawa residents were stuck paying for more than half of its LRT.

Speaking to reporters after Wednesday’s meeting, Sutcliffe said the presentation underscored the need for his Fairness for Ottawa plea.

“Other levels of government support transit funding in other cities in ways that they do not support Ottawa,” he said.

“We have to address those challenges in our own internal work — which we are doing — but we can’t do it alone. We need the help from other levels of government and need to be treated fairly as a municipality and as Canada’s capital.”

City staff also laid out a list of euphemistically titled “Levers to Affordability”: short-term “levers” such as higher transit fares, a review of discounted fare policies, paid parking rates and “service alignment;” and long-term “levers” including development charges, sale of development rights and air rights on city land near transit stations, plus a new transit master plan.

But transit wasn’t the only bad news for councillors on Wednesday. Expanding on the mayor’s complaints earlier in the summer about how the federal government was stiffing the city on payments in lieu of taxes — PILTs — city staff staff did a deep dive on the issue. The city says that over the past five years it’s owed nearly $100 million on PILTs from federal properties, National Capital Commission lands, Crown corporations and some diplomatic properties. If the city has to make up that shortfall, it alone would mean a property tax increase of five per cent, city Chief Financial Officer Cyril Rogers told councillors.

If nothing changes, the city projects it will be shortchanged between $252 million and $445 million over the next decade in payments from roughly 1,000 PILT properties.

On the positive side, the report showed the work that had been done to cut city expenses. Administrative costs in Ottawa have been reduced to 5.3 per cent of the total budget compared to seven per cent in 2016, Stephanson said. Cost-cutting this year resulted in more than $153 million in savings, the equivalent of about a 7.5-per-cent tax levy, she said.

But, even as city council was boosting its argument for more federal money, the federal political scene shifted Wednesday with news that the NDP was ending its supply-and-confidence agreement to support Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal agenda.

Sutcliffe was asked how that might affect his Fairness for Ottawa campaign.

“I can’t make decisions based on what’s happening at the federal level,” he told reporters. “I can only appeal to whatever government is power to give Ottawa our fair share of support and funding.”

The federal government’s plans to shed many of its Ottawa properties “could be the biggest change to our downtown in a century or longer,” Sutcliffe said.

“Whoever is in government needs to partner with us on a transition plan. One of the reasons I felt there was an urgency to deliver this message in August was that we know that, some time in the next year or 14 months, there’s going to be a federal election. I didn’t want to wait around to be talking about this.”

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...ttawa-campaign

[Richard Eade]

So, the Mayor and Council basically say “We don’t need more money. We’ll do everything with less. Therefore, we only need a 2.5% property tax increase – even though everything we do has gone up by 10%.”

Then they complain that they are not getting enough money from upper levels of government to do all the things that they want to do. That’s rich.

I’m with Sudds on this. The City needs to get its act together. This Mayor has been a disaster. I declare a Mayoral Crisis!

Any money that comes from upper levels, has already had a slice removed for their ‘handling’ of it. Having the Federal or Provincial government tax us, then take a cut, then pass it on to the City is crazy. The City itself needs to charge property taxpayers what it costs to provide the services.

Remember when this Mayor-to-be said that he was going to look at every line in the budget; that there had to be lots of slack there? Well, what ever came of that?

It has been said time and time again; the City needs to get back to basics and charge the property taxpayers the real cost of them.

What would you consider to be CORE SERVICES for the City? Mine are (in no particular order):

• Garbage and recycling, pick up and proper disposal;
• Roads, creation and proper maintenance of them;
• Public Transit, create and operate a usable, efficient, and reasonably-priced system;
• Planning and Zoning; so that the city grows in a desirable way;
• Emergency Services, to handle policing, fire, and medical calls without undue delay;
• Provide, and man, appropriate Recreational facilities at a reasonable cost to users; and
• Actively Beautify the city.

[J.OT13]

Sutcliffe has been a disaster. The only "efficiencies" he found was in public transit, cutting funding to events (like the Tulip festival, wasn't this guy supposed to be the tourism mayor?) and the secure bike parking budget.

Taxes should absolutely go up with inflation. I remember Sutcliffe almost calling McKenney a radical because they wanted to raise taxes by a whole 3%.

[Lakeofthewood]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Sutcliffe has been a disaster. The only "efficiencies" he found was in public transit, cutting funding to events (like the Tulip festival, wasn't this guy supposed to be the tourism mayor?) and the secure bike parking budget.

Taxes should absolutely go up with inflation. I remember Sutcliffe almost calling McKenney a radical because they wanted to raise taxes by a whole 3%.

Even though we're in boring, beige, Ottawa, I still can't believe we elected a person with NO HISTORY IN POLITICS. What did anyone think would happen? This isn't a high school popularity contest, the choice by people directly impacts the quality of life we have in our nation's capital.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Lakeofthewood

Even though we're in boring, beige, Ottawa, I still can't believe we elected a person with NO HISTORY IN POLITICS. What did anyone think would happen? This isn't a high school popularity contest, the choice by people directly impacts the quality of life we have in our nation's capital.

And this isn't the first time. We elected Larry "Zero means Zero, actually it means 4.9% two years in a row because this is not sustainable" O'Brien.

[Richard Eade]

Actually, I give O'Brien full credit for recognizing the truth once he was in, and pivoting. Adding the 'Infrastructure Surtax' was absolutely necessary. But it is also what Watson killed him with. O'Brien should have been better able to describe what the situation was, and how Watson's 2.5% plan was a mistake. (But it is hard to argue against someone who doesn't worry about telling the whole truth regarding what they are planning/doing.)

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

A total shutdown of transit in fact didn't even shut down the city and we aren't talking about that. Of course transit usage increases with service increaes the converse is true with transit fares but it is largely inelastic.

You must have forgotten that strike. There were massive mitigation efforts and the Christmas holidays in the middle, which sort of saved the city. I remember getting my brother to drop me off and get home (he was a student at the time). It took him 1.5 hrs to do the 7 km and back. There were lots of carpooling groups. People who could shift their hours did. People who lived in the downtown core walked. People who could work from home did. And disabled people were simply homebound. Sure the city didn't shut down. But none of that was sustainable in any fashion for a long period of time. And that was at a time when the city was a lot smaller and happened when tens of thousands of workers could take extended holiday breaks.

It it were to happen today we'd basically revert to Covid WFH mode everywhere, the very thing everybody is claiming they want reversed. And we'd probably still end up with hours of traffic.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Not really, you still have to maintain and plough the entire road network. At best you would save the marginal cost of extra lanes on arterial roads and maybe a minimal amount of wear and tear on roads (although trucks, buses and weather account for most wear and tear on roads).

Road networks are designed for peak traffic. If we designed a road network around just commercial demand and minimal single occupancy commuting, it would probably have a third to half of the lane km we do now.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You must have forgotten that strike. There were massive mitigation efforts and the Christmas holidays in the middle, which sort of saved the city. I remember getting my brother to drop me off and get home (he was a student at the time). It took him 1.5 hrs to do the 7 km and back. There were lots of carpooling groups. People who could shift their hours did. People who lived in the downtown core walked. People who could work from home did. And disabled people were simply homebound. Sure the city didn't shut down. But none of that was sustainable in any fashion for a long period of time. And that was at a time when the city was a lot smaller and happened when tens of thousands of workers could take extended holiday breaks.

It it were to happen today we'd basically revert to Covid WFH mode everywhere, the very thing everybody is claiming they want reversed. And we'd probably still end up with hours of traffic.

No for sure it wasn't business as usual but it was a full shut down of transit.
My memory was there was very little fine work from home that happened. Certainly less than the current arrangements in most offices.

Fully admit we need transit I'm just saying the idea 10 minute train service is going to cause everyone to drive and create total gridlock is dubious. Anyway the cuts are mostly (all?) not peak service.

[rocketphish]

Ottawa prepares for tax hike and major rise in transit levy, fares
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe still hopes higher governments will come through with transit funds

Elyse Skura · CBC News
Posted: Sep 11, 2024 5:27 PM EDT | Last Updated: 7 minutes ago

Staff in charge of drafting the City of Ottawa's next budget have given councillors only loose directions for filling a major transit shortfall — with a worst case scenario bringing the equivalent of a 9.9 per cent tax hike.

Mayor Mark Sutcliffe delivered the news in a press conference Wednesday morning in an address that draws heavily on talking points from his ongoing "Fairness for Ottawa" campaign.

Sutcliffe has been making the case since early August that Ottawa is being shortchanged by the Federal government.

He's argued that the Government of Canada is not providing enough money in payments made in lieu of taxes on federal properties and — together with the province — providing less support for Ottawa's ailing transit system than for other cities.

"I remain optimistic that we will get the help we need," he said. "But if we don't, we'll have no choice but to look at increasing the transit levy, increasing fares, and reducing service."

If the federal government pays up and Ontario follows suit, Sutcliffe is confident that council can keep a tax increase to 2.9 per cent. If not, be prepared to pay much more.

Members of the finance and corporate services committee will consider the budget deliberations at their Monday meeting, which include a number of eye-popping options, including a 37 per cent increase in the transit levy and a 75 per cent hike in fares.

If councillors were to address transit's full $120-million shortfall with a transit levy, city manager Wendy Stephanson confirmed taxpayers would see the equivalent of a 9.9 per cent increase — similar to Toronto's substantial tax hike last year.

But Sutcliffe said he doesn't believe councillors will choose to pull just one "lever" in their efforts to balance the budget. He said staff simply want everyone to understand the full scope of potential outcomes.

"It's not fair at all. None of this is fair to our residents," Sutcliffe said of potential transit cuts. "It's incredibly unfair to our residents that they're paying more than their fair share because other levels of government have not contributed to Ottawa in the same way that they have to other cities, so we don't want to do that."

Transit commissioner and River ward Coun. Riley Brockington called the numbers "quite shocking" and a reflection of the "very serious fiscal challenges" Ottawa is facing.

"It does not mean this is what the tax increase or or any rate increases," he told CBC. "It's simply the direction. And I absolutely will guarantee there will be some modifications."

Capital ward Coun. Shawn Menard, another transit commissioner, balked at the transit options, but said residents need to understand that the context of ongoing federal negotiations.

"I don't think that's what we would actually do. So it's not being the most transparent in that way. It's a bit more of a maybe scare tactic," he said. "This is not a plan. This is a worst case scenario on five different areas."

Menard said councillors should instead be reflecting on how to improve service to ensure that ridership rebounds.

Regardless of how councillors opt to make up the shortfall, Brockington said it's important to remain realistic.

"This is going to be challenging. Let's not sugarcoat this."

Many around City Hall remain optimistic that the federal government provide funding at the 11th hour, with Sutcliffe saying he's been in talks with Liberal MP Jenna Sudds as recently as Wednesday morning.

"If we do not get funding from the federal, provincial government, we're gonna have to look at the the range of the other choices that we have to compensate for that," transit commission chair and Stittsville ward Coun. Glen Gower told CBC.

"But we've got 100 days, 100 days approximately between now and when we have to approve a budget for 2025."

Coun. David Brown, who represents the rural Rideau-Jock ward and stood listening as Mayor Sutcliffe laid out the situation, said it's important to look at all the options before deciding how much taxes will increase.

"I don't have a crystal ball," he told CBC. "Lower is certainly better. Mortgages are going up, families are struggling, Food is expensive, gasoline is expensive. We need to make sure that we keep Ottawa affordable."

Brown also echoed a call from the mayor for anyone who's concerned to support the city's campaign for federal funding.

"If you want to make sure that your programs and services are protected, reach out to your MP. Reach out to your MPP. Make your voice heard," he said. "Get Ottawa's fair share."

The draft budget will be tabled on Nov. 13.

With files from Kate Porter

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...ares-1.7320134