City Budget 2025

The results from the survey have been presented in the "As We Heard It" report showcased on this page and can be accessed here.

Thank you for your input into the 2025 Draft Budget. Your comments and concerns regarding the reduction of discounts to senior’s fares have been forwarded to OC Transpo. Please note that the proposed changes to fares will be discussed at Transit Commission on November 25 and a final determination will be made by Council on December 11.

Thank you for your inquiry.

As Ottawa’s population is growing, changing, and aging, the City of Ottawa is committed to responding to these demographic changes and has been implementing an Older Adult Plan (OAP) since 2012.

The latest iteration of the OAP in 2020, committed to 24 actions organized around four (4) strategic areas that were consistent with the provision of City services for older adults: Aging with Choice, Transportation and Mobility, Well-being, and Communication. The OAP assigned responsibility for each action to a City Department, which had committed to its implementation within the stated timeline. The Community and Social Services Department provided the overall coordination and monitoring function for the OAP.

In 2020, City Council approved $350,000 in the Community and Social Services Department (CSSD) annual operating budget for the implementation of Corporate-wide Older Adult Plan initiatives. CSSD invited City Departments to submit proposals to fund initiatives that align with the priorities of the previous OAP. This process allocated $350,000 to initiatives and projects that aligned with the priorities identified in the last iteration of the OAP.

City staff are currently working on the renewal of the City’s OAP, which began with a fulsome consultation strategy from June to September 2024. City staff consulted and engaged with residents and community agencies to ensure the development of the renewed plan is adapted to new and emerging needs of older adults. The consultation process was structured to align with the Ministry’s Creating a More Inclusive Ontario: Age-Friendly Community framework, along with the World Health Organization’s Age-Friendly Cities framework. The frameworks characterize Age-Friendly Communities as responding to both the opportunities and challenges of an aging population by creating physical and social environments that support independent, active living to enable older adults and people with disabilities to continue contributing to all aspects of community life. The findings of the consultations will inform the development of a new iteration of the OAP, which will be released in 2025.  

As the new OAP is under development until 2025, the 2025 funding allocation process will occur once the plan priorities and the governance structure are established. The funding allocation process will be reviewed and updated to align with the new governance structure, the Community Funding Framework, and the new OAP priorities. This process will allocate $350,000 for the selected initiatives. Therefore, we are unable to confirm at this time the amount that will be allocated for “aging in place” initiatives. However, the funded initiatives will align with the priorities established from what we heard from the public during the consultations.

The request has also been sent to Planning, Development and Building Department for their feedback as well. We will be happy to send you more information from this department when we receive an update.

Thank you for your question regarding the City of Ottawa’s climate resiliency initiatives.

The 2025 Draft Budget continues Ottawa's commitment to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and enhancing climate resiliency, continuing our efforts to transition the City to a clean, renewable, and resilient community by 2050. The 2025 Draft Budget invests in initiatives that take Ottawa further toward the goals outlined in the Climate Change Master Plan (CCMP). Most significantly, it continues to prioritize the integration of climate and resiliency into the day-to-day operations of the City. 

This is the third consecutive budget cycle where a climate lens has been applied to new capital budget requests. Overall, 217 capital budget requests were rated as having a climate contribution in the 2025 Draft Budget. There were 22 rated as having a moderate or major contribution, totaling $375 million in new investments, more than $22 million of which is expected to make significant contributions to building climate resiliency. This includes:

• Programs to reduce flooding and erosion, including additional investment in the Residential Protective Plumbing program

• Additional back-up generators at community centres to ensure continued community services during power outages
• Improved streetscaping to include shade and other measures to reduce the urban heat island effect and manage increased rainfall
• Access to building retrofit training and education for private building owners
• Continued upgrades to support the City’s Emergency Operations Centre during extreme weather events

For 2025, $6 million will go towards initiatives identified through the CCMP, including funding to support the reduction of emissions and build resiliency to current and future climate conditions. The CCMP capital fund will be used to help catalyze new actions, address capacity issues, and support moving projects from a like-for-like to like-for-better replacement approach. As directed by Council, projects will be prioritized with a focus towards resilience; corporate building retrofits and energy conservation; urban forest management; electrifying city owned vehicles and infrastructure; and extreme weather preparedness and response.

The Climate Change and Resiliency Service Area is working on key initiatives that align with the Term of Council priorities to bolster resilience against extreme weather and climate changes. While the team continues to advance many resiliency related initiatives at the City, we will also be bringing forward a Resiliency Strategy for Committee and Council consideration next year. You can read more about that by visiting: Climate Resiliency Strategy | Engage Ottawa

This year’s budget has allocated $2.75 million toward rural road upgrades, which will go towards pavement and base repairs, reconstruction, strengthening, hard surfacing, resurfacing, and drainage improvements.

Community centres are not currently undergoing upgrades, however, Facility Operations has installed generators at select sites and any new builds or expansions are required to meet higher LEED standards.

More information on the budget as it related to climate change and resiliency can be found in the 2025 Draft Budget on page 44.

Thank you for your inquiry.

Food insecurity is a concern for us all. The recently approved Poverty Reduction Strategy is committing to address household food insecurity through policy making, funding and coordination. In support of this, the City will hold a community-led Food Security Forum in 2025 in partnership with the food sector. We invite you to follow progress on the Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan.

Draft Budget 2025 includes a 3.11% additional inflationary increase for food serving agencies in receipt of Sustainability Funding, representing $262K. This increase is in addition to the 2.5% inflationary increase that Sustainability Funded agencies will receive, for a total of $841K in inflationary increase in 2025. In 2025, pending Budget approval, over $5M will be invested in food security, directly towards emergency food services and through programs including a food security lens. Just Food, who oversees the Community Gardening Network, is one of the agencies that will receive a 5.61% inflationary increase on the 2025 Sustainability Funding allocation to support their food system work.

Additionally, the City is currently reviewing its Community Garden Action Plan. This review is informed by a thorough interdepartmental review, an external municipal scan of best practices, as well as virtual community engagements with residents and community stakeholders. Engagement was also held on the Engage Ottawa Community Gardens and Community-Led Green Initiative platform areas where community members requested City support. We are currently finalizing a ‘What we heard report’ for Council and community consideration, before a report is brought to Council on March 2025. The city is committed to ensuring the review of the Community Garden Action Plan reflects residents' needs and promotes sustainable urban agriculture and includes a food system lens.

No it does not.

The City has 3 separate levies and various levies have different impacts to property owners. The impacts of the Citywide tax levy, Police levy and Transit levy are broken down in further detail as per the various budget documents and information. The following table (for reference) is provided as part of the Tabling documents on November 13^th, which provides the details on the various levies and average assessed property for Urban/Rural and Commercial properties.

The overall City budget is funded from a variety of sources and not just the Property tax levy. As the cost of services increase, the City must increase taxes, fees, etc. to continue to provide services. The Property tax revenue accounts for approx. 48.2% with other sources of funding such as the Rate program (Water/wastewater/Stormwater fees), Solid Waste fees, program fees such as recreational programs and funding from Federal and Provincial programs. In addition, this Term of Council has endorsed a service review framework in which the Organization has identified $207.7M of savings and efficiencies forgoing the need to further increase taxes by 10%+. This demonstrates a strong focus on continuous improvements and efficiencies while respecting the taxpayers.

Thank you for your interest in Draft Budget 2025 and we appreciate you sharing your ideas with us. As we develop the budget we consider multiple factors, decisions and strategies such as the Term of Council priorities, public feedback, government funding requirements, mandated programs, previous decisions made by Council and services and much more. All of your feedback is important; please be advised this has been passed along to our Emergency Protective Services, Finance and Corporate Services and Planning, Development and Building Services departments for consideration.

The City is always looking at ways to improve our capital project delivery. The City has significant quality management practices that we regularly implement and update.  We have an ongoing review of design and construction standards, conducting quality assurance inspections during construction work, vendor performance management and public engagement and consultation on capital project delivery. Through our Infrastructure Quality Management System we will continue this work with aim of continuously improving all aspects of our capital project delivery.