Report to/Rapport au :

Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee

Comité de l’agriculture et des questions rurales

and Council / et au Conseil

6 June 2007 / le 6 juin 2007

Submitted by/Soumis par: Rural Issues Advisory Committee

Comité consultatif sur les questions rurales

Contact Person/Personne ressource : Marc Desjardins, Coordinator / Coordonnateur,

Rural Issues Advisory Committee / Comité consultatif sur les questions rurales

(613) 580-2424 Ext / poste, 28821 / Marc.Desjardins@ottawa.ca

Ref N°: ACS2007-CCV-RIA-0003

SUBJECT:	minimum level of service delivery in rural ottawa

OBJET :	niveau minime de service dans les secteurs ruraux

REPORT RECOMMENDATION

The Rural Issues Advisory Committee recommends that the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee, recommend Council approve, that, as a policy guideline, the delivery of services to residents of rural Ottawa should be no less than, and at least equivalent to the level of service provided by the area municipalities prior to amalgamation.

RECOMMENDATION DU RAPPORT

Le Comité consultatif sur les questions rurales recommande au Comité de l’agriculture et des questions rurales de recommander à son tour au Conseil municipal, qu’à titre de ligne directrice générale, la prestation de services aux résidents des secteurs ruraux d’Ottawa soit au moins égale, et en aucun cas inférieure, au niveau de service offert par les municipalités de la région avant la fusion.

BACKGROUND

At the request of the Rural Issues Advisory Committee (RIAC) member, Mr. B. Tupper, the RIAC discussed the above-noted subject at its September 19, 2006 and at its October 17, 2006 meetings.

Mr. Tupper asked that this matter be placed on the above-noted RIAC agendas so that members may discuss service levels in Rural Ottawa with respect to: what level of service the rural communities should receive; what level of service they currently receive; and what level of service they historically received. This would apply to such services as road maintenance, snow--plowing, roadside maintenance, maintenance and operation of community facilities, ice arenas, libraries, etc.

As a result of their discussions of this topic, members of the Rural Issues Advisory Committee felt City Council should set, as public policy, the level of service delivery in rural communities and, once set, City Council should be the overseers of that service delivery.

Discussion

In discussing the matter on September 19, Mr. Tupper provided an overview of his objectives in raising the matter for discussion; changes to service levels since amalgamation and a need for residents to know what they could expect in terms of service levels and standards for service delivery. RIAC members discussed some of the problems experienced by rural residents with respect to service levels and acknowledged the difficulties in quantifying service levels.

In discussing the matter on October 17, Mr. Tupper referenced the Committee’s discussions of September 19 and proposed the following motion, which received unanimous support from RIAC members:

WHEREAS the Rural Issues Advisory Committee (RIAC) is charged with the responsibility of recommending to the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee (ARAC) strategies to improve the delivery of municipal services to rural residents;

AND WHEREAS service delivery to rural Ottawa is being re-organized as a result of the Rural Summit and under ARAC and the recently established Rural Affairs Office;

AND WHEREAS it would be beneficial to rural residents to have some definition of the level of service they might expect;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the RIAC recommends to the ARAC that, as a policy guideline, the delivery of services to residents of rural Ottawa should be no less than, and at least equivalent to, the level of service provided by the area municipalities prior to amalgamation.

CONSULTATION

In order to provide adequate background information and comment on this Rural Issues Advisory Committee (RIAC) recommendation, the Rural Affairs Office has worked with staff in Community and Protective Services, Corporate Services, Planning, Transit and the Environment, Public Works and Services. The Rural Affairs Office provides the following review, comparison and comments based on the information on current and pre-amalgamation service levels provided by the various departments.

City services in the rural area have, for the most part, increased since amalgamation. Due the various practices and service levels in the former municipalities, it is impossible to say that service levels in the rural area have increased across the board. However, when compared on a pragmatic, item-by-item basis, service levels have generally increased since amalgamation with few exceptions.

The Rural Affairs Office acknowledges that this assessment is contrary to a widely held public perception that is clearly evident through the recent Decima Citizen Satisfaction Survey. One explanation for this may be, that while many services have improved, the personal relationship with staff has been lost through the transition to one larger organization. The impact of losing that personal connection to staff was a significant point of discussion throughout the Rural Summit process. Recognizing this concern, branches such as Surface Operations have realigned some staff to return them to the areas where they worked prior to amalgamation. Another explanation may be that the process to obtain City services, in some cases, has become more bureaucratic in nature.

In areas where service levels have decreased, the Council supported reductions have been implemented in order to cut costs or increase efficiency of service delivery. As the City of Ottawa has evolved since amalgamation, there has been a significant change in the way we deliver many of our services.

In making the comparisons, the Rural Affairs Office has made an effort to refrain from using cost as a comparator. Cost, while easier to measure, does not adequately represent our resident’s definition of service delivery. Instead, the Rural Affairs Office has made an attempt to focus on output, or things that directly affect rural residents. In doing so, the services have been described, as residents would see them, not necessarily by department or branch that provides the service. In some service areas we can be very definitive about service levels, and in other areas it is a greater challenge. There are two areas, roads maintenance and parks maintenance, where there are very clear, council approved service level standards. Having these clearly defined standards provides a better understanding of service levels for staff, members of Council and residents.

It is important to note that many of the City’s services could not be provided without the assistance of the ‘Centres of Expertise’ that have not been highlighted individually. It is through these ‘centres’, such as Human Resources, Finance, and Information Technology that support is provided to enable the delivery of front line services to the rural areas.

Staff’s recommendation, at this time, is that it would be impractical to state that all service levels must be, at a minimum, the same as before amalgamation. In order to achieve this goal, additional resources or a reduction in services that have been improved since amalgamation would be required to offset the costs of achieving a pre-amalgamation benchmark for every service. The level of resources required to reach this benchmark has not been quantified as part of this review.

Front line services

The rural Client Service Centres are currently open one day per week and offer a full suite of City services including information on planning applications, building permit application reviews, fire permits, information and registration for City programs. Suburban and urban Client Service Centres offer the same services, but operate on full business hours.

The reduced operating hours of the rural client service centres is perhaps the most apparent service reduction that has resulted since amalgamation. This service reduction was identified through the Rural Summit. Based largely on the costs associated with providing full services at these locations, the residents’ recommendation was not to return to full hours but rather enhance some of the other service options available to rural residents.

The City of Ottawa operates a dedicated call centre with 24-7 availability for emergency service issues. This call centre also enables a single point of contact to all City services, through 3-1-1 or 311@ottawa.ca which removes the question of who to call at the City. The extended hours of the call centre are an improvement over pre-amalgamation where the offices would typically receive calls from 8:30am to 4:30pm. Enhancements identified at the Rural Summit such as improved training on rural issues for call centre staff have been implemented with very positive results. Adoption of additional technology, such as the Speak@Ease automated call directory has further improved the 3-1-1 experiences for clients.

One of the other enhancements identified at the Rural Summit relates to the City’s website, which is increasingly used to deliver information and services to residents. The creation of Rural Connections, a centralized source for rural information and services greatly increases the ease of use for self-serve information. This is particularly useful for residents using dial-up Internet by filtering out all of the urban related information. The range of information and services available online are improved in comparison to the websites of the former townships.

City Facilities

City owned buildings in the rural area account for 9.5% of the entire City owned building space. Since amalgamation, the number of buildings under City ownership has increased as a result of the downloading of ambulance service. In order to ensure that these buildings are being kept in good repair, the City has completed ‘Facility Condition Audits’ for 650,000 square feet of space in the rural area. Transition to a proactive/preventative maintenance program, which is enabled through this program, results in lower overall maintenance costs and reduced downtime for rural facilities.

This audit process has identified many repairs and improvements that have been implemented as a result. This includes significant capital investments to rural facilities and community centres, such as wiring upgrades, furnace and HVAC replacement, new windows, doors, flooring and accessibility improvements.

Rural arenas have seen major investments including new flooring and upgrades to dressing rooms and spectator areas along with improvements to ice surfaces such as new boards and glass, protective netting and repairs to ice plants and cooling pipes. The audits have also identified $5.1M in life cycle renewal or major repairs that will be considered over the next 5 years.

Paramedic Services

Significant investments in paramedic services have resulted in dramatic improvements to rural paramedic services. In the rural areas, response times have decreased since amalgamation from well over 22 minutes to just over 17 minutes (for 90% of cases), a drop of 23%. The number of highly trained Advanced Care Paramedics, City wide, has increased from 74 to 121 – a 63% increase. Having better trained paramedics, that are responding quicker, results in a better chance to save more lives.

Fire Services

With amalgamation there was a great deal of concern raised in the rural community over the loss of full-time firefighters from the volunteer service. The full-time firefighters brought a great deal of skills and experience to the volunteer ranks. In order to ensure that this change would not mean a decrease in the ability of volunteer firefighters to respond to emergencies effectively, there were a number of actions taken. Resources were made available to provide all new recruits(career and volunteer) with identical training based on the Ontario Fire Marshall endorsed curriculum. The compliment of volunteer firefighters for each station was standardized at 25, a significant increase for some of the former municipalities.

Significant capital investment ($21.8M) since amalgamation has resulted in improved and new fire stations, fire trucks and equipment for fire protection in the rural areas. Through the unified fire service approach, there is also immediate access to specialized equipment and fully trained personnel such as hazardous materials, high angle rescue and confined rescue teams for silo rescue. The additional resources provided by the ability of the suburban fire stations to jointly respond or backfill in the case of a major emergency provides for enhanced fire service delivery throughout the vast rural area of the city.

By-law Enforcement

By-law services have increased their hours of operation since amalgamation. By-law staff are providing coverage until midnight with extended hours until 2:00am on weekends and throughout the summer months. Prior to amalgamation, there was limited service on evenings, weekends and holidays.

Cultural Services and Community Funding

While the process for applying for cultural and community funding may be longer and more formal than in the former municipalities, funding programs are more targeted, resulting in an increase in the amount of municipal funding available for rural communities, groups and associations. Community groups, museums and special events such as rural fairs have benefited from this additional funding for both operations and capital improvements.

Rural fairs have seen their combined support for operating expenses increase from $25,000 in 2002 to $45,000 in 2006. Rural community museums have seen their operating funding increase from $124,000 (for 5 museums) in 2002 to $542,018 (for 6 museums) in 2006. Arts and heritage groups are also eligible for funding to offset their costs for repairs or new construction. In 2002, rural groups were not familiar with the new funding opportunities or process, therefore in that year; rural groups were awarded $3,724 for minor capital projects. By 2006 this increased to $16,228.Rural museums and fairs also received $78,000 in one-time capital grants in 2006, funding that did not exist in 2002.

In 2006, 33 rural organizations received Renewable Community Funding for a total amount of $290,865.

An Allocations Committee, comprised primarily of community members, including representation from the rural areas makes decisions for the Community Project Funding Program. In 2006, 4 rural organizations received Non-Renewable Community Project Funding, for a total of $17,930.

Social Services

Prior to amalgamation, the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton or the Province of Ontario largely offered social services such as affordable housing, long-term care, and support for people with disabilities. Despite the downloading of provincial services, there has been no decline in social service levels. We have seen modest increases in long-term care beds and affordable housing units in rural areas since amalgamation.

Recreation

Since amalgamation Parks & Recreation have enhanced service levels to the rural area by offering increased recreational programming, making investments into rural parks and providing major and minor capital funding for recreation facilities in partnership with rural community associations. New programming options include adult fitness, children's camps and special interest courses and youth programs. In 2002, 62 programs were offered in the rural areas reflecting what former municipalities offered, while there are 444 programs offered in 2007. The City partners with local community associations to deliver recreational programming, maximizing the contributions of volunteers, wherever possible.

Capital investments in recreation infrastructure have included new playgrounds and playground equipment, outdoor rink boards, landscaping, pathways and trails and park features such as gazebos. Annual investments have increased from $104,000 in 2001 to more than $773,000 in 2002, and $945,000 in 2003. Good portions of the new investments have been through the

Minor and Major Community Partnership Programs, highlighting the popularity of these funding streams with rural community groups.

Access to ice time will be enhanced in West Carleton with the completion of the new arena in Kinburn.

Rural Libraries

Rural libraries have benefited from an exponential increase in the size of the collection that can be accessed from any one of the 33 locations. Rural branches have also seen significant improvements in the use and availability of technology. The catalogue can be accessed through the internet, or computerized access at all of the branches. Libraries are also host to public internet access terminals that offer free high-speed internet access.

Economic Development

Prior to amalgamation, the municipalities had various levels of economic development involvement. Since amalgamation, a co-ordinated approach has been adopted with the Ottawa 20/20 Economic Strategy. The strategy has outlined a number of key areas that should be supported in order to improve the health of the rural economy. Rural initiatives account for a significant portion of the City’s economic development activities and have resulted in some great success stories such as the creation of Ottawa’s Countryside – a group of rural tourism businesses that co-operatively market to promote the rural experience and various projects promoting ‘Buy Local’ for local agricultural products. These buy local initiatives have been further complimented by the introduction of the Directional Farm Signage Program that permits directional signs in the public right of way enabling customers to find, and buy locally grown food.

The City has made significant progress in reaching every resident, farm and business with high speed internet. This effort has culminated with the City of Ottawa’s partnership with Barrett Xplore that will see the City invest up to $1 million to substantially complete rural broadband access by the end of August 2007. This achievement would have been difficult, if not impossible without the financial resources and co-ordination made possible by being part of a large municipality. This co-ordinated effort has also proved to be fruitful in the implementation of a Citywide toll-free calling area that will come into effect June 18, 2007.

Permits and Approvals

Building Permits are processed by the City’s Building Code Services Branch, which is the municipal authority in Ontario Building Code knowledge, regulation, and enforcement. Prior to amalgamation, each township would have had a building official on a full or part-time basis. Having limited qualified staff created potential gaps in service when staff took annual leave or were ill. The current structure, with more resources to call on is less prone to disruption due to holidays or illness. Having access to more staff has also enabled Building Code Services to develop and maintain specialised Building Code expertise for certain types of structures, such as farm buildings.

Building Code officials are currently accessible in rural Client Service Centres one day per week. While this is a reduction compared to pre-amalgamation, suburban Client Service Centres have Building Code staff available five days per week. Following amalgamation, the initial point of contact for obtaining a building permit would have been Client Service Representatives. Since July 2005, Building Code experts have been re-integrated into the front line at the Client Service Centres to provide a continuous point of contact for clients. These Building Code experts work with clients in advance of submitting their applications to ensure that applications are ‘complete’, and pre-screen and direct the applications to the appropriate staff. This has minimized the number of ‘incomplete’ applications that would require the client to provide additional information, causing delays. In 2006, the Building Code Services Branch was able to meet the Council mandated timelines for small homeowner projects 72.32% of the time.

As a result of the Rural Summit, a grant program has been established to offset building permit fees for farm structures that are required to comply with the Nutrient Management Act. Staff are working with manufacturers and distributors to streamline the building permit application process for pre-engineered, fabric hoop (Coverall) type buildings.

While many rural residents may never need a zoning change, those that do, have seen a significant change as the City has evolved toward a specialist model as opposed to the generalist model of the former townships. Prior to amalgamation, individual staff members would have dealt with all types of planning applications ranging from committee of adjustment, to zoning by-law amendments. Under the current City structure staff have become more focused on a particular aspect of approvals either by application type (i.e. Committee of Adjustment) or subject matter (i.e. infrastructure approvals).

This specialization has both advantages and disadvantages with how it relates to customer service. The planning and approvals staff has a better understanding of their field of expertise, but the personal connection and broad understanding of a file and client is more difficult to maintain.

With the new and increasing complexity of provincial requirements, through the Planning Act and environmental policies, it becomes more and more difficult for staff to maintain the broad skill set that was historically available.

Through the evolution to this specialist model, there have been some extended timelines for planning approvals, but improvements continue to be made to the process and these timelines have been consistently shrinking in recent years.

Prior to amalgamation, planning staff would have been available in the former townships on a full time basis. Currently, Development Information Officers are available in the rural Client Service Centres one day per week and suburban Client Service Centres five days per week. Development Information Officers provide information on Official Plan guidelines, the planning process and planning applications. This face-to-face interaction has provided an improved level of client satisfaction.

Road Maintenance

Roads are considered by many rural residents to be the most important service the City provides. Despite major recent investments into our rural road infrastructure, there are still many roads that are in need of repair or upgrade. When comparing service levels for road maintenance, it is important to differentiate between operational services and life cycle maintenance. Operational services include grass cutting in the ditches, grading and snow control. Life cycle maintenance speaks more to the condition of the roads, and covers major expenses such as repaving.

Public Works and Services submitted a report in 2003 on maintenance quality standards that was subsequently approved by Council. As part of this report, a comprehensive look at proposed maintenance standards compared to those for every former municipality was provided, (http://ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa/citycouncil/occ/2003/06-11/ttc/ACS2003-TUP-SOP-0004.htm). The results of this comparison show that all of the current roadway maintenance standards are comparable, with some enhancements, to those from the former rural municipalities.

Under our current budget pressures, funding for life-cycle investments across the City has been reduced. This has resulted in a drop in the conditions of our entire road network, in both urban and rural areas. As outlined in the City’s 2005 Annual Report, the conditions of our roads have decreased since amalgamation. In 2002, 98.6% of our paved rural roads were considered ‘adequate’ or better. By 2005, this measure had slipped to 84.2%. While this decline is largely due to budget constraints, overall aging of our infrastructure also contributes to increased demands. Since 2005, we have seen increased funding for rural road rehabilitation. Roads were identified through the Rural Summit as a major priority. Subsequently the Rural Summit Task Force recommended that investment into rural roads and ditches should make up the single largest component of the Rural Summit budget allocation. This funding, if sustained, will help prevent further deterioration of our rural road network. Significant additional investment will be required to bring the condition of our rural roads up to pre-amalgamation levels.

Park Maintenance

Public green-space is one of the major factors that contribute to the quality of life in Ottawa. Since amalgamation, the maintenance levels of our rural parks and sports fields have increased, in some cases significantly. Specifically, rural sports fields benefit from increased grass cutting, fertilization and aeration. In 2005, Public Works and Services submitted a report outlining proposed park maintenance standards, (http://ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa/citycouncil/occ/2005/11-30/hrss/ACS2005-PWS-SOP-0009.htm). This report provides a detailed comparison of current park and sports field standards to pre-amalgamation levels. The rural areas are also home to significant tracts of public forests. The management of these natural resources has improved with the abilities of the City’s forestry division.

Transit

While many people consider transit an urban service, investments since amalgamation into new Park and Ride lots and increased express routes have yielded impressive service enhancements. The 12 new Park and Ride locations, and additional 79 rural bus trips per day have supported a 550% increase in rural ridership (includes Stittsville). A current total of 563,400 trips per year compares to 86,000 before amalgamation. Para Transpo users also have improved travel options since the service is now available between two rural points as opposed to only providing service into, and out of the urban area as was the case during pre-amalgamation.

City staff has been working hard, particularly since the Rural Summit process in 2005 to understand rural concerns and improve service levels to rural residents. These examples provide a clear indication that the City has improved upon service levels in the rural area since amalgamation. While there will always be some services that may be reduced, or delivered in a different manner, City staff are committed to delivering the best services possible within the budget constraints we are facing.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

The financial implications associated with the approval of the recommendation are not known at this time. Increased resources would be required to conduct further analysis to measure the financial impact.

SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION

Document 1 Extract of Minutes from the September 19, 2006 RIAC meeting

Document 2 Extract of Minutes from the October 17, 2006 RIAC meeting

DISPOSITION

The Committee Coordinator will inform the Rural Issues Advisory Committee of the Standing Committee and Council decision on the recommendation.