June 23, 2010

City Council Meeting HighlightsTables for two coming to a sidewalk near you

City Council acted today to address feedback it has received from the city's business community. Council approved café seating as a new type of temporary encroachment on sidewalks. Café owners and restaurateurs can now use one or two small tables with up to two chairs per table on the sidewalk in front of their establishments, without a platform or railing.

The tables must be against the wall of a building so as not to impede the flow of pedestrian traffic and alcohol cannot be served. Seating must be removed daily at the close of business or by no later than 11 p.m. A permit is required at a cost of $150.

In response to two audit reports released by the Office of the Auditor General, 2008 Audit of Bridge Maintenance Process, and Audit of Bridge Maintenance for a Specific Bridge the City of Ottawa ensures residents’ safety is paramount when it comes to the more than 700 bridges and overpasses it maintains under its jurisdiction.

These assets, worth nearly $1.5 billion, do not include bridges and overpasses that fall under the jurisdiction of Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation and the Railway Authority.

To meet its legislative responsibilities, the City inspects the structural integrity of each of its bridges and overpasses every two years under the direction of a professional engineer. These assessments range from visual inspections to very detailed structural investigations. Every year the City identifies and prioritizes structures that need varying degrees of rehabilitation which can range from preventative maintenance to the entire replacement of the structure.

Although the City is not under any legislative requirement to do so, it also frequently inspects retaining walls and culverts located across the City to ensure their integrity as well.

Over the last 15 years there have been significant improvements to several bridges across Ottawa. They include: Mackenzie King Bridge, Plaza Bridge, Bank Street Bridge, Laurier Bridge, Dunbar Bridge (Bronson Ave. over the Rideau River), Cummings Bridge (along Rideau Street and Montreal Road) and By-Town Bridges (along Sussex Drive), Pretoria Bridge and Michael Sheflin Bridge (Hunt Club Road over the Rideau River). Works are scheduled to start later this year on renewing the Heron Road Bridges.

In the case of the Conley Bridge, which the Auditor General identifies in the Audit of Bridge Maintenance for a Specific Bridge, the City agrees with determining the feasibility of obtaining compensation from the consultant and the contractor who repaired the bridge in 2004 that resulted in the need to undertake further work in 2007 to address deficiencies related to the timber deck.

However, at no point was Conley Bridge, which stands as the City’s only road bridge with a wood deck, in any structural deficiency. The deck was replaced in 2004 under very tight timelines to ensure the bridge was accessible during the winter season. The City discovered the shims that had been used to repair the bridge deck were inadequate and corrected the deficiencies in 2007 to stop the noise related to deck movement that also caused increased wear.

Although the City does pay a high level of attention to these important structures, it does encourage residents to call 3-1-1 if they notice any areas of concern.

An unprecedented construction boom from 2006-2008 led to a City of Ottawa Building Code Services (BCS) staff decision to continue using trained architectural, construction and engineering students to conduct final visual inspections despite legislative changes by the province that no longer deemed them qualified.

The decision to keep using the students for a time after the Building Code Act changed was solely due to the unprecedented workload BSC faced over that period. The program was discontinued in 2009, once the City’s inspector internship program produced qualified interns recognized by the Province.

Further, while management agrees with most of the recommendations included in this audit, management doesn’t agree with many of the findings.

The City of Ottawa is pleased the Auditor General has not found any evidence of fraud and waste at its Nepean National Equestrian Park (NNEP) facility.‪

City staff responded to the Auditor General after his office launched an inquiry when a complaint was logged on the City’s Fraud and Waste Hotline.

The complaint alleged the City showed preferential treatment to an organization that secured a new and larger sanctioned event for Ottawa that projected an annual $5 million economic benefit to Ottawa businesses.‪

After safety concerns regarding the state of the park’s electrical system, including exposed wiring, were brought to the attention of City officials the City took quick and appropriate action to repair the deficient electrical network. Work included retrenching, burying and rewiring the facility to meet municipal and provincial standards at a cost of $100,000. This renewed electrical system is now available to all of those interested in scheduling events at the park.

City staff strongly disagrees with the Auditor General’s point of view that favouritism was given to any individual or group wanting to use the facility.‪

The equestrian park is a 270-acre riding school located just minutes from downtown and specializes in providing introductory horse riding lessons along with intermediate classes to many groups and individuals including young people who may not be able to afford such an activity.‪

In addition to the park’s equestrian program the NNEP offers a boarding facility and provides the site for organizations who deliver world class events.

The City of Ottawa is making significant progress in improving financial controls and those advances are confirmed in a report by the City’s Auditor General, the City’s Treasurer said today.

Auditor General Alain Lalonde, in an audit tabled at Council today, finds that the City has made improvements to its financial controls. However, he maintains that the City has more work to do.

The audit was a follow-up to an audit originally done in 2006.

Ms. Simulik said the City’s Finance Department strongly supports improving internal controls and has made a number of improvements even since this follow-up audit was done a year ago.

For instance:

The City has completed an Authorized Signature Database for Finance officials to check payments. This May the City paid out $6.4 million to employees to clear the ongoing liability of banked vacation time, a subject of ongoing concern by the Auditor General. The City began to pay out banked vacation in the third quarter of 2009. The City will pay out excess vacation to employees every May.

Both City management and the Auditor General agree that considerable work in this area has been completed, especially in the last year.

The City of Ottawa continues to improve its hiring practices to ensure they are clear, transparent and result in recruitment of qualified candidates.

City management agrees with seven and disagrees with four of the recommendations of Auditor General Alain Lalonde on the audit titled “Five Specific Staffing Processes.” On one recommendation, the City agrees with the first part and disagrees with the second.

The City agrees on the need to:

Ensure that screening of job applicants is done more rigorously and consistently and that people who don’t meet qualifications are screened out;Have Human Resources review the job competition file before a job offer is made;That a broader definition of “family” be made for the hiring policy to avoid nepotism;The need for disciplinary action, when appropriate, when employees are involved in hiring practices that are contrary to policy;The need to document discipline of employees and the need to conduct a review of the discipline;That competition files be properly documented in a timely fashion, with reasons provided for actions taken;That processes and controls are implemented to ensure proper documentation and retention of job competition files. This has been done.

The City disagrees with the Auditor General on:

A proposal to include all job-equivalency options on competition posters. The City maintains that each individual must be assessed on his or her own merits and it is not practical to include all equivalency options on a poster;A suggestion to put disciplinary issues in performance appraisals. The City points out that while aspects of performance that have been subject to discipline may be referred to in a performance appraisal document, this is a non-disciplinary tool that has a broader application for performance and development and is not intended to deal with disciplinary issues;A proposal to limit the decision-making powers of managers involved in this case. The department is instead implementing new measures to ensure greater scrutiny of hiring, without impairing the ability of managers to do their jobs;Proposals to change the standards for temporary employees and create a bank of pre-qualified candidates are considered unnecessary and impractical;A suggestion to limit the amount of time acting employees could work in their positions is considered too inflexible to meet the requirements of city operations.

The City of Ottawa agrees with Auditor General Alain Lalonde that there was an instance of improper hiring in the Revenue Department three years ago but points out that it was an isolated incident.

A manager in the department sat on the hiring board for a position being sought by a relative. While the manager’s position did not strictly contravene the City’s rules on the hiring of family members, since the relative was not immediate family, the City believes the incident did offend the spirit of the City’s policies aimed at avoiding nepotism.

The employee in question had recently experienced the sudden death of a son and had recently returned to work. The manager’s superior noticed the hiring and questioned the manager. The manager was verbally reprimanded.

The division manager did not pursue written disciplinary action against the manager. The division manager instead sought to accommodate this productive employee through a period of great personal stress.

There are several points that provide additional context:

In the other hires that are the subject of this audit, there is no evidence of improper behaviour.While the audit highlights the employee being screened into the competition after the intervention of the manager, such discussions ─ involving equivalencies for job experience and education ─ are common in hiring.The management team in the department met to discuss the case and agreed on the need to go beyond the provisions of the City’s family hiring policy by requiring disclosure of all relations which could be perceived as a conflict of interest. The Auditor General has commended management in some recent audits on staffing for its work building staff-recruitment tools and providing better documentation for hires in timely fashion. The City hires approximately 2,800 people a year, mostly to replace employees who retire or are leaving for other opportunities.

The City of Ottawa has substantially completed or completed almost 80 per cent of the agreed on recommendations made by the Auditor General through 35 previous audits. The remaining 20 per cent are pending or in progress.

The audits carried out between 2005 and 2007 resulted in more than 700 recommendations and were recently the subject of follow-up assessments conducted by the Auditor General.

Disagreement between the Auditor General and management over the percentage of completed recommendations largely stems from the time lapse between when the Auditor General commenced his follow-up audits and when management provided its responses. In some cases, disagreement is based on the applicability of some of the recommendations in light of new information.

For example three recommendations the Auditor General made in 2007 related to the Corporate Pesticide Use Policy have been assessed as incomplete, however, the recommendations are no longer applicable due to the fact that the Corporate Pesticide Use Policy was revoked in April 2009 when new, more restrictive provincial legislation regarding pesticide use, came into effect.

In other examples, staff has determined that the cost of full implementation of the recommendation outweigh the benefits, or that the recommendation, once fully assessed, is not practical or possible to implement due to operational requirements, technical limitations or legal barriers.

Where City staff disagrees with the Auditor General, staff will seek Council direction.

The City of Ottawa agrees with many of Auditor General Alain Lalonde’s recommendations regarding his audit of the Procurement Process for the SmartBus Next Stop Announcement (NSAS) and the SmartCard System but disagree with some of his conclusions.

In his audit tabled today, the Auditor general concludes that there was “little communication with Council on the procurement of the NSAS and that “the initial cost estimate for NSAS omitted key elements”.

Management disagrees with this conclusion.

In fact, staff communicated complete and accurate information to council throughout the process. The SmartBus technology has been an ongoing discussion with Council since amalgamation.

As soon as management confirmed there would be a cost increase, Council was informed. Prior to the closing of the Request For Proposal staff could not confirm that the selected system would require any additional investment.

When a change in cost was determined, Transit Services identified other funding that could be transferred from other approved SmartBus projects to the next stop technology. This resulted in no net cost increase for the project.

Contrary to the Auditor General findings, Transit Services did seek Council approval to re-allocate these additional funds in its report to the Transit Committee in September 2009. The financial section of the report that was presented to Council outlined the cost of what staff was recommending to purchase and the source budgets.

In order to ensure senior management and Council are kept abreast of the phases of major procurements, Supply Management has implemented a formal Procurement Plan Approval process.

Further, all recommendations contained in a Lessons Learned report prepared by staff and presented to the Information technology Sub-Committee and Corporate Services Committee have been approved by Council and have already been implemented or are in the process of being implemented. They include seeking budget approval for the whole cost of an initiative rather than at stages of the project and providing regular updates to Committee and Council on any significant changes on the scope of a project and their impact on the approved procurement plan.

The City of Ottawa agrees with many of Auditor General Alain Lalonde’s recommendations to enhance the operational controls for payroll processing but disagrees with some of his findings and conclusions.

In an audit tabled June 23, the Auditor General concludes that there is “an abnormally high error rate in the payroll processes.” The audit maintains that, in a sample of 100 pays, there was an error rate of 56 per cent.

However, the City of Ottawa’s Finance Department has confirmed that the majority of the issues were documentation shortcomings and there were only five errors that impacted payroll payments to six employees. Two of the errors were discovered by Payroll staff through quality-control reviews, as part of normal payroll operations, confirming that controls are necessary and that they do work.

Mr. Lalonde’s audit of the City’s payroll operation was based on information from 2007 and a lot has changed since that time. Many of the recommendations for change in the audit have been agreed to by the City and have been implemented. The City gets relatively few complaints about payroll problems from its 17,000 employees.

There are 28 recommendations in the payroll audit and the City agrees with 25 of them. The City disagrees with two recommendations. The City agrees with one recommendation but challenges the Auditor’s finding of fact on which it is based. On one recommendation, the City agrees with the first part and disagrees with the second part.

The City says that the recommendation to create precise work schedules for the thousands of employees who currently follow a generic Monday-Friday schedule would create a costly and inefficient administrative burden.

The City disagrees with several of the conclusions of the Auditor General, including one saying there is “a general lack of attention to detail by staff and supervisors.” The payroll process is very complex and involves significant input from hundreds of individuals across a very diverse organization. Since 2007, many improvements and increased controls have been implemented.

The City says a finding that Payroll employees use the Internet excessively is not based in fact. Four employees were found to have e-mail in excess of the norm and they have been cautioned about this. However, Payroll staff use the internet on a daily basis for work-related activities and also some were listening to the radio. The heavy Internet surfing cited by the Auditor General is a combination of these activities. However , simply listening to the radio via the Internet creates hundreds of Internet “hits” in an hour but still allows workers to efficiently perform tasks.

The City agrees with the Auditor that:

The Payroll Division should be responsible for controls on both the central payroll system and decentralized operations such as transit and parks and recreation. Central payroll has already assumed direct control for some formerly decentralized operations. The Division says it would need to reassign existing resources from other areas to accomplish this across all City operations.There is a need to retain audit reports. Instead of one year, the reports are being retained for seven.Payroll reports should be automated where possible.The City should send benefit statements to employees to ensure their benefits are correct.The need for more controls, such as an authorization list of specimen signatures and initials, and that electronic payroll reports be continuously available.The City needs a number of technical improvements allowing for more consistency and controls in payroll operations, and greater use of the advanced SAP computer software used at City Hall.The City needs to make pension contributions for all earnings by employees. Any retroactive reporting of additional earnings will be concluded this year. As well, the City will do random audits four times a year to ensure all earnings are included in payments to the Ontario Municipal Employees’ Retirement System.

Wabano Centre expansion approved

Council approved a zoning amendment which will allow the planned expansion of the Wabano Centre to proceed. (Zoning By-law 2008-250for 297 and 307 Montreal Road and 272 Bradley Avenue and amended an exception to 274 Bradley). The new building, to be designed by renowned Aboriginal architect Douglas J Cardinal, will be attached to the original and feature a cultural gathering space, after-school programs for children, social enterprise activities for young mothers, family counselling, and social and community development initiatives. Visit Wabano Centre Expansion for more information.

City Council received the Quarterly Performance Report for the first quarter of 2010 (January to March). The report is part of the City’s commitment to accountability and transparency. It provides performance information for branches that deliver services to the public.

A few highlights from the first quarter of 2010 include:

Transit Services
Ridership increased by one per cent over the fourth quarter of 2009, making the first quarter of 2010 the highest quarterly ridership ever. This suggests that the increase in service levels in Fall 2009 still has a favourable effect on transit customers. In the first quarter, on-time performance improved for the third quarter in a row, reaching 63.4 per cent of the time.

Solid Waste Operation
When comparing Q1 2010 with the same period in 2009, the diversion rate for all streams of waste (blue and black box, leaf and yard waste and organics) improved by 30 per cent (increase from 27.8 to 36 per cent). This is the result of organic waste moving from the garbage stream to the Green Bin program. With leaf and yard waste being diverted, rate is expected to increase substantially in subsequent quarters. In addition, some increase is expected in organics tonnages as customer become more comfortable with the program—which expanded to include medium density curbside homes in 2010.

Building Code Services
Five wards -- Gloucester-South Nepean, Barrhaven, Cumberland, Somerset and Kanata South -- had the greatest building permit activity in Q1, accounting for 40 per cent of permits issued. In Somerset Ward, the majority of the permits issued were for tenant fit-ups in commercial and office buildings, likely due to government stimulus spending. Construction permits in the other highly active wards were primarily for tract housing. The total number of building permit applications increased by 15.6 per cent in the first quarter of 2010, relative to the same period in 2009.

Ottawa Police Service
Total calls for service increased five per cent in Q1 2010 from the same period in 2009. Emergency calls for service also increased by five per cent over the same period. At the same time, response times remained relatively constant at under 15 minutes 88.5 per cent of the time compared to 88.9 per cent a year earlier. The target response time is under 15 minutes 90 per cent of the time.

Fire Services
The number of incidents responded to and average monthly call volume decreased 10.5 per cent and 10.4 per cent from Q1 2009 respectively. This was due to the bus strike in Q1 2009 and the milder weather in Q1 2010, resulting in few traffic related incidents in 2010.

Ottawa Public Health
Visits to Sexual Health Centres increased eight per cent from Q1 2009 due to mandatory contact tracing investigations of sexually transmitted infections, as well as increased promotion, outreach and partnership initiatives. There was a 45 per cent increase in the number of food premises inspections conducted due to business automation. Data for Q3 and Q4 2009 is unavailable due to Ottawa Public Health’s response to the H1N1 crisis in these periods.

Ottawa Paramedic Service
Overall response times continued to decrease, showing a reduction in Q1 2010 of 54 seconds from Q1 2009 and one minute, 51 seconds from Q1 2008 (includes high and low density zones).

Communications and Customer Service
The dramatic increase in service requests in Solid Waste Collection are attributed to the Green Bin program and new collection calendars.

The full Q1 2010 Quarterly Performance Report to Council is available at ottawa.ca.