City wrestles with 3% tax cap as budget pressure builds

By Kate Porter, CBC News Ottawa, September 4, 2019

City staff are preparing a 2020 budget that will again cap the property tax increase at three per cent, but to achieve that some departments will have to cinch their belts tighter than others

(...)An extra $19 million in federal gas tax money in each of the next three years is expected to soften the blow for Ottawa.

City staff are now proposing spending that money on roads, bridges and cycling infrastructure, while money previously set aside for those projects will now go toward transit, replacing the lost provincial gas tax revenue.

"You're taking money from one fund to another. It's perfectly legitimate to do that," Mayor Jim Watson said Tuesday.

"It allows us to make up the gap that we need for Phase 2 [of light rail construction], and at the same time keep up the aggressive paving work on some streets that are in really, really rough shape."

 

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