On Monday November 19th, 2024, CAFES' Angela Keller-Herzog made a public delegation at the Environment and Climate Change Committee (ECCC) meeting regarding the City's 2025 Draft Operating and Capital Budget.
The budget was first tabled at the November 13th Council meeting, and on November 19th, ECCC approved its portion of the draft budget following the staff report on tax and rate budgets for Forestry Services, Solid Waste, Climate Change Resiliency, and Infrastructure and Water Services. The 2025 was officially approved by Council on December 11th, 2024.
The CAFES delegation acknowledged highlights from the Forestry Services budget, including $14.4M to be allocated to existing tree and forest maintenance, and $1.9M for tree planting programs (which increased from last year's $1.7M). The budget includes 2 new FTE Tree Workers, 1 FTE Forestry Inspector, and $500K capital investment to launch the Proactive Right-of-Way Tree Planting program. The new Private Land Tree Planting Program is also set to begin in 2025, which will distribute free trees city-wide with additional trees offered in equity areas.
CAFES made the point that we need clear, updated data and analysis on tree canopy and tree loss. We are concerned that the Forestry budget is not enough to realize Mayor Sutcliffe's goal to plant 1 million trees. This would require planting 250,000 trees per year; however the budget proposes to plant approximately 75-100K trees, less than last year's 104,000K. CAFES asked for more public information and evidence for the budget decisions.
In terms of the Climate Change Master Plan, our delegation questioned whether there are funds to finish the work from the 2020-2025 plan, and to execute the work that needs to be done now in order to successfully move forward into the next five years. We recommended setting aside funds for a temporary FTE to plan the CCMP 2026-2030.
In particular, the Better Homes program could be extended by providing heat pumps for tenants and in buildings with no air conditioning. We also must ensure there is room in the budget for technical capacity and expertise to support energy transition, including planning and zoning for utilities, battery energy storage systems (BESS) and other renewable energy systems. We acknowledged work that had begun at City Hall to investigate how green building standards outlined in the High Performance Development Standard can be better implemented without drastically raising home prices, for example by providing developer incentives to build to Tier 2 standards. Diverting organic waste from landfill and protecting against basement flooding with improvements to the Residential Protective Plumbing Program were further considerations that we insisted the budget should prioritize.
CAFES' thought-provoking delegation was picked-up on by Councillors as they asked several follow up questions. CBC quickly published an article featuring Angela's call for better canopy data, which triggered a response from the Mayor's office stating their ongoing commitment to canopy regeneration and strategic community partnerships.
For more information, you can view the draft budget and staff report HERE, and watch the recording HERE (Angela's delegation is at 52:45).
Following the city's final approval of the 2025 budget on December 11th, visit Engage Ottawa to stay informed on how the budget is rolled out in 2025.
