Thursday evening around 10:55pm as I turned on to the Nicholas on-ramp heading east to the Queensway, I came to an important realization; I need a hobby … big time.

After wrapping up a speaking engagement before the Nepean-Kanata Rotary Club out at the Bells Corners legion (a thoroughly enjoyable evening indeed) around 8:45pm, I zipped back downtown to make a pit stop at city hall en-route to Orleans to catch few minutes of the marathon pesticides debate still going strong in the council chambers. An hour-and-a-half later enough was enough; it was time to hit the hay. (More on pesticides in next Wednesday's column).

When this less-than-humble scribe was not enthralled with the nuisances of integrated-pest-management strategies or the miracle grow capacities of herbicides, I enjoyed some light reading leafing through the city's 595-page operating budget and 907-page capital budget, both for 2003. But of even more interest was reading section 83.1 of my dog-eared copy of the Municipal Act.

This section of the Act compels our city to prepare information for the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing (within six months of the end the previous fiscal year) and subsequently publicly release (within nine months of the end of the previous fiscal year) certain indicators of its financial performance for review by taxpayers.

This information includes "operating costs for general government as a percentage of total municipal operating costs" along with "operating costs for fire services per 1,000 of assessment, operating costs for police services per household, total crime rate as defined by Statistics Canada, operating costs for paved (hard top) roads per lane kilometre" and at least 20 other measures of municipal performance. These measures run the gauntlet transit to sewage to water to garbage collection to land-use planning.

The act goes on to further state that "a municipality shall publish the information referred to … through one or more of the following methods: (a) a direct mailing to taxpayers or households; (b) and insert with the property tax bill; (c) one or more notices in local newspapers or advertising periodicals; or (d) posting the information on the Internet."

To be fair, let's assume the city complied and delivered the mandatory information to the province. However, to the best of my knowledge, this information has not been mailed out, included in any tax bill nor has it been published by way of the city's annual $3 million - and forever growing - advertising budget. So what about posting this information on the city's Internet site? Don't think it's there either.

On the other hand, while I was searching through the various parts of this city's website such as transit information, frequently asked questions, city quick facts, etc., I found out that we do have a page on masturbation. Don't believe me? Check it out for yourself. The address is: http://ottawa.ca/city_services/yourhealth/sexual/28_1_21en.shtml. But still no, no municipal indicators.

So this got yours truly to thinking, not about masturbation, but about municipal budgets: How did the City of Ottawa financially perform in 2001? Looking through the 2003 budget document there is no mention of 2001 budget projections vs. actual expenditures. And for the life of me, I can't seem to recall if the city ever published its audited financial statements for 2001. Maybe they're hidden away on the same part of the city website along with the municipal indicators as indicated in Section 83.1 of the Municipal Act.

Private sector corporations must prepare annual reports and have their statements audited for presentation to the Board and shareholders. Ditto for our federal and provincial governments via their production of the Public Accounts.
The same stringent guidelines apply to the myriad not-for-profits and associations operating in our fair city. So why has our city apparently not done this?

Why the delay? Is there something to hide? Why hasn't anyone on council asked for this information? One of the principles of financial planning and forecasting is to secure baseline data from the last set of audited financial statements. So again, where are they some 10 months after the close of fiscal year 2001?

This is doubly troubling as we head into the pivotal 2003 budget cycle that will set the tone of municipal operations during the forthcoming critical election year. And in an era of justifiable concern post-Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing, Adelphia et al, our city must strive for the utmost in financial transparency and disclosure, anything less is an affront to taxpayers.

Returning to the issue of performance indicators there is yet another troubling sidebar to add to this sad tale. While the Municipal Act prescribes what the city should do in terms of reporting its financial performance to the province and to taxpayers, it is suspiciously silent on what redress the province or an individual taxpayer has if the city does not comply, as appears to be the case here.

What does it all mean? Well, we have a city council trying to set a combined $2.3 billion budget for next year without the wisdom of knowing what happened financially in 2001 and without any preliminary figures from the first half of 2002.

We have a provincial government that attempted to inject a degree of accountability and transparency into the municipal performance review process without any consequences for lack of action. Accountability is a hollow concept without swift redress for inappropriate behaviour.

So taxpayers are left in the dark with no sense of how our city stacks up to others in terms of costs per services delivered and no independent signoff on the first year (2001) of the amalgamated city's operations. And to top it all off, most of us received our 2002 assessment notices this week with average values - according to my informal survey of friends and colleagues - jumping by 20% across the region. Wonder if the mayor and council will use this assessment growth AGAIN to play another smoke and mirrors, now you see it, now you don't, tax rate cut game?

Now about finding that hobby ...