Take Action!

Help keep environment budget from the chopping block at city hall!

The City of Ottawa's draft 2010 budget has been released and public consultations are underway. You can take action by letting city council know that funding to support the health of our environment is important to you!

The draft budget shows considerable improvement over previous years' budgets in certain areas, such as cycling and pedestrian infrastructure and energy efficiency improvements to city-owned buildings. Unfortunately, these could all still be targeted for cuts before the budget is finalized.

Other environmentally beneficial programs and services—such as public transit, essential tree maintenance, and implementation of the tree protection by-law—have already been marked for deep cuts or elimination.

For more details, check out Ecology Ottawa's summary of the key environmental components of the draft budget, which can be downloaded below:

2010_budget_Ecology_Ottawa_comments.pdf

The draft budget can be read in full at http://www.ottawa.ca/city_hall/budget/budget_2010/budget_documents_en.html

Council needs to hear from you before they finalize the budget during the last week of January! 

You can provide feedback to the City of Ottawa on the draft budget in any (or all!) of the following ways:

• E-mail

• Call 311 with your comments

• Fax 613-560-2126

• Attend a councillor ward consultation (taking place December 10 to January 20)

• Register as a public delegation at City Council (sitting as Committee of the Whole starting January 25) by contacting 613-580-2424, ext. 12487 or by e-mail at

Thanks to everyone who wrote to city council about the 2010 city budget. Thanks to the interventions of you and other concerned Ottawa residents, council reversed the proposed cuts to transit service, the U-Pass transit program for university students, and maintenance of city trees!

Also included in the final 2010 budget is the Smart Energy Initiative, which focuses on energy-efficiency improvements to city-owned buildings, and increased funding for the Ottawa Cycling Plan and Pedestrian Plan. The city will construct new cycling lanes and sidewalks, and pedestrian/cycling bridges over the Rideau Canal and the Rideau River.

For more details on the final budget that was passed, see the news coverage here.

To stay informed of our action alerts and get updates on key local environmental issues and events, sign up for Ecology Ottawa's e-mail updates. We will send no more than two updates each month.