Program Costing And Special Projects

Legislation such as the Ontario Municipal Act, The Planning Act and the Building Code Act provide rules and limits on the application, pricing, and reporting of specific city permits, licenses, user fees, and other charges. These rules require Municipalities to continually monitor fee policies, processes, calculations and reporting methods in order to comply. The need to provide a system to calculate the full cost of providing various City services, and to continually maintain and update this system, was a direct result of these legislative requirements. Program Costing is used to assist departments with the costing of any impacted fees within the legislative guidelines. This is a very significant corporate wide effort encompassing legislation interpretation, fee identification, and developing costing methodologies and models for each unique legislative requirement. Listed below are a few of the key functions related to Program Costing:

  • Manage and coordinate the development and continual update of activity costing models and processes, including the creation of cost drivers and direct/indirect cost identification and allocations
  • Meet with departments on a regular basis to obtain and determine department activities and cost allocations contributing to fees requiring cost justification, assimilate costing logic and department information into the respective activity costing model and ensure buy-in on methodology and drivers
  • Provide interpretation, guidance and a high level of financial support to  departments in relation to legislative activity based costing requirements, processes and polices
  • Assist in the preparation of the required Building Code - Bill 124 annual financial report
  • Determine necessary reserve targets and monitor aggregate excess fee revenue over cost and reserve performance to determine if a change in fee structure is required
  • Calculate annual reserve contributions and quarterly accruals as per legislative guidelines
  • Revise and develop as necessary policies and procedures related to activity costing and user fee justification

 

Special Projects

Special Projects are studies or analyses based on Corporate Strategic Initiative and/or Council Direction. Some examples of Special Projects include:

  • Program Review study and prioritization of City programs
  • Development Activity Revenue Forecast
  • Provide support in costing of City Master Plans and other miscellaneous City programs
  • User Fee reviews and cost recovery analysis
  • Public/Private Partnerships - Financial Modeling
  • Insurance/Recovery Management study

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