Eleven years and $9.8 million

The short version

This started with one sidewalk in Guelph's Ward 5. A resident told me it had been broken for about ten years, so I asked the City why. The answers led me to the software the City uses to track repairs. Then to the project that was supposed to replace it.

That project has been running for years and has spent most of what Council approved for it. The system it was meant to deliver, the one your sidewalk complaint would go into, isn't in use yet. When a councillor asked what the City would get back for the money, staff said they'd come back with more. The City now says no return-on-investment figures were ever developed. Guelph's Internal Audit department, two people, has never reviewed the project, and none is planned.

The crews who fix sidewalks did good, fast work. This report is about the project above them, and who is supposed to be watching it.

I'm running for council in Ward 5. I've been saying property tax increases can be held to inflation without cutting programs, and people ask me where the money comes from. Projects like this one are where I'd start. Ontario lets a council appoint an Auditor General: someone who reports to Council, can see every record and can question anyone under oath. Hamilton did it with the auditor it already had, by one by-law. Guelph can do the same, and this project should be its first review.

Guelph doesn't need to cut programs. It needs a council that roots out waste and eliminates it.

The woman at the window

Door-knocking in Ward 5 in July, I met a woman who talked to me from her second-floor window. She'd had it with politicians. If I wanted to prove I was any different, she said, I could get the sidewalk in front of her house fixed.

By her count it had been broken about ten years. She'd called the City more times than she could remember. Every time, somebody came out and painted a stripe on the broken part, and then nothing. ⁵

Under Ontario's minimum maintenance rules, painting a hazard counts as treating it. The City says so itself. ^{2 10}

I reported it on July 23. The City's Operations department said the address had been added to the repair list. I asked for a timeline so I could tell her what to expect. They told me twice they couldn't give one. ⁵

If you're running for council, the City has an office you can send written questions to: the City Clerk's Office. On the evening of July 28 I sent seven. Twenty hours and thirty-four minutes later I had an email saying her sidewalk was fixed. A crew had ground it down and patched it. ⁵

The crew did clean, fast work. None of this is about them.

The written answer came back August 24. ⁶ I read it, found a problem in the math, and sent 37 more questions, then six more. The Clerk's Office had several departments working on them and answered on September 11. ^{2 5} What came back included contract prices. It also corrected two of my own numbers, and I've gone with the City's figures.

Nine of the answers said, one way or another, that the information exists but couldn't be pulled out of the system in the time available. They had more than two weeks with these questions. If information can't be pulled from a system in more than two weeks, the system isn't working. ²

Most of what follows isn't about sidewalks.

The number

Since at least 2017, the City has been trying to replace the software it uses to track repair jobs. In 2019, staff gave Council a progress report on fixes that two earlier audits had asked for. Several of those fixes were stuck waiting for the new software. One entry says the software project was "scheduled for Q3-2018" (the third quarter of 2018), then pushes the finish to the end of 2020. Other entries, tied to an upgrade of the same software, show it slipping from late 2018 to mid-2019 to the third quarter of 2020. One staff comment calls the old software "a system that will be retired in the next year." ¹ That 2018 date was for an earlier version of the plan. The same table shows that version was paused later in 2018, and the project in its current form was budgeted in 2021. ^{1 2 7}

Today, when you report a broken sidewalk in Guelph, it still goes into that old software. ²

The new software is now due in mid-2029. The City says the earlier dates were for a different plan and no longer apply. ²

As of August 31 this year, the City has spent $9,801,776 on the project. Council approved a budget of $14,135,000 for it. Another $2,404,553 is promised under contracts but not yet paid. The project also covers a purchasing module for the City's finance system; the City hasn't broken the spending down by part. ²⁴ The City's own year-by-year breakdown lumps everything before 2021 into one line, "2021 and prior." In every full year since, spending has been between $1.4 million and $2.0 million. ²

The City bought a licence for a software product called IBM Maximo. The price, $935,807, is in a list staff gave Council of things they signed off on in 2021. ⁴ The licence never expires, and it covers six parts of the system. ² I asked whether it's being used anywhere in the City today.

"No, licenses are not currently in use." ²

The company hired to set it up had a contract worth $3,062,851. That contract was terminated. By then $1,726,230 had been spent on it. Before that, in 2019, the City hired a consultant on a $201,499.80 contract to get ready for the project. Then in April 2026 the City awarded a new contract to a different company, Esri Canada Limited, for $2,583,655. ^{2 19}

I couldn't find any of those specific prices in a report to Council. I asked, and the City gave me all three. The report that told Council about the contract that was later terminated names the company, but not the price. It's marked "Financial Implications: None." That line describes the report itself; none of the contracts on that list is given a price. ⁴

I also asked whether the software was in use. The City said no, and added this by way of explanation:

"circumstances arose that resulted in the implementation partner no longer being able to continue delivering the project as originally planned." ²

The City says it was the one that ended the contract, after looking at its options. The answer doesn't say what the circumstances were. It doesn't say when. It doesn't say whether any of the $1,726,230 came back. And it doesn't say what happened to the licence. ²

The same document says the new software should bring "multi-million-dollar savings over a ten-year period" compared with going ahead with Maximo, the product it bought and isn't using. ² That may be true. But nobody has ever been officially asked to show the math, and the next section explains how that happened.

Nothing in the record names who made these decisions. The answers just come from "the City." Council votes the budget. Within it, staff sign contracts like these on their own, under authority Council delegated by by-law, without a separate vote on each one. Once a year, Council gets a list of the contracts staff signed. That list gives the contract and the job title of the person who signed it, but not their name. The first two of these contracts are on those lists. ^{4 19} The May 2026 budget report told Council a new procurement had been completed. The contract, the vendor and the $2,583,655 price haven't appeared in any report to Council that I can find; on the usual schedule, they wouldn't be listed until next spring. ^{19 24} So Council is never told who signed. That's a gap. It's an easy one to close.

Of the $14,135,000 Council approved for this project, $4.3 million is still unspent, and $1.9 million of that isn't committed to any contract yet. ²

A question that was asked once

On October 11, 2023, at a training session for Council, Councillor Dominique O'Rourke asked staff almost exactly this question: what return would the City get on this money? From the recording:

"in 2021 we set aside 1.6 million and then in 2022 it was going to be 3.6 million so i'm not understanding... did we put in that cms [the work-order system]... and now we want a new thing like i'm not understanding what those two blocks were what the ask is and what they're going to do in terms of roi. so i'm clearly not afraid to ask questions that make me look like i don't understand." ⁷

A senior staff member explained the project, then said this:

"we can follow up all with more of that and we'll incorporate a little bit more about in terms of the our ROI comments and questions when we come back." ⁷

Nearly three years later, I asked the City whether those return-on-investment numbers were ever produced. The answer:

"No, return on investment figures were not developed or reported to City Council as there were no formal, binding directives through the 2023 Special Council Education Session to do so." ²

Staff said they'd come back with more on the return. The City now says no return-on-investment figures were ever produced, because Council never formally asked for them. The City says it has kept track of the project through its regular budget reports instead. ² The City says those reports cover costs and efficiencies. It has never put a number on what it gets back for any part of the $9,801,776. ² The same thing happened with a second system, and that story is in Appendix B.

I read those budget reports. Twelve of them, from the first quarter of 2023 to the 2025 year-end report in May 2026, carry a paragraph on this project under its number, PN2439. None mentions the licence, the price of any contract, or the contract that was ended early. Starting in May 2025, each one says the project is "progressing as per plan," with "enterprise asset management implementation in 2026 and 2027." The last of those reached Council in May 2026. In September, the City told me the target is mid-2029. The newest report, for the first quarter of 2026, comments only on projects with more than $10 million left to spend. This one, with $4.3 million left, is no longer mentioned. ^{2 24}

"As per plan" is true in a narrow way. When a finish date moves, the project is measured against the new date. The City told me the "previous target completion dates associated with the original project are no longer applicable." ² First 2018, then 2020, then "2026 and 2027," now mid-2029. Since May 2025, on plan at every step. ^{1 2 8 24}

Meanwhile, the sidewalks

Start with what the City does count. There are 896 repairs in this year's program. In 2025, City crews ground down 211 raised edges, replaced 27 slabs, and patched 381 spots with asphalt. Right now they're finishing an inspection of every sidewalk in the city to plan next year's list. ² None of those numbers tells you how long anybody waits. Every open request is on the map at <a href="https://jonchristensen.ca/sidewalks">jonchristensen.ca/sidewalks</a>, and you can report one there.

The City told candidates that sidewalk requests received in 2025 took an average of 13 days to complete. ⁶

Looking at the City's own table, it seemed to me that every repair with no finish date was being counted as taking zero days. Before I said anything publicly, I sent my math to the Clerk's Office and asked them to check it. If I had it wrong, I wanted to know first. ²

The answer had two parts that don't fit together. First: requests with no finish date "show an average age of 0 days." Second: the average "is calculated using only SRs [service requests] that have a status of Finished." ² The published numbers only come out if the zeros were in fact included. So I asked for the spreadsheet itself, and they sent it. ³

Take the City's file. Count every request in its table, and count every request with no finish date as zero days. You get 59.7 for 2023, 44.6 for 2024, 13.1 for 2025, and 36.4 overall. The City published 60, 45, 13 and 36. Now count only the finished repairs, the way the City said it did. You get 83, 53, 19 and 48. The City's own table shows the first three of those, printed beneath the 13. ^{3 6}

Counting from the day a resident reported the problem: 142 requests are still open. 120 have waited more than a year. 66 have waited more than two. The oldest has waited 1,274 days. By the City's own labels, 95 of the 142 are "active," which the City says means work has begun. Forty-four have been approved for repair but no work has started, and 35 of those were reported more than 1,000 days ago. Three are waiting for approval. ^{2 3}

The City's file holds 548 requests. The table the City published covers 516. The 32 that are missing are exactly the ones with no note of the type "ACTION TAKEN" on them (a later "ACTION TAKEN 2" note doesn't count). Keep only the requests that have that note, and the published table's yearly totals come back exactly: 138, 177 and 201. ³ It looks like the table was built from the notes on each request rather than from the requests themselves. So any request without that particular note dropped out of the count. Six of those 32 are still open. One is on Harcourt Drive in Ward 5. It has been marked "Pending Approval" for 1,239 days, and it appears nowhere in the table the City published for candidates. ³

I asked whether Council had ever been given any figure on how well sidewalk repairs are going. In answer to that question, the City sent me six reports; the newest is from 2015. (An earlier answer had listed newer reports on sidewalk maintenance and infrastructure management, but I asked here for a figure on how well repairs are going, and that is the list I got.) ^{2 6} What they say is in Appendix C.

Who reviews this kind of thing

So whose job is it to look at a $9.8 million project and say whether it worked?

Guelph has an Internal Audit department. I asked how big it is and who it answers to. It has two full-time staff. For its audits, it reports to Council. But it also, in the City's words, "administratively reports to the Deputy Chief Administrative Officer of Corporate Services." ² That's the day-to-day line, and that person is one of the City's top managers. So the two auditors for the whole City answer, day to day, to a senior person inside the management they audit. The City's audit charter says the audit work itself "shall remain free of influence by any element of the City." The same charter says the Deputy CAOs give the auditor management's action plan on each recommendation "before finalizing a report," and the auditor's job, staffing and place on the org chart sit with the administration. ²⁵

I asked whether Internal Audit has ever looked at the software project, or at how good the data in the old system is:

"No, Internal Audit has not conducted a review of the current Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) project or the quality of its work order data. At this time, there are no audits planned for either the project or the associated data quality." ²

So: $14 million approved, $9.8 million spent, one contract ended early, one licence not in use. The City's own audit office has never reviewed any of it, and has no plan to.

The list of what Internal Audit will look at over the next three years goes to Council as a staff report. One of the City's top managers approves and recommends it before Council sees it. ¹⁴ Council can change that arrangement.

Ontario's law for cities, the Municipal Act, lets a council appoint an Auditor General. That's an auditor who reports to Council instead of to City management. Under the Act (sections 223.19 to 223.23), an Auditor General can see every City record and can question people under oath. ²⁰ It's optional, and Guelph doesn't have one. I asked whether Council has taken any recent decision on it: "No, there has been no recent discussion or direction on the part of City Council regarding the appointment of an Auditor General." ²

It doesn't have to be a new department. Hamilton did it with a single by-law, one vote of council, giving the auditor it already had the powers of an Auditor General under the Act. Markham hired an outside firm to do the job and had it report to Council. ¹⁷

Everything above comes from documents the City gave me, and from the spreadsheet it sent when I asked. My work and my page references are available to anyone at the City who wants them, today, whether they agree with me or not. Staff corrected two of my numbers along the way, and the report is better for it. If any line of it is wrong, I want to be the first to know.

Appendix A: What that's on your tax bill

Property taxes in Guelph went up 7.87 per cent this year. For a typical detached house, assessed at $410,000, that's $401.62 more. Of that, $171.47 is for City services, the part Council controls directly. The rest goes to local boards such as the police and the library, and to the hospital levy. ¹⁸

The City doesn't say what one percentage point of property tax is worth in dollars across the whole city. Working it out from the City's own budget tables, it's about $3.5 million. That means this project has cost close to what a 3 per cent property tax increase brings in for one year. The City doesn't publish that figure. It's my math on the City's own tables. ¹⁸

That's a comparison of size only. This project isn't why your taxes went up this year.

Appendix B: The same pattern on a second system

On December 12, 2023, Councillor O'Rourke asked when the City would be able to tell a resident three things: that their concern had been received, that someone had acted on it, and that it was resolved. Staff said 2027, and were honest about where things stood: "right now, there's just several different separate systems where you can probably go and find that information some of the time." ⁸

On May 5, 2026, Councillor Klassen asked about a timeline for that same system. A senior staff member said it was "some time out on the horizon" and that "i believe it's in the 2028 it capital forecast to begin working on" it. ⁹

So in late 2023 it was coming in 2027 or so. By 2026, staff believed work on it wouldn't start until 2028.

Appendix C: What the City has told Council about sidewalks since 2009

I asked whether Council had ever been given a figure on how well sidewalk repairs are going. The City sent six reports. ^{2 10 11 12 13 15 16} The newest is from 2015. One, from 2009, is about snow clearing, not repairs. Not one of them says how long a Guelph resident actually waits for a repair.

The 2011 report is worth reading. Guelph's sidewalk backlog has been cleared once, between 2009 and 2011, using federal and provincial stimulus money. Staff told Council what that was worth: "The project represented 40 years of annual rehabilitation work given current budgeting." ¹⁵ In other words, the City's normal budget would have taken 40 years to do what that one project did. Two years later, staff were back reporting 4,421 trip hazards and a budget big enough to fix about a fifth of them. The 2013 report also confirms, in the City's own words, that painting a raised edge (the City calls it a "discontinuity") meets Ontario's Minimum Maintenance Standards, the rules mentioned earlier in this report: "the simple marking of discontinuities satisfies the requirements of the MMS," and Guelph "meets all MMS requirements with the marking/identifying of any discontinuity until a permanent repair can be undertaken." ¹⁰

Sources

1. City of Guelph, Committee of the Whole agenda, September 3, 2019, internal audit follow-up tables. One item (Vendor/Payment Process Audit, rec. 13.3): "JDE/WAM re-implementation which is scheduled for Q3-2018," later revised to Q4-2020, with the comment "a system that will be retired in the next year." Separate items (Fuel Security and Systems Audit, recs. 4.3, 6.1-6.3, 7.2) tied to "WAM 2.2": revised from Q4-2018 to Q2-2019 to Q3-2020. guelph.ca/wp-content/uploads/cow_agenda_090319.pdf
2. City of Guelph, written response to candidate questions, "Additional questions on sidewalk maintenance and repair prioritization," Candidates' Portal, September 11, 2026. Every quotation attributed to the City, and every budget, spending, contract and audit figure, is taken verbatim from this document. candidates.guelph.ca/multiple-candidates/additional-questions-on-sidewalk-maintenance-and-repair-prioritization/
3. City of Guelph, "Sidewalk-Repairs-Report-for-2023-2024-2025.xlsx," the working file supplied with source 2: 1,073 rows, 548 service requests. All record counts, averages and waiting times were calculated from this file, counting each request once and measuring open requests to August 24, 2026.
4. City of Guelph, 2021 Delegation of Authority Report, March 25, 2022: the $935,807 Maximo licence; the RFP 20-056 agreement listed with no dollar figure, in a report whose own Financial Implications line reads "None." pub-guelph.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=23807
5. Correspondence between Jon Christensen, City of Guelph Operations and the City Clerk's Office, July 23 to September 11, 2026, and Jon Christensen's contemporaneous account of the July door-knock. Copies on file.
6. City of Guelph, written response to candidate questions, "Sidewalk Maintenance Records - Service Standards, Tracking and Costs," Candidates' Portal, August 24, 2026, with a 21-page attachment of service request records.
7. City of Guelph, recording of the Council Orientation and Education Workshop, October 11, 2023, approx. 2h30m. The chair recognises Councillor O'Rourke by name before this exchange.
8. City of Guelph, recording of the City Council meeting, December 12, 2023, approx. 2h01m. Staff address the questioner as "Councillor O'Rourke."
9. City of Guelph, recording of the Committee of the Whole, May 5, 2026, approx. 1h52m. Councillor Klassen is named on the recording; the staff member answering is not identified with certainty and is described by role.
10. City of Guelph, "Sidewalk & Sign Inspection Programs - Update," OTES091324, September 10, 2013.
11. City of Guelph, "Sidewalk Discontinuity Marking Pilot," OTES091436, September 5, 2014.
12. City of Guelph, "Sidewalk Discontinuity Marking Pilot Results," PS-15-46, September 3, 2015.
13. City of Guelph, "Sidewalk Maintenance Program Update," PS-15-42, September 9, 2015.
14. City of Guelph, "Internal Audit Work Plan 2026-2028," report 2026-51, page 4.
15. City of Guelph, "Infrastructure Stimulus Program - Sidewalk Rehabilitation Project 2009-2011," OT111162, December 16, 2011, pages 1-2.
16. City of Guelph, "Sidewalk Winter Control Service Review Results," June 15, 2009. Sources 10 to 13, 15 and 16 are the six reports the City supplied when asked whether any sidewalk repair performance figure has ever gone to Council. Source 16 concerns snow clearing rather than repair.
17. City of Hamilton By-law 19-180, appointing the Auditor General under s.223.19 of the Municipal Act, July 12, 2019. City of Markham, Office of the Auditor General, contracted to MNP LLP for a four-year term from December 11, 2015, reporting to Council through General Committee.
18. City of Guelph 2026 Budget, Tables 1, 7 and 11, and budget news releases of November 26, 2025 and February 4, 2026: 2026 levy and payments in lieu $383,028,807 against a 2025 base of $351,105,153; total levy impact 7.87 per cent; median single-family detached home assessed $410,000, up $401.62 in 2026, of which $171.47 is City services. guelph.ca/city-hall/budget-and-finance/city-budget/2026-budget/ The figure of about $3.5 million for one percentage point is not published by the City; it is calculated from Table 7 and from one per cent of the Table 11 base levy.
19. City of Guelph Delegation of Authority reports, the annual list of agreements signed by staff without a Council vote, reaching Council each spring for the prior year: CS-2020-28 (April 3, 2020), 2021-104 (March 26, 2021), March 25, 2022, 2023-118 (March 31, 2023), 2024-168 (March 28, 2024), March 28, 2025, 2026-131 (March 27, 2026). RFP 19-043 is listed in the 2019 report and RFP 20-056 in the 2021 report, both without a dollar figure. RFP 25-040, awarded April 2, 2026, appears in none of them; on that cycle it is not listed for Council until spring 2027.
20. Municipal Act, 2001, S.O. 2001, c. 25, sections 223.19 to 223.23. Section 223.19 (1) authorises a municipality "to appoint an Auditor General who reports to council"; the appointment is permitted, not required. Section 223.20 (2) entitles that office "to have free access to all books, accounts, financial records, electronic data processing records, reports, files and all other papers, things or property belonging to or used by the municipality," and 223.20 (1) places a duty on the municipality to furnish information. Section 223.21 (1): the Auditor General "may examine any person on oath on any matter pertinent to an audit or examination under this Part." ontario.ca/laws/statute/01m25
21. City of Guelph, City Council: the Mayor and two councillors from each of the City's six wards, 13 members. guelph.ca/city-hall/mayor-and-council/city-council/
22. City of Hamilton, report AUD19011 to the Audit, Finance and Administration Committee, July 11, 2019 ("Staffing: No new FTE's are being requested"; Financial section limited to the previously approved $94,500 hotline pilot), pub-hamilton.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=198514; By-law 19-180, July 12, 2019; Hamilton 2018 and 2019 Approved Budget books, Appendix 3 (Audit Services $1,066,430 in 2018, $1,115,980 in 2019, +4.6%) and Appendix 5 (7.00 FTE both years); 2023 and 2024 budget books (7.00 FTE). hamilton.ca/sites/default/files/2022-09/2019-approved-budget-book.pdf
23. City of Guelph, 2026 Confirmed Budget department table (Internal Audit, 2026 confirmed $342,818), guelph.ca/city-hall/budget-and-finance/city-budget/2026-budget/; Internal Audit Work Plan 2026-2028, report 2026-51 ("based on the availability of two full-time auditors for the full year"), pub-guelph.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=70249
24. City of Guelph, Budget Monitoring Reports, guelph.ca/city-government/budget-and-finance/financial-reports/. Project PN2439 appears in the twelve reports from the 2023 First Quarter report to the 2025 Year-end Capital report, as "CMMS Implementation" until the 2024 First Quarter report renamed it "ERP Program Implementation." "Progressing as per plan" and "enterprise asset management implementation in 2026 and 2027" first appear in the 2024 Year-end Capital Budget Monitoring Report (Committee of the Whole, May 6, 2025; guelph.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024-Year-end-Capital-Budget-Monitoring-Report.pdf) and last in the 2025 Year-end Capital Budget Monitoring Report (Committee of the Whole, May 5, 2026; Council, May 26, 2026; guelph.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025-Year-end-Capital-Budget-Monitoring-Report.pdf, "implementation later in 2026 and 2027"). The 2026 First Quarter Budget Monitoring Report (guelph.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026-297-2026-First-Quarter-Budget-Monitoring-Report.pdf) reports capital spending by category only. None of the twelve mentions the Maximo licence, a contract price, or the termination.
25. City of Guelph, Internal Audit Charter, March 2024 update ("All internal audit activities shall remain free of influence by any element of the City"; "The Deputy Chief Administrative Officers will provide the Internal Auditor with an action plan to address each recommendation before finalizing a report"). guelph.ca/wp-content/uploads/Internal-Audit-Charter-March-2024-Update.pdf

Guelph's written minutes record motions and votes, not questions, so they cannot show what was asked aloud. Sources 7, 8 and 9 come from machine transcripts of the City's own recordings, which carry no speaker labels. A person is named only where somebody says that name out loud on the recording.