Shuttering or Reducing Poorly Subscribed Services

The Airport

Last year Council addressed one of the least subscribed services, the Airport. If my memory serves me correctly, the Airport was costing taxpayers about $250,000 a year at the time it was sold.  From the Community Survey we see that an average of 90.5% of Phone and Computer respondents said that they never used it or rarely used this service. Of this an average of 74%, or three-quarters of those surveyed that said they never used it.  As shown in figure 19 above, the Airport cost taxpayers $358.40 per user before it was closed. Given this usage data, it’s clear to see that Council made a good decision to sell the Airport.

The most obvious candidates for service reduction or elimination are those services that are both costly to maintain and have a low level of use.  The city’s audited financial statements, as reflected in figure 5, give us a good understanding of cost of services. The Citizen Satisfaction Survey, which was delivered in September 2021, gives us a feeling for the frequency of use of these services.