As of Friday, Janaury 13, the City has received approximately 140,000 completed declarations, representing 42 percent of residential properties required to submit a declaration.
The following communications tools are being used to promote the declaration period and the requirement to complete a declaration for all residential properties:
o Detailed program information on Ottawa.ca/VUT. Basic information on submitting declarations is available in Spanish, Arabic, Simplified Chinese and Somali
o A public service announcement that was released on January 9th
o Social media campaign
o Online ads
o OC Transpo exterior and interior bus ads
o Digital screens at City of Ottawa facilities
o Radio ads in various languages on CHIN Radio
o Posters and handouts available at City recreation facilities, libraries and Client Service Centres
o A buckslip outlining information on accessible options available in ParaTranspo vehicles and suitable locations
o A demonstration on completing the declaration at the Seniors’ Round Table
o The second notice and two handouts. Included with the second notice are two additional inserts – VUT Guide -providing a step-by-step overview of the process, and VUT Facts – with some background information on VUT. Paperless billing clients will receive an e-mail with links to the PDF versions of the inserts. Distribution of the notices is expected to be completed by January 17th
o A message included in water bills
o English and French videos on how to complete a declaration as paid YouTube content
Staff are monitoring the latest trend of questions being received by the public. In response, the City just released a “You Asked” feature story to address some of the common questions received thus far. For example, 30% of the calls received pertain to a “Property not found!” error message when property owners are searching for their property.
All technical issues identified when the portal first went live on January 4th have since been resolved. No new issues have been identified since the last update. Although still busy, the call centre’s wait times have been considerably reduced since the last update.
If residents have difficulty completing the property search step, they can contact Revenue Services at 613-580-2444 or by e-mail at
vut_ilv@ottawa.ca.