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Auditor general reports Hamilton DARTS was overpaid, lacking communications

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A report from the City of Hamilton’s Office of the Auditor General (OAG) found the transit service was overpaid over a 12-year period, and was lacking in clear communications.

The audit was the result of a concern reported to the Fraud and Waste hotline, to look into the city’s payment of foregone fares.

DARTS is a non-profit door-to-door transit service that uses vans and wheelchair accessible vehicles to help people with disabilities.

The ride program works under contract to Accessible Transportation Services (ATS), a department of the Hamilton Street Railway (HSR).

The audit found that overpayments to DARTS from 2012 to 2023 are estimated to be between $230,00 to $263,000.

The estimation is based on an average of five years – 2018 to 2023 – through the 12 year period.

The review process also found that clear communications of “special events” was generally lacking and overall comprehension of those events was “not prevalent.”

The OAG made four recommendations to management to involve the process, which was approved by city management.

Director of the City of Hamilton’s Transit Division Maureen Cosyn Heath responded to the audit in their own release, saying “the city is committed to working closely with DARTS to strengthen measures to deliver more accountable and transparent Special Events subsidy.”

DARTS agrees to the OAG’s four recommendations

The city agreed to include the terms in a new Master Operating Agreement with DARTS to facilitate stronger oversight capabilities. This would allow DARTS to assure contract compliance and quality of data. This recommendation is estimated to be completed in Q4 of 2025.

They also agreed to host a booking software for all rides in-house which could utilize a cloud-based solution, provided HSR or ATS holds administrative privileges, or a method to extract the data without having to go through DARTS. This recommendation is estimated to be completed in Q1 of 2026.

The city agreed to issue ride codes for all special events used by DARTS – set by the HSR – at the beginning of the year as necessary, with any changes during the year to be approved by HSR as needed. This recommendation is estimated to be completed in Q1 of 2025.

The final recommendation by the OAG was that DARTS issue monthly reports invoicing ATS for previous fares and that ATS verify the correctness of amounts before issuing payment. This recommendation is expected to begin later this month.

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