# How The Current Organization Chart Was Built

## Why this chart exists

Many residents, and some municipal employees, find the City's current staff structure difficult to understand. The operational work plan is a substantial document: the 2026 edition with appendices is 543 pages. It describes departments, functions, responsibilities and reporting relationships, but that information is spread across a long report rather than presented as one easy-to-read picture.

Police information is also published separately. Owen Sound Police Services has its own organizational chart and operates under a separate Police Services Board rather than as an ordinary branch of the City Manager's reporting tree. Residents should not have to mentally combine several documents to understand how City departments, elected governance and police governance fit together.

This project brings those public pieces into one visual reference. It is intended to make the current structure easier to discuss, identify questions that require better public information, and provide a baseline for the proposed bottom-up organization review. It is not a claim that every position is unnecessary, duplicated or suitable for removal.

## What the chart combines

The [current per-seat chart](current-organization-per-seat.svg) combines four kinds of public information:

1. **City organization:** departments, managers, supervisors, coordinators and frontline roles transcribed from the City's [2026 Annual Organizational Work Plan with appendices](../owen-sound-municipal-reading-list/organization/2026-annual-organizational-work-plan-with-appendices.pdf).
2. **Police organization:** the separate [December 2025 Owen Sound Police Services organizational chart](source/osps-organizational-chart-dec2025.pdf), also available from the [Owen Sound Police Service](https://www.owensoundpolice.com/media/asqpmyn4/osps-organizational-chart-dec2025.pdf).
3. **Public salary records:** the 2025 Ontario public-sector salary disclosure, filtered to City of Owen Sound records in [`current-2025-salary-disclosure.csv`](current-2025-salary-disclosure.csv).
4. **Elected compensation:** the published 2026 Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Councillor amounts in [`2026-elected-compensation.csv`](2026-elected-compensation.csv).

The role inventory and seat register are working extracts from the organization plan. They make the source material easier to count and inspect, but the original public documents remain the authority when an extract needs correction.

## How it was assembled

The process was deliberately conservative:

- department and service names were transcribed from the public organization material;
- repeated roles were expanded into separate charted seats where the source gave a count;
- individual salary records were matched by employer and reported job title where a reasonable match existed;
- salary paid was kept distinct from base salary, benefits and total employer cost;
- named salary records were kept separate when the public source identified different people, even when their job titles were similar;
- repeated firefighter seats use the average of the 12 disclosed `Fire Fighter Class 1` records, labelled as an average rather than as each person's exact salary;
- repeated Water Distribution Operator seats use the average of the two disclosed `Water Distribution` records, labelled as an average rather than as each person's exact salary;
- unmatched, mixed or undisclosed values remain white rather than being guessed;
- the Police Services Board branch was kept separate from the City's ordinary staff hierarchy;
- the Mayor's Police Services Board voting relationship is shown as a governance connection, not as a City Manager reporting line.

The two Director of Corporate Services records illustrate why this matters. The 2025 disclosure contains separate records for Kate Allan, listed as Director Corporate Services at `$164,781.27`, and Suzanne Bell-Matheson, listed as Director of Corporate Services at `$115,015.92`. Bradey Carbert is separately listed as Manager of Corporate Services at `$113,528.18`. The chart therefore shows three distinct nodes rather than silently averaging or collapsing them.

The chart uses a continuous salary colour scale. Purple and violet represent the highest disclosed amounts, followed by blue, green, yellow, orange and red. White means the salary is unknown, mixed, not individually disclosed, or not appropriate to infer from the available source. The legend gives the approximate current-chart ranges.

## What the chart shows

The chart provides a single visual baseline for:

- the City's documented department and service structure;
- the layers between frontline work, managers, directors and the City Manager;
- repeated or separately counted seats;
- elected governance in relation to the City Manager;
- the separate Police Services Board, Chief, deputy, operational and civilian branches;
- public salary-disclosure records that can be matched to charted roles; and
- places where the public record is incomplete.

The [current organization chart](current-organization.svg) is a broader department-level view. The [current per-seat chart](current-organization-per-seat.svg) expands the available counts into individual charted seats; the matching [PDF chart](current-organization-per-seat.pdf) is provided for printing and sharing. The [goal organization charts](goal-organization.svg) and [goal per-seat chart](goal-organization-per-seat.svg) show a proposed future framework and should not be mistaken for the current staffing structure.

## What it does not show

This is a public-source reconstruction, not an internal position or payroll system. It does not establish:

- who currently occupies every seat;
- whether a 2025 salary record represents a current, former, acting or transitional assignment;
- the complete salary, benefits, pension or employer cost of every employee;
- the actual workload, service result, vacancy status or legal duty attached to a position;
- every reporting-line detail where the public organization plan is ambiguous; or
- whether a role should be reduced, merged or removed.

Salary disclosure is especially easy to overread. It reports salary paid under the provincial disclosure rules, not a complete salary grid or a complete cost-to-employer calculation. Two similar titles may represent two separate people, two different assignments, a change during the year, or a naming inconsistency that requires confirmation from the City.

## Information still needed

The chart would become substantially more useful with a current public position register containing:

- position number, title, department and current reporting line;
- filled, vacant, acting and temporary status;
- base salary, benefits, pension and complete employer cost;
- full-time equivalent count and scheduled hours;
- statutory, professional, collective-agreement and safety requirements;
- workload, service standards, backlogs and measurable results; and
- contracts, consultants, software and external work connected to each function.

Until those records are available, this chart should be used to ask better questions and establish a common baseline, not to claim a predetermined payroll saving. The related [staffing and reorganization savings review](staffing-savings-review.md) explains why reassignment, vacancies and verified service results must come before a savings claim.

## Sources and related files

- [2026 Annual Organizational Work Plan with appendices](../owen-sound-municipal-reading-list/organization/2026-annual-organizational-work-plan-with-appendices.pdf)
- [Extracted organization tree](../owen-sound-municipal-reading-list/organization/organization-tree.md)
- [Extracted organization role inventory](../owen-sound-municipal-reading-list/organization/organization-role-inventory.csv)
- [Official December 2025 Police Services organizational chart](source/osps-organizational-chart-dec2025.pdf)
- [Filtered 2025 salary disclosure](current-2025-salary-disclosure.csv)
- [2026 elected compensation](2026-elected-compensation.csv)
- [Ontario 2025 public-sector salary disclosure source](https://www.ontario.ca/public-sector-salary-disclosure/2025/all-sectors-and-seconded-employees/)
- [Current seat register](organization-seat-register.csv)
- [Current-to-goal cost comparison](current-goal-cost-comparison.csv)