What this means for residents
With Local Representatives, residents would have a nearby person who can help them get practical support, feel heard, and resolve local issues close to home.
A Local Representative could help residents:
- find the right City service, office, councillor, or community group for the help they need;
- get local issues addressed with patience and follow-through, such as sidewalks, lighting, drainage, snow, noise, safety concerns, or damaged infrastructure;
- understand nearby City projects and help shape them before decisions are finalized;
- connect with their Ward Councillor when an issue needs Council attention;
- organize practical neighbour-to-neighbour care, such as snow help, cleanups, gardens, safety walks, or support for vulnerable residents;
- resolve small conflicts early through compassionate listening, respectful communication, and local follow-up.
An annual Local Area potluck and block party
A family-friendly neighbourhood gathering close to home, every year.
Ward and local representation should also give residents more opportunities to enjoy their community and get to know the people living nearby.
Each Local Area would hold one annual family-friendly potluck or block party in a nearby park or shared community space. Residents could meet neighbours, raise concerns, share ideas, organize local projects, identify local helpers, and take part in the association’s accessible election of their Local Representative for the coming year. The gathering would also welcome new residents, share food, let children play, and build familiarity among neighbours and their representative.
Preparing invitations and knocking on doors would give the Local Representative a natural opportunity to introduce themselves, hear local ideas, and make sure residents know how to reach them. Participation and food sharing would always be voluntary. The gathering would welcome renters, homeowners, seniors, children, newcomers, and residents living alone, with accessibility considered in the event plan.
In local areas with few urgent concerns, organizing this annual gathering could be the representative’s main planned community task for the year. Other activities could grow naturally from the interests and needs of residents.
The City could make these gatherings easier through a simple organizer kit, assistance with park booking and event requirements, reusable signs and name tags, and a modest approved allowance for basic supplies.
The 2026–2030 model: 7 geographic Wards, about 70 Local Areas
After the citywide election, Council would assign each of the seven at-large Councillors primary responsibility for one ward of roughly 3,000 residents. Each ward would contain about 10 Local Areas, with roughly 150 households in each.
The geographic assignment gives every part of Owen Sound a clearly identified Councillor responsible for regular contact and follow-through while preserving every Councillor’s citywide mandate.
- All seven Councillors remain elected by voters across Owen Sound.
- All seven continue to represent the whole city and vote on every citywide matter.
- Residents may contact any member of Council, regardless of ward.
- Councillors may take responsibility for a ward regardless of where they live.
The Mayor and Deputy Mayor would retain their citywide roles and their responsibilities at Grey County Council.
At-large election → seven Councillors → one geographic ward assigned to each Councillor → about 10 Local Areas per ward → Local Representatives connected with residents
The proposed wards are:
Geographic ward boundaries would be shaped by population balance, natural community identity, geography, roads, schools, parks, and how residents actually experience the city.
Explore the proposed wards
This interactive map shows Owen Sound’s 2022 polling areas, recorded electors, ballots cast, voter turnout, and a preliminary seven-geographic-ward model. Existing polling areas provide measurable building blocks for creating areas with roughly balanced numbers of electors, while geography, roads, community identity, future growth, and public input can help refine the boundaries.
Official data: 2022 polling areas and election figures.
Campaign analysis: turnout and elector comparisons.
Preliminary proposal: seven geographic areas of Councillor responsibility.
The proposed boundaries remain open to public input and describe geographic areas of responsibility. Formal electoral wards would require a later public consultation and statutory ward-boundary process.
Do these boundaries reflect the neighbourhood where you live? Are any natural neighbourhood connections divided? Share your feedback in the Owen Sound Council discussion community.
Electoral wards could be considered around 2030
During the 2026–2030 term, residents and Council could evaluate how well geographic ward assignments improve contact, follow-through, local participation, and citywide decision-making.
Based on that experience, Owen Sound could consider formal electoral wards through public consultation and the statutory ward-boundary process. Under that later model, residents in each ward would elect their own Ward Councillor.
Geographic wards can begin while elections remain at large. The experience gathered during that period would provide practical evidence for deciding whether electoral wards should be adopted closer to 2030.
Clear roles and responsibilities
Residents should know who to contact, and each person serving the community should have a clear purpose, a spirit of service, and a reliable path for follow-up.
Residents
Residents are the foundation of the plan. Each resident has a voice, a place, and something to contribute. Residents can contact a nearby Local Representative, raise concerns, share improvement ideas, participate in local meetings and accessible elections, volunteer for projects, accept optional paid community tasks, and apply to serve.
Local Representatives
Each Local Representative would hold an elected office in a resident-governed neighbourhood association. The association’s constitution would establish the office, its representative duties, annual term, resident voting rights, election procedures, and rules for vacancies and removal.
Residents would elect their representative through an accessible annual election, with acclamation where a single eligible candidate stands. Residents would be encouraged to choose a candidate who lives in the Local Area. The neighbourhood election would naturally favour someone who knows the streets and daily conditions directly. Representatives would receive their mandate from residents, exercise independent judgement on neighbourhood priorities, and report publicly on their activities. Residents who cannot attend the annual gathering would have an accessible alternative way to vote under the association’s election procedure.
The duties of the office would include inviting household participation, convening neighbourhood gatherings, listening to residents, communicating with the assigned Councillor, and organizing responses to local concerns. Volunteers, paid community participants, and City services could carry out the resulting projects.
When a concern involves someone who may be losing housing or living outside, the Local Representative could help the resident use 211 or the appropriate City or County channel and follow whether the request reached the right service. Residents and representatives would submit observations and referrals, while authorized providers would manage personal housing, health, addiction, and service information through the coordinated system and the Grey County By-Name List where consent and eligibility apply.
A simple baseline responsibility would be helping organize one annual family-friendly local-area potluck or park gathering. Door-to-door invitations would help the representative introduce themselves, welcome residents, and begin building relationships before local problems arise. In a local area with few active needs, this gathering could be the representative’s main planned task for the year.
The annual gathering would be a regular opportunity to hold the election and report on the office’s work. The association’s accessible election process would include nominations, voting, acclamation where appropriate, and a way for residents who miss the gathering to participate. After election, the representative would connect with the Councillor responsible for the ward for at least one hour each month, carry neighbourhood concerns and priorities forward, share City information locally, and help follow issues through City Hall. The role would also provide practical experience for residents interested in future civic leadership.
The association would provide remuneration for these elected duties under a published compensation policy, calculated using approved hours at the living-wage standard, with expense reimbursement and public financial reporting. The term and entitlement to office remuneration would follow the association’s election and succession rules.
This proposed structure is designed to fall within the elected-office exclusion in section 3(5), paragraph 9 of Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, 2000, which applies to holders of elected offices in organizations. Ontario’s interpretation guidance explains the exclusion. Qualification depends on the association’s governing documents and actual operation. Separate paid community tasks would operate under their own payment arrangements and applicable worker protections.
The role should be rooted in service to others, steady communication, and trust built through ordinary neighbourly care.
Ward Councillors
Ward Councillors would be members of Owen Sound Council elected at large by the whole city and assigned primary responsibility for one geographic ward. Each would meet with Local Representatives, review local patterns and requests, bring ward priorities to Council and City staff, explain City decisions, coordinate local input on projects, and support fair treatment across Local Areas.
The assignment preserves their full municipal role: every Councillor would continue to represent all Owen Sound residents, vote on every citywide matter, remain available to every area, and exercise independent judgement.
Deputy Mayor
The Deputy Mayor helps coordinate the city-wide picture by comparing needs across wards, identifying gaps or duplication, supporting budget discussions, representing Owen Sound at Grey County Council alongside the Mayor, and maintaining continuity when the Mayor is unavailable. This role helps the whole city remain balanced, attentive, and fair.
Mayor
The Mayor chairs Council, supports constructive decision-making, turns local concerns into clear Council priorities, represents Owen Sound at Grey County and with provincial and federal governments, and keeps the system transparent, accountable, and focused on practical results.
Each role contributes at its proper scale. Residents govern their neighbourhood association elections, representative mandate, and association rules. Local Representatives provide close-to-home listening, communication, and practical coordination. At-large Councillors provide elected representation for the whole city while accepting clear geographic responsibility and follow-through. The Deputy Mayor helps track citywide balance and continuity. The Mayor leads the whole system and represents Owen Sound externally.
Fair compensation and accountability
A ward and local representation system should respect people’s time, labour, and care. The proposed model separates three kinds of spending: remuneration for elected representative duties, payments for optional community tasks, and supplies, expenses, insurance, and administration.
Remuneration for elected duties
The resident-governed association would publish the compensation policy for its elected offices. The municipal funding agreement could support approved hours at the living-wage standard, expense reimbursement, accessible elections, and public reporting. Representatives and their relatives would participate only under published conflict rules, with independent assignment and payment approval.
Optional community tasks
Residents could volunteer, accept an optional paid community task, or request assistance through City services. A task payment would require an appropriate worker arrangement. Where participants are employees, the programme would track hours and follow applicable employment standards while maintaining its promised living-wage floor. Independent providers would need a genuine business relationship, with the actual relationship determining the applicable tax and employment treatment.
Public accountability
The association and City would publish spending and results by ward and Local Area while protecting personal information. The system would include:
- clear role descriptions, approved task categories, and budget envelopes;
- hour and payment records for paid work;
- public reporting by ward and local area;
- independent assignment and payment approval for representatives and relatives;
- privacy, confidentiality, insurance, and safety rules;
- a clear process for complaints, review, and replacement.
The goal is fair compensation, public trust, and a culture where service to neighbours is valued enough to be sustainable for the people doing the work and the families who depend on them.
Optional community tasks and the public task board
Each Local Area could have a public community task board, also called a bounty programme, for approved tasks that residents may volunteer for or accept as paid work. Every listing would state its scope, location, payment, permissions, completion criteria, and status.
For tasks suitable for City delivery, the proposed operating sequence would be:
- Check whether qualified City employees can complete the task within its defined service timeframe.
- Offer an eligible overflow task when that capacity is unavailable, following the agreed labour and programme procedures.
- Withdraw an available, unaccepted listing when City capacity returns.
- Honour an accepted assignment under its published completion and cancellation terms.
An unaccepted listing is an invitation, not a work assignment. An accepted assignment creates the payment and completion obligations published with that task. The board would record one responsible assignee, prevent duplicate assignments and payments, and show whether a task is available, accepted, completed, cancelled, or withdrawn.
The arrangement would define eligible activities, capacity assessment, scheduling, overtime, recall, safety, insurance, and consultation with affected unions. Spare capacity alone establishes neither collective-agreement compliance nor permission to contract out City work. Hazardous waste, needles, specialized repairs, and other higher-risk work would remain with appropriately trained and equipped services.
Implementation notes
The neighbourhood association, City, residents, and affected workers would establish the operating details before the programme begins. Council-approved funding and programme arrangements would identify the City’s supporting responsibilities, while residents would govern each association’s elections and representative rules.
The relevant City collective agreements would guide the labour review. The CUPE Inside Workers agreement (2024–2026) includes consultation where contracting out affects bargaining-unit work, and the CUPE Outside Workers agreement (April 2024–March 2027) defines covered work and limits excluded positions performing bargaining-unit work. The proposed task arrangement would be developed with affected unions and would follow any applicable collective agreement, legislation, safety requirement, scheduling rule, overtime or recall provision.
Canada Revenue Agency guidance assesses employee or self-employed status from the actual working relationship. The Ontario employment standards guide provides the applicable minimum-wage floor. The living-wage commitment is a programme standard above that floor where the arrangement creates an employment relationship.
Baseline representation funding and optional task funding would be budgeted separately. A final budget would be published after the number of associations, elected offices, expected tasks, insurance, administration, and City capacity are assessed. The published budget would keep those assumptions and cost categories visible until they are verified.
Public safety and camera coordination
Many residents and businesses already want to help when something happens nearby, especially when a neighbour, family, business, or vulnerable person needs support. Security camera footage can help resolve break-ins, vandalism, traffic incidents, missing-person searches, safety concerns, neighbour disputes, and other local incidents where clear information matters.
A coordinated process would let residents respond through one clear, familiar channel while keeping residents in control of their own participation.
Residents who choose to participate could register cameras or upload relevant footage through a City-managed system. Local Representatives could help coordinate communication between residents, police, neighbours, and the Ward Councillor, so requests are handled clearly, respectfully, and with local accountability. Access to police records, camera footage, and other sensitive information would follow specific authorization and privacy rules. Election to the representative office alone would grant no access to those records.
A good camera-footage program should include:
- voluntary opt-in participation and clear consent for sharing footage;
- requests connected to specific incidents or community safety concerns;
- access logs for every request and every viewed file;
- clear retention and deletion timelines;
- privacy protections for residents, victims, witnesses, and bystanders;
- a review path through the Ward Councillor or City process when a request needs extra care.
Local Representatives would support communication, consent, and local trust, helping people respond with calm, care, and confidence.
The goal is practical community safety with simple participation, better information, and stronger trust between neighbours, police, councillors, and the City, so residents can help one another in moments that matter. The Community Safety & Policing plan explains how civic response, civilian crisis response, and police response fit together.
Voluntary Neighbourhood Watches
Local Representatives can help residents organize voluntary neighbourhood watches where residents want them. Participants would receive basic safety, de-escalation, and reporting guidance.
The role is observation, reporting, neighbour connection, and documenting recurring concerns. Formal enforcement, legal decisions, emergency response, and crisis intervention remain with qualified professionals.
Watches would connect with the four-stream response model and the Owen Sound Emergency Communications Centre where appropriate. Participants would submit observations and requests through the appropriate channel, while authorized providers would manage personal housing, health, addiction, and By-Name List information.
How this supports the platform pillars
Transparency
Residents can see who represents their area and follow how local concerns move through Council.
Transparency is a form of respect: residents deserve to understand how decisions are made and how their concerns are handled.
- A clear local representative.
- Searchable council transcripts through helpos.ca.
- Easier follow-up on local concerns.
Participation
Residents gain practical ways to organize, care for their area, serve one another, and grow into civic leadership.
- Ward-scale organizing.
- Annual local-area gatherings and shared stewardship.
- A pathway into future civic leadership.
Compassion
Compassion means local government listens for the person behind the concern. Local relationships help people slow down, hear one another, understand the needs beneath conflict, and build trust over time.
- Compassionate local listening.
- Neighbour-to-neighbour care.
- Conflict resolution that protects dignity and strengthens trust.
Building the map and future civic leadership
The seven-geographic-ward map should be developed openly with residents. Boundaries should consider population balance, natural community identity, geography, roads, schools, parks, and growth. The map should reflect real communities of care, connection, and daily life while remaining practical for Councillor assignments during the at-large term.
The plan also helps residents see public service as something close, human, and possible. Neighbours, volunteers, parents, tenants, business owners, seniors, and people from under-represented areas can build experience through local-area and ward participation.
- Invite residents to shape understandable ward boundaries.
- Encourage strong candidates from under-represented parts of the city.
- Build a stronger bench of future civic leaders across Owen Sound.
Frequently Asked Questions
Would Owen Sound use electoral wards in the 2026 election?
No. The 2026 election would remain at large. Voters across Owen Sound would elect the Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and seven Councillors. After the election, Council would assign each Councillor primary responsibility for one geographic ward.
What is a ward?
In the immediate plan, a ward is a geographic area of responsibility within Owen Sound’s existing at-large electoral system. It gives residents a recognizable Councillor responsible for regular contact and follow-through while every Councillor continues to represent the whole city.
Would Owen Sound still be one city?
Owen Sound remains one united city. The ward and local-area model helps residents participate locally while keeping municipal decisions, services, and accountability within the City of Owen Sound.
Would the mayor still represent everyone?
Yes. The Mayor would continue to be elected city-wide, represent the whole city, chair Council, and advocate for Owen Sound at Grey County and higher levels of government.
What is the difference between a ward and a local area?
A geographic ward is an area assigned to one at-large Councillor for primary responsibility. A Local Area is a smaller community connection area of roughly 150 households where residents elect a nearby Local Representative through the neighbourhood association’s annual election process. Residents would be encouraged to choose a representative who lives in that Local Area, and the local election would naturally favour someone with direct knowledge of the community.
What would a Local Representative do?
A Local Representative would hold an elected office in a resident-governed neighbourhood association. The representative would invite household participation, convene the annual family-friendly local-area potluck or block party, listen to residents, communicate with the assigned Councillor for at least one hour each month, organize responses to local concerns, and report publicly on activities. Residents could volunteer, accept optional paid community tasks, or request City services for resulting projects. The association’s published compensation policy would cover elected duties at the living-wage standard, with public financial reporting.
Who makes which decisions?
Residents govern their neighbourhood association’s elections, representative mandate, compensation policy, and association rules. The City and Council govern municipal services, budgets, bylaws, staff, and statutory decisions. The assigned Councillor carries ward matters through Council, and City employees and qualified services deliver municipal work. The association’s proposed funding and coordination agreement would define the City’s supporting responsibilities while protecting the independence of resident elections.
Could Owen Sound adopt electoral wards later?
Yes. Closer to 2030, residents and Council could use the experience from geographic ward assignments to consider formal electoral wards through public consultation and the statutory ward-boundary process. Under that later model, residents in each ward would elect their own Ward Councillor.
How would this happen?
I would bring Council the proposed geographic assignments, neighbourhood association framework, and funding agreement. I would include funding in my proposed budget and publish the assumptions so residents can help shape it. I would use my organizational authority under section 284.6 of the Municipal Act, 2001 to establish the City’s supporting responsibilities and publish the programme’s costs and results.
Council would approve the programme and funding arrangements connecting the City with resident-governed associations. Residents would govern their association’s elections and representation. Geographic assignments would operate during the current at-large electoral system. Any future formal electoral wards would follow their separate statutory process.
Participate and serve
Residents can help shape the plan, prepare neighbourhood gatherings, serve as Local Representatives when association elections are established, support neighbours as helpers, and build future civic leadership.
Local representation can begin with one welcoming event. Neighbours can help with mapping, outreach, forms, meetings, research, shared stewardship, and neighbour-to-neighbour care according to the published programme rules.
Help Shape the Ward Plan
If you live in Owen Sound, Andrii wants to hear how ward and local representation should work. Which local needs are hardest to get addressed? What ward boundaries feel natural to you? What would make City Hall easier and kinder to deal with? Who in your local area already listens well, helps others, and could be a strong Local Representative or voice on Council?
Subscribe for Updates
Get campaign updates, neighbourhood news, and voting reminders.