A Lean, Accountable City Organization

Why City Hall’s Structure Needs Attention

Owen Sound’s 2023 Service Delivery Review documented organizational problems affecting employees, residents and the cost of delivering services. These included siloed divisions, unclear responsibilities, duplicated work, small management spans, underused technology, excessive administrative work and weak tracking of strategic priorities.

Documented problem	Evidence from the service review	Effect
Unclear ownership and departmental silos	Employees reported difficulty understanding other teams’ responsibilities and finding the correct person for an issue.	Work could be assigned according to availability instead of responsibility or priority.
Duplicated work	Staff reported performing some tasks twice because responsibilities were unclear.	Staff time is consumed without producing additional resident value.
Too many small management spans	Two HR managers each had one direct report. Finance managers had approximately three and 4.5 reports. Planning and building heads had two and three reports.	Management positions can become expensive coordination layers over very small teams.
Administrative workload and turnover	Staff described administrative tasks as overwhelming and contributing to turnover. Employees reported repeatedly hiring and training replacements, which hindered efficiency and effectiveness.	Recruitment, onboarding and training repeatedly consume money and experienced staff time. Vacancies, learning periods and lost institutional knowledge also reduce service capacity.
Underused technology and manual processes	The review identified outdated or underused systems, high paperwork and inconsistent processes.	Residents wait longer while employees repeat data entry, approvals and follow-up.
Weak measurement and follow-through	Strategic priorities were reported as difficult to track, with limited perceived follow-through.	Council and residents have difficulty determining who is accountable for results.

The documented conditions and recommended responses in this table are drawn from the Owen Sound 2023 Service Delivery Review. The review documents high turnover and retention problems but does not provide a numerical retention rate.

The review recommended consolidating management functions, reclassifying some management positions into specialist or coordinator roles, clarifying accountability and making better use of technology. Because Owen Sound still lacks a complete public organizational chart, the public has limited ability to verify which structural problems have been resolved since 2023.

From Four City Hall Layers to Three

Publicly available titles and departmental groupings indicate that many City Hall functions currently follow a four-layer pattern:

Current administrative pattern	Proposed three-layer pattern
1. City Manager	1. City Manager
2. Broad corporate or community director	2. Functional working head
3. Functional manager or statutory department head	3. Professional and administrative staff
4. Professional and administrative staff

Examples of the current pattern appear to include:

City Manager → Director of Corporate Services → IT Manager → IT staff
City Manager → Director of Community Services → Planning Manager → planners

Under the proposed structure, these become:

City Manager → Head of Digital and IT → IT staff
City Manager → Head of Planning and Development → planning staff

The broad umbrella-director layer would gradually be absorbed into the City Manager and functional-head roles. Functional heads would report directly to the City Manager, own their service standards and budgets, supervise meaningful teams and continue performing substantial professional work.

Statutory officers and regulated professionals would retain all authority and independence assigned through provincial law and professional standards.

Lean Process Improvement

What Lean process improvement means

Lean process improvement is a well-established method for making services simpler, faster and more reliable. It began in manufacturing and has since been applied in health care, logistics, construction and government.

A Lean review follows a service from the resident’s first request through to completion. Employees who understand the work identify unnecessary waiting, repeated data entry, excessive approvals, avoidable handoffs, errors and rework. The redesigned process is then measured to determine whether it reduced completion time, cost or errors while improving service.

For City Hall, this could mean processing information once, assigning one clear service owner, allowing routine decisions at the appropriate level and giving residents a way to track progress.

The purpose is better service flow, increased staff capacity, respect for employees’ practical knowledge and greater value for residents.

Supporting examples: AHRQ health-care Lean case studies and the US Government Accountability Office efficiency review.

Duties in a Three-Layer City Hall

Level	Minimum responsibility	Measurable accountability
Mayor and Council, governing level	Establish public priorities, policies, service expectations, financial direction and the approved organizational structure.	Public commitments, budget results and implementation progress
1. City Manager	Coordinate City Hall, supervise functional heads, resolve cross-functional issues, manage corporate risks and translate democratic direction into operational action.	Corporate priorities, budget control, cross-functional results and unresolved risks
2. Functional working heads	Lead a defined function, supervise its staff, control its budget and workflow, maintain legal compliance and improve service performance.	Service standards, processing times, unit costs, backlogs, quality and budget variance
3. Professional and administrative staff	Deliver the service, exercise professional judgement, complete administrative work and identify practical improvements.	Timeliness, accuracy, completed work, resident experience and professional standards

A senior employee may hold a deputy designation for signing authority, succession or statutory continuity without creating another permanent people-management layer. A fourth administrative layer would require a published operational or statutory justification.

Statutory officers and regulated professionals retain responsibilities assigned through provincial law and professional standards. Compensation for a functional head should reflect the actual team, budget, legal responsibility and complexity of the position rather than the title alone.

Three-Layer Models in Comparable Municipalities

Municipalities around Owen Sound’s size already use three layers in many City Hall functions.

Municipality	Relevant evidence
Brockville, population approximately 22,000	Uses a City Manager with direct functional department heads for areas including Finance and IT, Human Resources, the Clerk’s office and Development Services. Its complete internal chart is available by request, so individual teams may contain justified supervisory positions.
Cobourg, population approximately 20,500	Owen Sound’s service review documented direct functional heads for Corporate Services and Treasury, Human Resources, Planning and Development, Economic Development and Communications.
Pembroke, population approximately 14,000	Its public directory shows a three-layer pattern in functions such as planning: CAO, functional director and professional staff. Some finance responsibilities retain an additional deputy designation.

The evidence supports three layers as the normal City Hall structure while allowing a documented fourth layer where workload, team size, financial controls or statutory continuity genuinely require one.

How the Three-Layer Model Improves Services

Current problem	Three-layer response	Resident benefit
Unclear ownership	Every function has one publicly identified working head.	Residents and employees know who is responsible.
Small management spans	Management positions are consolidated and specialist work is restored where supervision forms only a small part of the job.	More staff capacity reaches actual service delivery.
Repeated handoffs	Professional staff work directly with the functional head.	Faster decisions and fewer delays.
Excessive administrative work	Each functional head is responsible for simplifying workflows and introducing appropriate local automation.	Shorter processing times and lower service costs.
Weak accountability	Every functional head receives published service standards, budgets and annual targets.	Residents can compare promises, costs and results.
City Manager overload	Functional heads own day-to-day services while the City Manager concentrates on coordination, major risks and organization-wide results.	Fewer operational matters accumulate at one position.
Turnover and repeated training	Clearer roles, more direct support, simpler workflows, appropriate automation and greater authority at the working level reduce avoidable frustration and administrative overload.	Experienced employees can remain productive longer, while less money and staff time are consumed repeatedly recruiting, onboarding and training replacements.

Retaining Experience and Reducing Repeated Training Costs

Employee turnover costs more than the salary of a vacant position. Recruitment requires advertising, screening, interviews and administration. New employees require orientation, technical training and supervision from experienced colleagues whose own work is slowed during the learning period. Frequent departures can also cause errors, rework, service delays and the loss of practical knowledge about City systems and local conditions.

A simpler three-layer structure is intended to improve retention by giving employees clearer responsibilities, fewer unnecessary handoffs, more direct access to the functional head, better tools and greater authority to complete routine work. Functional heads will also be responsible for identifying excessive administrative workloads and improving the processes that create them.

The City will measure whether the new structure is working by publishing annual results for:

employee turnover and first-year departures;
vacancies and average time required to fill positions;
recruitment, onboarding and training costs;
staff time devoted to training replacements;
overtime, temporary staffing and consultant costs associated with vacancies.

These results will show whether organizational simplification is retaining experience, reducing repeated training costs and improving service continuity. Organizational clarity should help, while compensation, workload, leadership and workplace culture will also influence whether experienced employees stay.

Clear Ownership and Measurable Targets

Every municipal service should have:

one clearly identified functional working head or other responsible owner;
a published service standard and current performance baseline;
annual improvement targets connected to its budget;
public results showing cost, timeliness, quality and resident experience.

Management targets should measure resident outcomes. Examples include permit-processing time, repair backlogs, response times, project completion, budget variances, avoidable rework and resident satisfaction.

The City Manager should focus on organization-wide coordination, functional-head accountability, major risks and cross-departmental results. Functional working heads should carry genuine responsibility for the services assigned to them. This prevents the City Manager position from becoming the default owner of every operational problem. The three-layer structure is a goal state to be refined as the complete staffing register and current reporting relationships are published.

Organizational Transparency

Residents will be able to see how City Hall is organized, who is responsible for each service, how many management layers exist and what those positions cost.

The City will publish and maintain a cohesive organizational chart and staffing register showing:

every approved position, department and service area;
the employee’s name, public contact information and approved salary band;
full-time, part-time, seasonal, contract, shared or vacant status;
reporting relationships between positions;
each manager’s direct reports and total number of employees overseen.

Archived versions will show how staffing, reporting relationships and management costs change over time. A supporting annual staffing report will show total staffing and employer costs by service, salary band, vacancies, overtime, consultants and contracted labour, employee turnover, first-year departures, time-to-fill, recruitment and training costs, and vacancy-related overtime, temporary staffing and consulting costs. Small-team results will be aggregated where required to protect employee privacy. Employees covered by Ontario’s Sunshine List will continue to have their exact salary and taxable benefits reported.

This information will connect each position’s responsibilities, reporting span, salary band and total employer cost, making it easier for residents to find the right person and see whether management compensation reflects actual responsibility.

Locally Grounded Management Compensation

Municipal management compensation should reflect actual responsibility, span of control, qualifications, budget authority, service results and the economic circumstances of the residents paying for it. The bands overlap so that compensation can progress continuously as responsibility increases.

Management level	Benchmark multiple	Approximate base-salary range
Supervisors and senior professionals	2.0–2.75×	$70,000–$95,000
Managers	2.75–3.5×	$95,000–$120,000
Directors and department heads	3.5–4.5×	$120,000–$155,000
City Manager	4.5–5.75×	$155,000–$195,000

The City Manager ceiling remains an absolute six-times-local-income base-salary ceiling. Using the approximately $34,000 local individual-income benchmark, the current ceiling is approximately $204,000. The intended recruitment area for a highly experienced private-sector City Manager candidate remains approximately $175,000–$195,000, within the upper portion of the City Manager band.

Pension contributions, payroll charges, benefits, allowances and other employer costs will be disclosed separately from base salary. The ceiling applies to base salary. Job titles alone will not create automatic salary entitlement; actual duties, decision-making authority, staff supervised, budgets controlled, technical requirements, service results and comparable responsibilities will be considered.

Private-Sector Recruitment Pool

The recruitment strategy will expand the candidate pool beyond incumbent Ontario city managers whose salaries have already risen within the municipal compensation system. Owen Sound will actively recruit experienced private-sector plant directors, manufacturing general managers, operations executives and multi-site leaders with demonstrated success managing 100–250 employees, subordinate managers, substantial budgets, regulated operations, customer service and Lean improvement.

The federal Job Bank reports that manufacturing managers in the Stratford–Bruce Peninsula region earn approximately $108,000 at the median and approximately $178,000 at the high end. Recent Ontario recruitment advertisements have offered approximately $120,000–$150,000 for plant managers and $135,000–$155,000 for manufacturing general managers.

Candidate’s current private-sector salary	Increase at $175,000	Increase at $185,000	Increase at $195,000
$140,000	$35,000, or 25%	$45,000, or 32%	$55,000, or 39%
$150,000	$25,000, or 17%	$35,000, or 23%	$45,000, or 30%
$165,000	$10,000, or 6%	$20,000, or 12%	$30,000, or 18%

Sources: Federal Job Bank, Stratford–Bruce Peninsula manufacturing-manager wages; Ontario plant-manager recruitment example; Ontario manufacturing general-manager recruitment example; and OMERS 2026 contribution rates.

Compared on base salary alone, a strong private-sector candidate earning approximately $140,000–$165,000 could receive an increase of approximately $10,000–$55,000, depending on experience and placement within the City’s range. At the proposed $185,000 midpoint, the likely increase would be approximately $20,000–$45,000, or 12–32%. The position would also include OMERS pension participation, with the City’s matching contribution approximately $21,400–$24,300 annually under 2026 contribution rates.

This creates a realistic recruitment path for experienced operational leaders ready to take on broader organization-wide responsibility while keeping base salary below the current City Manager salary.

Council sets policy and service priorities, the Mayor determines the overall organizational structure and proposes the budget, and the City Manager administers the organization and delivers results. Directors and managers remain responsible for the services assigned to them rather than sending every operational decision upward.

Transition, Savings, and Verification

Current employee salaries will remain unchanged. Employees whose salaries exceed an adopted range will be red-circled, meaning their base salary will remain fixed while the local-income benchmark and approved salary band catch up. New hires, promotions and replacement appointments will be made within the adopted ranges.

The transition will occur through turnover, vacancies, succession planning, streamlined management layers and future hiring. The savings approach assumes no restructuring layoffs and no severance costs arising from the compensation framework.

Current public records support the following narrow senior-position illustration, using base salary only:

Known positions	Current disclosed base salary	Revised target range	Potential base-salary saving
City Manager	Approximately $224,784	$175,000–$195,000	Approximately $30,000–$50,000
Three principal directors	Approximately $493,500 combined	$360,000–$465,000 combined	Approximately $28,500–$133,500
Combined known positions	Approximately $718,284	$535,000–$660,000	Approximately $58,000–$183,000

This illustration covers only the City Manager and three principal directors identified in the available records. A complete position-by-position estimate across the management structure remains pending verification against the published staffing register. Base-salary savings will be separated from pension, payroll, benefit, allowance and other employer-cost savings.

Police and library management are excluded because they answer to separate boards. Front-line and unionized employees are excluded from this management-compensation estimate. Any positions later combined, eliminated through attrition or converted to part-time work will be evaluated and reported separately.

Verified Savings Ledger

Actual savings will be published through the Verified Savings Ledger. For each implemented change, it will report:

the former base salary and complete employer cost;
the replacement base salary and complete employer cost;
transition timing and any one-time implementation cost;
pension, payroll, benefit and other employer-cost effects;
service effects and measurable results;
the resulting effect on the tax levy or future tax pressure.

Potential savings will be treated as verified only after the service and financial results are documented.

Published Management Goals

At the beginning of each year, the City will publish clear performance goals for every municipal manager. At the end of the year, it will publish the original goals, measurable targets, progress and final results, explanations for incomplete work, and priorities carried into the following year. Each goal will connect to the relevant budget, service, project, Council decision or strategic priority where practical.

Management goals will include measurable targets for improving efficiency, controlling staffing costs, simplifying management structures and strengthening service delivery. Results will focus on resident outcomes such as processing time, backlogs, response times, project completion, budget variance, avoidable rework, quality and resident satisfaction.

Sources and Method

Private-sector comparisons are approximate reference ranges. The narrow savings illustration uses disclosed City Manager and principal-director salaries; the complete management estimate requires a verified position-by-position staffing register.