Owen Sound auto Meeting Transcript — April 21, 2026

00:00:16 Speaker 01: Okay.

00:00:17 Speaker 01: Good evening, everyone.

00:00:18 Speaker 01: It is April the twenty-first, twenty twenty-six.

00:00:21 Speaker 01: It is five thirty p.m. and I will call the Community Services Committee to order.

00:00:26 Speaker 01: At number two, we have called for additional business.

00:00:35 Speaker 01: Does anyone have any additional business for this evening?

00:00:39 Speaker 01: Seeing none.

00:00:41 Speaker 01: Declarations of interest.

00:00:43 Speaker 01: Does anyone have anything to declare?

00:00:48 Speaker 01: You can always declare it if something does present itself.

00:00:54 Speaker 01: At number four, we have confirmation of minutes.

00:01:04 Speaker 01: At four a, the minutes of the Community Services Committee meeting held on March eighteen, two thousand and twenty-six, and four b,

00:01:21 Speaker 01: the minutes of the closed session of the Community Services Committee meeting held on March eighteen, two thousand and twenty-six.

00:01:36 Speaker 01: Both were presented and adopted at the last council meeting, so I just need someone to move those minutes.

00:01:48 Speaker 01: And Lance is moving the minutes.

00:01:53 Speaker 01: So if there's no discussion, I will call the question.

00:01:57 Speaker 01: All in favor, and that carries.

00:02:02 Speaker 01: So at number five this evening, we have deputations and presentations.

00:02:18 Speaker 02: At five a, we have a presentation from Tim Lanthier, Grey Sable Conservation CEO, regarding Bill ninety-seven and proposed changes to the conservation authorities act.

00:02:34 Speaker 02: So, welcome, Tim.

00:02:35 Speaker 02: Thank you, Madam Chair.

00:02:37 Speaker 02: Thank you, Committee.

00:02:39 Speaker 02: It's it's great to be here again.

00:02:47 Speaker 02: Unfortunately, not the thing I'd love to be talking to you about, but here we are.

00:03:04 Speaker 02: So, I prepared this to be pretty high level to go through some of the changes that are happening to the conservation authorities and changes to the Conservation Authorities Act that are allowing that to happen.

00:03:28 Speaker 02: As we go through the presentation, though, recognizing that there are several members on the committee that are not members of council,

00:03:44 Speaker 02: I'll give a little bit of background too on what conservation authorities look like today, so you can better understand what these changes mean.

00:03:55 Speaker 02: So, very high level.

00:04:12 Speaker 02: On March 26, the province of Ontario, the government introduced the new budget bill, Bill 97, and within this bill is a section that includes the changes to the Conservation Authorities Act.

00:04:32 Speaker 02: These changes do tend to come through budget bills, which is not, from our perspective, not the best mechanism because it doesn't provide the opportunity for comment and change.

00:04:55 Speaker 02: And so, what we are seeing is that the bill is stalled right now, or was the last time I checked, because it's been deferred to standing committee.

00:05:12 Speaker 02: But following going to standing committee, it will receive third reading and royal assent, and then be law.

00:05:30 Speaker 02: Some of the things that are included in changes to the Conservation Authorities Act, and I'll look at these a little more closely as we go along.

00:05:51 Speaker 02: But are the statutory amalgamation, so the merging of Ontario's thirty-six conservation authorities into nine, the transition committees and project executive that will be set up to guide that process, prohibitions during the transition period,

00:06:09 Speaker 02: governance of the regional CAs, the new conservation authorities, and and some other amendments.

00:06:28 Speaker 02: So the timeline to date, starting from the fall when this all became known to everybody, is well starting a little bit earlier in the spring of last year.

00:06:49 Speaker 02: The government, when they released their budget, included a statement that they were going to make conservation or common sense changes, essentially to conservation authorities, and they were silent after that.

00:07:08 Speaker 02: So, we spent six months waiting for the other shoe to drop, as it were.

00:07:17 Speaker 02: In the fall, October thirty-first, there was an announcement from the province that they were proposing to merge Ontario's thirty-six conservation authorities into seven conservation authorities,

00:07:35 Speaker 02: and they were announcing a new agency that would sit between the conservation authorities and the provincial government, called the Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency.

00:08:03 Speaker 02: On November sixth, they introduced legislation that made that happen to create that agency, and on November seventh, they opened up a public commenting period for the changes, the proposed consolidation to the Conservation Authorities Act.

00:08:22 Speaker 02: What I will say about that is they received, my understanding is about fourteen thousand comments through the ERO.

00:08:34 Speaker 02: So if you're familiar at all with the ERO process, you'll know that normal commenting is in the hundreds.

00:08:44 Speaker 02: The Greenbelt, I think, was in the three to four thousand range.

00:08:52 Speaker 02: So fourteen thousand is a lot of comments.

00:09:06 Speaker 02: Only about four thousand eight hundred of these comments are publicly available on the province's website, and a third party has reviewed those.

00:09:21 Speaker 02: And ninety-seven and a half percent of those objected to this consolidation, yet here we are.

00:09:32 Speaker 02: In through the fall, the province consulted on these changes.

00:09:43 Speaker 02: On March tenth, they made their decision on all the comments that they received, and their decision was: we're not going with seven anymore.

00:10:05 Speaker 02: Now we're going with nine, and what that means is Thunder Bay is no longer grouped in with our region, and Lake Erie is.

00:10:23 Speaker 02: And Lake Erie has been split into two regions, and then on on March twenty-sixth, as I mentioned, the budget bill was introduced, which provides the legislation that would make this change happen.

00:10:40 Speaker 02: So the statutory amalgamation is when we come to the map that shows the conservation authorities.

00:10:47 Speaker 02: I'll provide a bit of a background on that.

00:10:56 Speaker 02: But essentially, that statutory amalgamation that turns us into nine large regional conservation authorities would happen on February first of twenty twenty-seven.

00:11:21 Speaker 02: Of 2027, in the period between now-ish and then, transition committees will be set up, and those will consist of the CAOs from each existing conservation authority, plus a board member from each existing conservation authority,

00:11:36 Speaker 02: and a project executive that's appointed by the province.

00:11:52 Speaker 02: Each of those transition committees will work through the process of developing a plan to get us from where we are today to what we will look like when we're consolidated.

00:12:09 Speaker 02: That's not enough time to actually consolidate.

00:12:15 Speaker 02: So it's my understanding, sort of speculatively, that over the next two-year period, that transformation period will happen.

00:12:30 Speaker 02: So systems will run in parallel and slowly be merged together over the following two-year period.

00:12:43 Speaker 02: For our area, I'll show you on a map in a second.

00:12:50 Speaker 02: But it would merge six conservation authorities.

00:12:57 Speaker 02: Grey Sable being one.

00:12:59 Speaker 02: Grey Sable is currently about thirty-two hundred square kilometers.

00:13:08 Speaker 02: It takes about two hours to drive corner to corner in our watershed.

00:13:21 Speaker 02: The new regional Lake Huron Regional Conservation Authority that we and Owen Sound would be part of is going to be twenty-two thousand zero square kilometers.

00:13:35 Speaker 02: So size of a small Central American country, four times the size of PEI.

00:13:41 Speaker 02: So large, very very large.

00:13:45 Speaker 02: So this is what conservation authorities look like today.

00:13:54 Speaker 02: You'll notice that they're predominantly located in southern Ontario, stretching from Windsor.

00:14:07 Speaker 02: Stretching from Essex Windsor all the way out to Ottawa, there are a few in the north in key areas.

00:14:22 Speaker 02: Largely, this is a couple of reasons: one, population density in the south is much much greater than in the north.

00:14:37 Speaker 02: Two, there's many unorganized municipalities in the north that would lead to difficulty in establishing conservation authorities.

00:14:47 Speaker 02: And three, there's a lot of crown land in the north that negates the need for a conservation authority.

00:15:10 Speaker 02: But essentially, the way conservation authorities were formed is municipalities, neighboring municipalities, came together because they identified a need to correct land use practices that were not conducive to a healthy environment and healthy communities,

00:15:28 Speaker 02: and ultimately, further down the road, also to deal with flooding.

00:15:38 Speaker 02: And so, the Conservation Authorities Act provided the tool to allow municipalities to do that.

00:15:56 Speaker 02: But it was municipalities that were the drivers of this change and the creators of the conservation authorities, and this happened throughout the 1940s and 1950s for the most part.

00:16:08 Speaker 02: So Grey Sable used to be North Grey region and Sable Valley.

00:16:22 Speaker 01: From in 1958 to 1959, we merged or amalgamated in 1985, and the reason for that amalgamation is it was the same staff at both organizations with two different boards, so it just made sense.

00:16:39 Speaker 03: It wasn't.

00:16:45 Speaker 03: It was only an amalgamation on paper.

00:16:52 Speaker 02: So this is what we look like today.

00:16:57 Speaker 02: There are 36 conservation authorities throughout the province of Ontario.

00:17:10 Speaker 02: You can see Grey-Sable there in the area around Owen Sound, at the base of Owen Sound, covering about half of the southern portion of Georgian Bay and a bit of Lake Huron.

00:17:27 Speaker 02: In the new iteration, the green area will be the Lake Huron Regional Conservation Authority.

00:17:48 Speaker 03: So it includes the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority, extending into the city of Cornwall at the lakes, Nottawasaga Valley, Grey-Sable, and then down the lake here on the shoreline, including Saugeen Valley, Manitoulin Valley,

00:18:05 Speaker 03: and Sable Bayfield—a massive area.

00:18:17 Speaker 02: You're probably looking at five or six hours to drive from one side to the other, and including communities that are very much like Grey County and Bruce County in terms of being rural,

00:18:33 Speaker 02: but also including communities like York Region, the City of Barrie, the City of Newmarket—huge, huge urban municipalities.

00:18:46 Speaker 03: So I'll speed through some of this a little bit because I do recognize time is ticking here.

00:19:02 Speaker 02: But in terms of what happens when we amalgamate, everything that exists in the current conservation authorities will continue to exist in the new conservation authority.

00:19:22 Speaker 02: So all agreements that we have in place, all liabilities, debt, reserves, permit applications, our jurisdictions, MOUs, everything that we currently have, just makes that transition with us,

00:19:39 Speaker 02: so none of that will be lost at the outset.

00:19:44 Speaker 02: Big, big changes to governance, though.

00:19:52 Speaker 02: So what we're going to see is right now, Grey's Harbour for its three hundred and twenty square kilometres has eight member municipalities represented by eleven board members.

00:20:08 Speaker 04: In the new iteration, there will be we will no longer be represented by lower tier municipalities.

00:20:21 Speaker 04: So Owen Sound will no longer be a participating municipality of the Conservation Authority.

00:20:29 Speaker 04: Instead, the upper tiers and single tier.

00:20:34 Speaker 04: will be so.

00:20:41 Speaker 04: Grey County and Bruce County will be the representatives for what is now Grey-Sable.

00:20:49 Speaker 04: There are about fifteen upper tier and single tier municipalities within the Lake Huron Regional Conservation Authority.

00:21:03 Speaker 02: The province has said they want boards of directors to be fifteen to twenty members.

00:21:11 Speaker 02: So that means Grey County gets one member, Bruce County gets one member.

00:21:16 Speaker 02: Most of them get one member.

00:21:25 Speaker 02: We would expect that maybe York Region might get three, City of Barrie might get two, things like that.

00:21:38 Speaker 02: We don't know what that looks like for sure yet, but that's the expectation.

00:21:53 Speaker 02: So representation still by population, but obviously large urban areas that are growing quickly have larger populations, and we'll get more representation on that board.

00:22:05 Speaker 02: That new governance structure will take place February first.

00:22:14 Speaker 02: Apportionment will still be—it's our understanding—modified current value assessment, so still based on tax base and distributed out accordingly, except in year one.

00:22:35 Speaker 02: In year one, we've been instructed to create our 2027 budgets and to levy that to our lower tier municipalities, even though the governance structure starting February first will be the upper tier municipalities.

00:22:54 Speaker 02: I'm going to be honest; I'm not looking forward to those conversations with your councils for obvious reasons.

00:23:05 Speaker 04: So the transition plans: there will be a transition committee set up.

00:23:12 Speaker 04: I've explained what that will look like.

00:23:16 Speaker 04: We will create transition plans to move us into the next phase.

00:23:24 Speaker 04: Ontario Provincial Conservation Authority, agency rather, will approve these plans or require changes.

00:23:33 Speaker 04: The minister is expected to issue temporary guardrails, so these may be things like don't sell any properties, don't buy any properties.

00:23:47 Speaker 04: We don't know what those will look like yet, but those types of things to make the amalgamation a little bit cleaner.

00:24:04 Speaker 04: Following the amalgamation, the project executive that's appointed by OPCA, will become the CAO of the regional conservation authority for a period of up to two years to go through that transition period.

00:24:18 Speaker 05: After that, the board will set their own CAO.

00:24:31 Speaker 05: So, what we can expect moving forward is, like I said, the upper tiers, fifteen members expected, or probably twenty for our board, given the size of the area that we cover.

00:24:52 Speaker 02: The transition process and future regulations will define the details, and we are yet to see those.

00:25:03 Speaker 02: And we've been told by the province that we should expect the regulations in the fall.

00:25:29 Speaker 06: So timelines are just ticking along, and for us, it's really unfortunate because we would, if this is the direction that things are going, we would like to take action and get things going,

00:25:44 Speaker 02: but we don't have the information that we need.

00:25:50 Speaker 02: Program.

00:25:55 Speaker 02: We need programs and land management should remain the same.

00:26:03 Speaker 02: We've been told they will, and they're expected to be.

00:26:14 Speaker 02: What that looks like further down the road, when it's a regional body making these decisions, we can't say.

00:26:29 Speaker 01: And then each RCA, a regional conservation authority, is to establish one or more watershed councils.

00:26:41 Speaker 01: No detail has been provided on this at this point.

00:26:56 Speaker 01: The intent is to provide some sort of local input to the broader board, but we don't know what that looks like at this time.

00:27:07 Speaker 07: So the timelines moving forward is Bill 97 will eventually receive royal assent.

00:27:15 Speaker 07: The minister will issue those directions to set the guardrails.

00:27:22 Speaker 07: OPCA will ask us for information, which we will send to them.

00:27:27 Speaker 07: They'll appoint a project executive.

00:27:32 Speaker 07: The transition committees will be set up.

00:27:37 Speaker 07: We'll do the work of developing the transition plans.

00:27:43 Speaker 07: We'll approve the budget.

00:27:52 Speaker 07: So for Grey-Sable, we expect to approve our budget by September because the municipal election is an impediment to us approving it later than that.

00:28:04 Speaker 07: So we would be before City Council sometime in the summer.

00:28:13 Speaker 07: And then on before February first, the counties will have to appoint their members.

00:28:21 Speaker 07: And effective February first, they will take effect as the new board of directors.

00:28:28 Speaker 07: So some things to note is that there.

00:28:32 Speaker 07: There's good and there's bad, or there's opportunities and there's challenges.

00:28:39 Speaker 07: I think is a better way to think about it.

00:28:55 Speaker 07: There's opportunities in the fact that a larger organization like this provides more opportunity to recruit and maintain high quality staff because they can see a better career trajectory for themselves.

00:29:15 Speaker 07: So that's a positive.

00:29:27 Speaker 07: There's the positive opportunity in that expertise may be better spread across the province, and funding may be able to be better distributed.

00:29:41 Speaker 07: The challenges are that funding may not be better distributed, and it may cost more.

00:29:54 Speaker 07: Municipalities will still pick up the tab, but their representation is going to be dramatically reduced.

00:30:16 Speaker 07: And in an area like rural Ontario, like we live in, I would say that our neighbors, the Long Lake Huron shoreline, are similar to Grey-Sable in a lot of ways.

00:30:42 Speaker 07: Largely rural, with some small urban centers like we have, but as we move eastward towards Lake Simcoe, that changes dramatically, and we're going from, you know, maybe a hundred thousand people in our area, to,

00:31:01 Speaker 07: you know, individual municipalities with hundreds of thousands of people, and that's not a good or a bad thing.

00:31:18 Speaker 07: It's just the needs of those areas are very different than the needs of the communities here, and that could be a challenge in terms of navigating that.

00:31:31 Speaker 07: So that's very quick, very high level of the changes.

00:31:37 Speaker 07: But through you, Madam Chair, I'd welcome any questions.

00:31:48 Speaker 07: I don't, I have some more questions and answers in a lot of this, but I can, I can certainly help.

00:32:01 Speaker 07: Thank you for that presentation, and that's what I was going to say.

00:32:13 Speaker 07: I'm sure many of us have questions, but I, I highly doubt that you have the answers at this point.

00:32:22 Speaker 07: It'll be a learning process.

00:32:25 Speaker 07: Marian, go ahead.

00:32:29 Speaker 07: Thank you, and thanks for your presentation, Tim.

00:32:33 Speaker 07: How will the levy look after transition?

00:32:48 Speaker 07: Is it this all municipalities that share the levy, the apportionment, or is it Grey County that apportions?

00:32:59 Speaker 07: If you can answer that one first.

00:33:04 Speaker 07: Yeah.

00:33:09 Speaker 07: So the levy would be apportioned to the upper tier municipalities.

00:33:23 Speaker 07: The challenge that we're going to be talking to our upper tiers about is how do you, how does that translate back down to the lower tiers?

00:33:52 Speaker 07: So right now the lower tiers are earmarking X amount of dollars to go to the conservation authorities every year, and suddenly they don't have to pay that, you know, directly to the conservation authorities anymore.

00:34:16 Speaker 07: Are they still earmarking it to give it to the counties to give it to the conservation authorities, or what does that look like?

00:34:40 Speaker 07: Because the relationship between how the counties and the municipalities operate from a budget perspective is different than the relationship between how conservation authorities and municipalities operate.

00:35:03 Speaker 07: So, short answer is, I think it will still find its way to the lower tiers, but through the upper tiers, who will be the ones that are apportioned?

00:35:14 Speaker 07: Okay.

00:35:20 Speaker 07: My next question is: People who have so-called given their land to conservation authorities.

00:35:37 Speaker 07: I know there are agreements, but what if they don't agree with the changes that are taking place and they want the land back?

00:35:49 Speaker 07: Is that a possibility?

00:35:52 Speaker 07: No. It's a short answer.

00:36:00 Speaker 07: I mean, it's like if, because oftentimes sometimes people give their land to conservation.

00:36:18 Speaker 07: Very oftentimes we buy the land, and so just like if you bought your house off somebody else, they couldn't get it back if they didn't like how you renovated it.

00:36:33 Speaker 07: But that's sort of a coarse way of thinking about it.

00:36:42 Speaker 07: More realistically, right now we're not expecting change to that.

00:36:50 Speaker 07: So the idea is that all of those lands would continue to be protected.

00:36:57 Speaker 07: It's still a separate entity.

00:37:02 Speaker 07: It's just a much larger separate entity.

00:37:16 Speaker 07: And I think the most important thing we can do as local communities is make sure that that larger entity continues to be informed of the value of these areas locally,

00:37:30 Speaker 07: so that they're not seen as surplus ever.

00:37:39 Speaker 07: And just a last one: Do you anticipate changing any of your programs that you offer as GSEA?

00:37:47 Speaker 07: So that's an excellent question, and that's one I don't have an answer to.

00:37:59 Speaker 07: So what we do know is that in the short term, we don't expect those changes.

00:38:14 Speaker 07: In the long term, certain of our programs have been identified as mandatory.

00:38:28 Speaker 07: So, natural hazard management, land management, drinking water source protection, and some of the water quality work that we do.

00:38:43 Speaker 07: Other programs that are really important to the community are not considered mandatory programs.

00:38:48 Speaker 07: So, environmental education, environmental stewardship, and tree planting.

00:39:02 Speaker 07: Those types of programs are at risk long term because right now we had to strike agreements with eight separate municipalities to keep that going.

00:39:23 Speaker 07: When we have you know seventy or eighty municipalities, those discussions become it gets a lot harder to get everybody on the same page.

00:39:37 Speaker 07: And the other six or the other five, I guess, conservation authorities also have their own programs.

00:39:57 Speaker 07: So one of the things that we're going to have to figure out in the early stages is how do we make sure that all of that community value continues.

00:40:13 Speaker 07: But in the long term, I don't have answers.

00:40:18 Speaker 07: Travis, go ahead.

00:40:22 Speaker 07: Thank you, Madam Chair.

00:40:36 Speaker 07: And again, you know, it's just a new week or a new month of the province overextending and taking complete control and reducing the local input provided by municipalities.

00:40:52 Speaker 07: You know, I don't think that's what anyone voted for the conservative government.

00:41:01 Speaker 07: And again, they're clearly making it clear that they don't give.

00:41:04 Speaker 07: They don't.

00:41:08 Speaker 07: They aren't taking in the perspectives of anyone in this province.

00:41:13 Speaker 07: It's a sad state.

00:41:16 Speaker 07: What we're dealing with.

00:41:21 Speaker 07: I had a question, but regarding the funding models.

00:41:25 Speaker 07: But Marian asked that one.

00:41:27 Speaker 07: Local office.

00:41:28 Speaker 07: What's what?

00:41:41 Speaker 07: Do we have an idea if we're going to maintain our local office, local presence for when residents need to do permits, that sort of thing?

00:42:01 Speaker 07: What's has the expansion been placed on hold for the time being until you have a better direction?

00:42:11 Speaker 07: Yeah.

00:42:14 Speaker 07: How are you handling those pieces?

00:42:17 Speaker 07: So I'll answer those in reverse.

00:42:23 Speaker 07: So the renovation is not on hold.

00:42:28 Speaker 07: In fact, it's almost done.

00:42:32 Speaker 07: So yeah.

00:42:39 Speaker 07: So we'll be moving back in there in six weeks, and that's really exciting.

00:42:52 Speaker 07: In terms of will these local offices remain?

00:43:01 Speaker 07: Again, I can't say for sure, but I'd be shocked if they don't.

00:43:14 Speaker 07: And the reason for that is, again, this area is twenty-two thousand square kilometers in size.

00:43:34 Speaker 01: The Owen Sound office, our office, Georgian Bluffs, technically, but in the Owen Sound area, is very, very central to this region, and it's at least an hour to the next closest office,

00:43:52 Speaker 08: whether it's Ottawa-Saginaw Valley or Saginaw Valley, driving.

00:44:03 Speaker 08: So it's not realistic to not have, even if they're considered field offices, to not have those offices across the jurisdiction.

00:44:16 Speaker 07: In terms of if they decided to not have those, again.

00:44:31 Speaker 08: The Owen Sound office is very central, so it does bode well to be that type of office.

00:44:52 Speaker 08: But as we go through the transition process, we'll be making sure that those things are kept because it's really important to us that staff are maintained, that local expertise,

00:45:14 Speaker 07: which is the backbone of conservation authorities and the service that we provide to the community, is maintained, and that those offices that house those staff are maintained.

00:45:26 Speaker 07: Both so that we're not wasting time driving hours to get to somewhere.

00:45:47 Speaker 08: Hours to get to somewhere, from a staff perspective, but also so that the person who lives in Wyarton isn't driving to Formoso or Utopia; they're driving to Owen Sound.

00:46:08 Speaker 08: They're driving twenty minutes instead of you know an hour and a half.

00:46:30 Speaker 09: The other big thing for me too, though, is that Ingles Falls is our flagship property, and it sits on seven hundred acres of which that office also sits on.

00:46:42 Speaker 09: So I think that bodes very well too.

00:46:49 Speaker 09: So I think the office will remain.

00:46:59 Speaker 09: Is the short answer.

00:47:06 Speaker 09: But again, as things move further along, I have no long-term answers.

00:47:13 Speaker 09: Thank you, Madam Chair.

00:47:19 Speaker 09: And I appreciate those comments, and I would 100% agree with you.

00:47:27 Speaker 09: Unfortunately, I don't think common sense is working at the provincial level.

00:47:35 Speaker 09: So, we'll guess we'll see what happens on that front.

00:47:49 Speaker 09: Because my biggest worry is they try to pull a Lynn or something like that, where they're just going to say, "Hey, we're going to just jam this somewhere" three hours away,

00:48:07 Speaker 06: and that works for us as the provincial government.

00:48:15 Speaker 06: So I'm glad to hear that you know you're going to be on the forefront and pushing those.

00:48:29 Speaker 07: How important that is to maintain that office for both staff and the expertise that's in our community.

00:48:40 Speaker 07: We've had a great relationship with Grey-Sulphur Conservation Area over the years.

00:48:54 Speaker 07: You've done a lot of things for the municipality, helped with the multiple changes in the Planning Act that occurred throughout this process until we got to this point.

00:49:21 Speaker 08: You know, I can only imagine how your workflows have been going over the handful of years of consistently changing policy.

00:49:31 Speaker 08: So, on behalf of the City of Owen Sound, we know thank you for the work that you've done.

00:49:48 Speaker 08: We appreciate the Great Seal of Conservation and the office that you do, and you know, thank you for everything you've done.

00:49:58 Speaker 08: Go ahead, Allie.

00:50:02 Speaker 08: Thank you so much.

00:50:08 Speaker 08: That was a great overview of what is going on.

00:50:29 Speaker 01: I feel like you get a lot from headlines, and this was great summarizing what is actually going on in the timeline.

00:50:40 Speaker 01: It seems really clear.

00:50:44 Speaker 01: It's less bang for our buck and less representation, which is really disappointing.

00:50:51 Speaker 01: I had a technical question about how the board will work.

00:50:57 Speaker 01: You mentioned that it's the upper tier.

00:51:03 Speaker 01: Is that the county warden that will then sit on the board?

00:51:11 Speaker 01: And if so, I'm curious: are they involved right now, or is this new involvement for them in this board?

00:51:19 Speaker 01: So the counties or the upper tiers and single tiers will appoint their members.

00:51:26 Speaker 01: So whether they're involved will depend on the member.

00:51:32 Speaker 07: So currently, several of our board members are mayors or deputy mayors.

00:51:39 Speaker 07: So they would currently sit on the county.

00:51:52 Speaker 07: So it is possible that we have members that come on that already have experience with CAs, and I would probably be encouraging them to go that route.

00:52:04 Speaker 07: But obviously, it'll come down to those nominations and appointments.

00:52:09 Speaker 07: Anyone further?

00:52:11 Speaker 07: Go ahead, Royden.

00:52:16 Speaker 07: Yes, thank you again for a very clear and informative presentation.

00:52:28 Speaker 03: It's clear, just with our region being grouped together with more the urban regions, we're probably going to face some challenges.

00:52:41 Speaker 07: Did they provide much rationale on why they wanted to merge?

00:52:47 Speaker 07: You know, our region with the regions that we've been paired with.

00:52:56 Speaker 03: At the risk of sounding crass, they haven't provided any rationale for anything at all.

00:53:16 Speaker 07: But I would suspect that it has to do with the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority being a larger urban CA and having more expertise on their staff and being able to share that expertise across

00:53:31 Speaker 07: a broader range of conservation authorities.

00:53:41 Speaker 07: So, because smaller rural CAs don't have the same challenges as large urban CAs, the level of expertise needed is different on a day-to-day.

00:53:55 Speaker 07: But so I suspect it's to give access to that.

00:54:02 Speaker 07: Okay.

00:54:08 Speaker 07: Anything further from anyone?

00:54:09 Speaker 07: See none.

00:54:16 Speaker 07: Thank you very much, Tim, for coming and giving that presentation.

00:54:47 Speaker 10: A lot of good information, and we look forward to seeing how this all pans out.

00:54:56 Speaker 10: So at five.

00:55:08 Speaker 10: So at 5B this evening we have a presentation from Miriam Fairs from the Owen Sound Tourism Development Fund.

00:55:23 Speaker 10: She's the facilitator, and I see Tiffany James here in support from the Owen Sound Chamber.

00:55:34 Speaker 10: So welcome, Miriam.

00:55:36 Speaker 10: Thank you.

00:55:43 Speaker 10: All right, let me get situated here and make sure this clicker works.

00:55:50 Speaker 10: There we go.

00:55:51 Speaker 10: Lovely.

00:55:56 Speaker 10: This is my first time here in this building.

00:56:03 Speaker 10: For those that don't know me, my name is Miriam.

00:56:22 Speaker 10: So it's lovely to be here this evening and talk further about the Owen Sound Tourism Development Fund, and also introduce myself because the last time it was our chair of our committee,

00:56:40 Speaker 10: and I was not hired yet.

00:56:45 Speaker 10: So here we are.

00:56:53 Speaker 10: We are going to go through strategic objectives in a very overview because this is what's driving the fund.

00:57:13 Speaker 10: We're going to talk about the funding streams that I created for the fund for people to be able to apply for, and that is the divvy.

00:57:31 Speaker 10: The money is divvy.

00:57:41 Speaker 10: The money is divvied up into those six streams, and that is how we decided to move forward of allotting those dollars.

00:57:58 Speaker 10: We're going to talk about funding overview from a comparison and where the money is projected to go in two thousand and twenty-six.

00:58:13 Speaker 10: And I'm going to give you a high level of the award notifications.

00:58:26 Speaker 10: We did a fall and spring cycle, and March twenty-third just wrapped up our second one.

00:58:41 Speaker 10: So we had eight organizations receive funds, and then the future of Owen Sound Tourism Development Fund.

00:58:53 Speaker 10: So, I was told that you guys are all familiar with the strategic goals of the action plan.

00:59:11 Speaker 10: But essentially, these strategic goals that you see here on the screen, these are the pillars of how I created the scoring criteria.

00:59:34 Speaker 10: This is how we came up with how people were going to submit an application underneath the six funding streams, which I'll go through those six funding streams in just a moment.

01:00:01 Speaker 10: And this is how we decided on how are we if we have more people that are asking for more money than we actually have, how are we going to divvy up that money?

01:00:25 Speaker 10: So these pillars of attracting more tourists and growing tourism-related spending, our main objective is getting heads and beds.

01:00:38 Speaker 10: This is how the municipal accommodation tax will continuously grow.

01:00:55 Speaker 10: The more tourism we have, the more people staying in accommodations here in the city of Owen Sound, supporting those investments in the tourism industry and supporting the development of the demand generators, as mentioned,

01:01:19 Speaker 10: and supporting the investments in tourism infrastructure and improvement in the visitor amenities, and of course, the end goal is to empower champions to continue to drive this and create sustainable tourism.

01:01:33 Speaker 10: So I'm going to go through the six streams that we've created, and these are the funding streams.

01:01:46 Speaker 10: So if you haven't already visited OSTDF, which is short for a mouthful of Owen Sound Tourism Development Fund.

01:02:05 Speaker 10: You can look at this information on the website underneath the funding streams and the criteria and the eligibility is also listed very clearly there.

01:02:19 Speaker 10: So essentially, just plugged and played with this information and put it here to give you kind of a higher level.

01:02:32 Speaker 10: So our first funding stream is major attraction.

01:02:43 Speaker 10: This is those large scale or high impact tourism offerings that will draw out of town visitors.

01:02:55 Speaker 10: Think about visitor center upgrades.

01:03:02 Speaker 10: Think about accessible docks or platforms or something that is big and bold.

01:03:25 Speaker 10: The max funding for this specific stream is thirty thousand dollars, and we are encouraging people that apply for this stream to match twenty-five percent of the funds that they are asking for in their application.

01:03:44 Speaker 10: In order to kind of meet some eligibility requirements.

01:03:55 Speaker 10: A hundred percent of this fund, when somebody receives funds from this stream, it's going straight to capital expenses.

01:04:09 Speaker 10: You'll notice as we move through, there's some that is specific to the festival or event, and then there's some that's for marketing and promotion.

01:04:25 Speaker 10: This one's going straight to capital expense, and the project term is medium or long term.

01:04:34 Speaker 10: Number two, we have festival and events, which is our number one.

01:04:44 Speaker 10: This is what most people right now currently are applying for.

01:04:56 Speaker 10: You'll notice when I go through all of the award recipients of the funds from fall and spring, majority of them fell underneath cultural, recreational, or seasonal festivals.

01:05:11 Speaker 10: These are the events that drive visitation and elevate Owen Sound's profile as a vibrant destination, and it's kind of self-explanatory.

01:05:34 Speaker 10: So, festivals and events, anything that's related to an experience, an outdoor event, bike race, paddling festival, and so on and so forth.

01:05:48 Speaker 10: The maximum funding for this specific stream I'm short, so I'm going to move this down a little bit.

01:06:06 Speaker 10: The maximum funding for this is twenty thousand dollars.

01:06:19 Speaker 10: And although that there is no match indicated on the eligibility and the funding details here,

01:06:37 Speaker 10: we are encouraging obviously people to not just come and ask for money and not put anything into their festival and event.

01:06:52 Speaker 10: The use of these funds is seventy percent of the funds allocated to this funding stream for success.

01:07:10 Speaker 10: Funding stream for successful applicants will go to programming, and the other thirty percent can be used for marketing and/or promotion.

01:07:20 Speaker 10: This project term is short or medium term.

01:07:26 Speaker 10: New experience, which is our third, our second big one.

01:07:38 Speaker 10: Sorry, no third major attraction, festival and events, and new experiences.

01:07:48 Speaker 10: So this is development of new tourism products, programs, or services.

01:07:55 Speaker 10: This doesn't mean new as a new event or a new festival.

01:08:06 Speaker 10: It means a new experience within an existing project.

01:08:16 Speaker 10: For example, if the Salmon Derby came forward, I'm going to use the example of their fishing pond.

01:08:28 Speaker 10: They had come forward for other things, and then now this year they were putting a fishing pond in.

01:08:39 Speaker 10: That would be a new experience within their festival or their event.

01:08:48 Speaker 10: Other examples could be any guided experience, any specific niche.

01:08:53 Speaker 10: So, for example, glamping.

01:09:06 Speaker 10: If you were hosting yoga or something that was in addition to at a glamping facility or a campground, funding details for this specific one is thirty thousand dollars.

01:09:23 Speaker 10: We are encouraging applications to meet a match of twenty-five percent for business expansions.

01:09:34 Speaker 10: This is to create that sustainable strategic objective in the tourism development fund, and this project term is short, medium, or long term.

01:09:44 Speaker 10: Number four, we have marketing.

01:09:54 Speaker 10: Not to be confused by the next one, which is partnership marketing.

01:10:01 Speaker 10: So marketing is pretty self-explanatory.

01:10:09 Speaker 10: We're looking for innovative and strategic initiatives within the festival event or experience that the tourism project comes forward with.

01:10:24 Speaker 10: So something that they're maybe wanting to create a new video to promote their tourism-related project, potentially digital advertising.

01:10:37 Speaker 10: Something that they haven't already done, or something that is more creative and innovative.

01:10:50 Speaker 10: Funding details for this specific stream is ten thousand dollars, and we are not they are not required, but encouraged to match the funding.

01:11:08 Speaker 01: And one hundred percent of these funds must be used towards marketing, not for the event that they came forward for.

01:11:27 Speaker 01: This is a short term funding stream for their project, and the other stream of marketing, which is partnership marketing, this is more of a collaborative effort.

01:11:49 Speaker 11: For example, if there was a dinner theater and accommodation package, this could come forward as one application underneath partnership marketing for potentially a hotel, a theater, and a restaurant.

01:12:06 Speaker 11: The funding details for this specific stream is ten thousand dollars, and we encourage applicants to match the funding but not required.

01:12:25 Speaker 11: The use of the funds must be a collaborative partnership marketing, and it is going to be reflected in the interim reporting.

01:12:38 Speaker 11: This project term is also short term.

01:12:50 Speaker 11: And last but not least, this is our big kind of umbrella, which you'll notice when we get to funding details here.

01:13:07 Speaker 11: This is based on approval from the committee, so there is no specific set dollar for this.

01:13:14 Speaker 11: It's a.

01:13:18 Speaker 11: For this, it's for physical infrastructure projects that improve visitor experience.

01:13:26 Speaker 11: Think of a large project, something that will continuously year after year after year bring tourism to Owen Sound.

01:13:40 Speaker 11: And we successfully gave money to Lacrosse for their turf, and this would be funding that would be something that would meet that requirement.

01:13:56 Speaker 11: The funding details are, as mentioned, based on approval.

01:14:04 Speaker 11: Just because we wanted to see.

01:14:08 Speaker 11: We didn't want to put a dollar amount on this.

01:14:17 Speaker 11: We wanted it to be something that would encourage tourism year after year, phase after phase.

01:14:24 Speaker 11: And 25% is encouraged to match the funding, but not required.

01:14:28 Speaker 11: And 100% must be used for capital costs.

01:14:36 Speaker 11: This is medium or long term, just to create that sustainable tourism in Owen Sound.

01:14:54 Speaker 11: So those are our six streams that have been created for us to divvy out the MAT tax to put back into tourism in the City of Owen Sound.

01:15:07 Speaker 11: Should have worn my glasses.

01:15:09 Speaker 11: The two thousand and twenty-six budget.

01:15:13 Speaker 11: You'll see a graph up here, a little pie chart.

01:15:21 Speaker 11: I try to make it look pretty instead of more words because I am going to talk about it.

01:15:30 Speaker 11: So, forty-four percent is destination.

01:15:38 Speaker 11: That's your three big funding streams: so major attraction, festival and events, and new experiences.

01:15:48 Speaker 11: Admin costs, which we're trying to keep very low.

01:15:55 Speaker 11: My position is very, very, very part time.

01:16:10 Speaker 01: I kind of work an hour here, a couple hours here, and a bulk of the hours is worked underneath the timing of the application process.

01:16:35 Speaker 10: That's ten percent of the one hundred eighty thousand being represented for two thousand and twenty-six, and eleven percent was marketing.

01:16:56 Speaker 10: Our reserve fund, which is seven percent, and then if you're looking at the last little pie, our last little sliver of the pie is twenty-eight,

01:17:17 Speaker 10: and this is the dollars being used for the fall and spring cycles for the year of two thousand and twenty-six.

01:17:45 Speaker 10: I created a monthly comparison here, and I wrote some notes because I wanted to make sure I gave this information clearly because it's about dollars, and I'm going to be completely honest.

01:18:12 Speaker 10: I have moral support here, so if you have questions about the financials, Tiffany will be glad to help us.

01:18:33 Speaker 10: So the monthly comparison that you see here, obviously, we only have the January, February, and March comparison because of where we are in the program and where we when we started.

01:18:50 Speaker 10: So if you look at the comparison, this is the dollars that was collected, received, received, not collected.

01:19:05 Speaker 10: So this is the comparison of the MAT.

01:19:14 Speaker 10: Is a comparison of the MAT tax dollars that were received in January, February, and March.

01:19:21 Speaker 10: All right, the fun part.

01:19:23 Speaker 10: This was really exciting.

01:19:29 Speaker 10: So fall was our first time allotting dollars from the streams.

01:19:46 Speaker 10: So we announced the recipients of fall twenty twenty five for the funding intake on November third, and ninety three thousand dollars were granted to ten different organizations, project leads,

01:20:05 Speaker 10: and supporting new and innovative initiatives that enhance tourism.

01:20:17 Speaker 10: The funding stream, as I mentioned earlier, that took it away was festivals and events.

01:20:33 Speaker 10: So we might have to work on the different streams and the dollars that are in those different streams.

01:20:44 Speaker 10: So festivals and events, we had Dirt Road Revival, which was a concert.

01:21:00 Speaker 10: Owen Sound Salmon Spectacular, Owen Sound Minor Baseball, which is a baseball tournament, Harmony Center, which was a dinner and drama, a taste of Owen Sound,

01:21:13 Speaker 10: Georgian Bay Folk Society—they received funds for their summer folk music and crafts festival.

01:21:21 Speaker 10: And then we had a new experience.

01:21:26 Speaker 10: We had two new experiences.

01:21:35 Speaker 10: One of them being super unique: the Roxy Come Home, the Legend of Daddy Hall, and Bike Face Cycling.

01:21:52 Speaker 10: So this was a bike rental program that was awarded dollars for a new program for bikes to be able to have for people to have access to them around Owen Sound, which is super exciting.

01:22:07 Speaker 10: And then marketing and partnership marketing.

01:22:15 Speaker 10: So Mudtown Station Brewery and Restaurant they receive marketing dollars to put Owen Sound on a map, literally for a beer tourism map,

01:22:30 Speaker 10: and it is accessible on a couple different apps and also on a website.

01:22:44 Speaker 10: If you are a beer lover and you don't have that app, maybe you should go check it out because Owen Sound's on it now.

01:22:59 Speaker 10: Partnership marketing: Georgian Bay Folk Society collaborated with the Roxy, and they received money for Play It Forward.

01:23:13 Speaker 10: And then, last but not least, Capital Tourism.

01:23:22 Speaker 10: We awarded dollars to Owen Sound Lacrosse, and they have our logo on it, and the turf is in.

01:23:32 Speaker 10: I received an email a couple weeks ago, and we will.

01:23:38 Speaker 10: I will be there for their opening on June seventeenth.

01:23:52 Speaker 10: I think whatever Father's Day is, and then our second cycle a little less of dollars because, of course, when we started collecting the fund, there was nobody here giving the money away just as yet.

01:24:12 Speaker 10: So we have ninety three thousand in fall and fifty four.

01:24:18 Speaker 10: And fifty-four thousand went out on March twenty-third.

01:24:36 Speaker 10: Again, as you'll notice on these funding streams, festivals and events is really heavy, so we might have to look at changing this in the near future.

01:24:55 Speaker 10: But of course, this is a new program, a new fund, so we're learning.

01:25:03 Speaker 10: Festivals and events.

01:25:11 Speaker 10: The money went to Snow Folk Club, which is awesome because it will bring tourism in the shoulder season.

01:25:33 Speaker 10: This is a February event, motoring festival, and Oblivion Avenue, a new event and a new part of their event is coming to Owen Sound.

01:25:43 Speaker 10: Major country concert.

01:25:59 Speaker 10: I was not allowed to talk about certain things because of legalities, but they will be announcing actually May fourth about their artists that are coming to Owen Sound, and then Northlight Festival,

01:26:15 Speaker 10: which is essentially an electronic music festival that's coming to Owen Sound.

01:26:36 Speaker 10: We they weren't successful at receiving funds for this year, but we did really like the creativity and the innovation, and the committee awarded dollars to the festival to let it happen next year.

01:27:11 Speaker 10: Twenty Twenty Seven Top OHL Prospects Game is coming to the Owen Sound Attack Arena, and Bandit Fest, which is all youth-driven and youth bands.

01:27:36 Speaker 10: So marketing and major attractions are last but not least in terms of our funding streams that we awarded dollars to in spring, so Nature's Gateway campaign,

01:27:59 Speaker 10: which is a City of Owen Sound marketing campaign to get people here for all four seasons, and our major attraction.

01:28:14 Speaker 10: We awarded dollars to the Harbor Access Waterfront Improvement application, which is a dock system that is being led by the launch.

01:28:27 Speaker 10: We are currently looking for committee member one for sure, potentially for more.

01:28:48 Speaker 10: As June will be a new term for committee members on the Owen Sound Tourism Development Fund, we're looking for anyone that is a lover of community events, festivals, anything that ties into tourism.

01:29:04 Speaker 10: So share with your network, contact me, share the word, spread the word.

01:29:15 Speaker 10: It is on the Owen Sound Chambers social media, as we don't have our own.

01:29:29 Speaker 10: We are—they're posting on our behalf.

01:29:39 Speaker 10: So at the beginning of every post that's Owen Sound Tourism Development Fund related, it will say on behalf of the OSTDF.

01:29:53 Speaker 10: And there's my contact information, and I will take any questions that you might have.

01:30:02 Speaker 10: Okay, thank you for that presentation.

01:30:08 Speaker 10: Does anyone have any questions for Miriam?

01:30:11 Speaker 10: Go ahead.

01:30:15 Speaker 10: Thank you, and thank you, Madam Chair.

01:30:27 Speaker 10: Great information, and I think I love seeing how it's going back into the community and getting more beds and beds in heads in beds, as you said.

01:30:40 Speaker 10: A couple quick questions.

01:30:48 Speaker 10: You mentioned okay, so you know, large scale projects, thirty grand festivals, twenty grand, that kind of stuff.

01:30:58 Speaker 01: Do we have a maximum allotment per six sections?

01:31:06 Speaker 01: Like for example, you have a hundred thousand dollars.

01:31:13 Speaker 05: Fifteen percent goes to this.

01:31:17 Speaker 05: Or is it just whatever applications come through?

01:31:21 Speaker 05: Great question.

01:31:27 Speaker 05: So that maximum fund that I mentioned underneath each one—that's the maximum fund for that stream.

01:31:35 Speaker 10: And then follow up if that's okay.

01:31:43 Speaker 10: The matching of the funds.

01:31:53 Speaker 10: So you know we would like you to match twenty-five percent or whatever it might be.

01:32:11 Speaker 10: If someone is ineligible to do that or isn't able to do that, does that does it have weight when you're reading and evaluating each of the applications?

01:32:35 Speaker 10: So if someone is able to match theirs, the contribution, and someone isn't, are they weighted more heavily, or how does that look on your scale?

01:32:50 Speaker 10: That's an excellent question.

01:32:54 Speaker 10: Yes, it is in the scoring criteria.

01:33:10 Speaker 10: So there is a scorecard that has qualitative and quantitative data, so there's a sixty forty split, and with those things being factored in, so that you're not fully penalized for not getting any funds,

01:33:29 Speaker 09: but it is considered because it is on the application that says, "Are you able to match?

01:33:37 Speaker 09: If not, why?

01:33:40 Speaker 09: Are you able to show proof?

01:33:46 Speaker 09: If so, explain where you're getting other money from."

01:33:53 Speaker 09: And sorry, final one is the marketing.

01:34:00 Speaker 09: I think there was eleven spent on marketing.

01:34:06 Speaker 09: Eleven percent spent on marketing, in your little pie chart.

01:34:17 Speaker 09: Does that mean marketing from the tourism development fund, or was it eleven percent spent on marketing within those six streams?

01:34:31 Speaker 06: Yes, I'm going to look at Tiffany because I'm going to be honest.

01:34:39 Speaker 06: I took that data from her because she's the lovely financial person.

01:34:49 Speaker 06: Some of it was spent on the tourism fund, and whatever we had left went back to the community.

01:34:54 Speaker 06: Okay.

01:34:55 Speaker 06: Any other questions, Pam?

01:34:56 Speaker 06: Go ahead.

01:35:02 Speaker 06: Thank you, Madam Chair.

01:35:15 Speaker 09: And just when this idea came up in two thousand and twenty-two, we had a steep learning curve about what was the municipal accommodation tax, and going from developing the bylaw to how were we.

01:35:40 Speaker 01: To how are we going to collect it, and then turning our minds to finding a partner who would work with us to kind of make cool things happen.

01:36:00 Speaker 01: It's so exciting tonight to hear about the wide range and diversity of really great things that the funding has been able to support.

01:36:21 Speaker 09: And these, we often think about how do we lighten the load on taxpayers here in Owen Sound, and this is a really neat way to leverage spending,

01:36:39 Speaker 09: often to visitors to our community to support the things that they're going to enjoy.

01:36:53 Speaker 09: Maybe not a fair question, but maybe for the next time you guys come back, under the agreement we have kind of two presentations every year.

01:37:10 Speaker 09: One of the things that we think about when we report on community improvement plan spending is for every dollar that we fund, how is that leveraged into more spending?

01:37:30 Speaker 09: So, for a facade grant, if we give them seventy-five hundred dollars, maybe they've spent twenty-five.

01:37:42 Speaker 09: So every dollar we spent is three or four dollars leverage.

01:37:50 Speaker 09: So it might just be interesting to hear that.

01:38:03 Speaker 01: I'm sure you kind of know what their event cost and what it's spending.

01:38:10 Speaker 01: So, but thanks thanks for the presentation.

01:38:16 Speaker 05: It's great and so rewarding to see it actually happening.

01:38:21 Speaker 05: Ryden, thank you.

01:38:27 Speaker 05: And then just a question around, like the current application cycle versus like future applications.

01:38:40 Speaker 05: You mentioned that Northlight doesn't receive funding now, but they will in the future.

01:38:57 Speaker 05: So, does that mean someone can apply for like this year, and if it's if they are favorable, they are kind of like pre-approved for future funding?

01:39:14 Speaker 05: Is that how that works?

01:39:15 Speaker 05: That's an excellent question.

01:39:19 Speaker 05: I'll be a little bit more specific.

01:39:31 Speaker 01: So that festival was very ambitious, and they wanted to create this festival in July of this year, and we were as a committee not sure that that could happen.

01:39:50 Speaker 05: So, but we didn't want to turn down this young man that had this amazing idea.

01:40:04 Speaker 05: I guess we wanted to keep him like, ah, like in Owen Sound and not go find somewhere else that's going to host his festival.

01:40:25 Speaker 05: So the committee came up with an agreement that we would allot a certain amount of dollars, not his requested dollars, to confirm the festival event ground rental for twenty twenty-seven.

01:40:38 Speaker 05: Does that answer your question?

01:40:39 Speaker 05: Yep.

01:40:39 Speaker 05: Go ahead.

01:40:42 Speaker 05: My apologies, I forgot I had another question.

01:40:52 Speaker 05: Are we able to request, and maybe this is just my interest, to see who received what allotment and the amount they received?

01:41:01 Speaker 05: The only, and we don't need it now, but for futures.

01:41:14 Speaker 05: And the only reason being is because a lot of people come back to us and say, "Hey, can you help support us?"

01:41:26 Speaker 05: And it's nice to know what they've received already from you or what streams they're utilizing.

01:41:38 Speaker 05: So that's just a helpful.

01:41:40 Speaker 05: Thanks.

01:41:45 Speaker 05: Yeah, we can do that for sure.

01:41:50 Speaker 05: I do have the list.

01:42:01 Speaker 01: I didn't put that in the press release, but I can share that with you guys.

01:42:08 Speaker 01: Yep.

01:42:09 Speaker 01: Anything.

01:42:09 Speaker 01: Frederick?

01:42:10 Speaker 01: Go ahead, Mary.

01:42:11 Speaker 01: This is probably way off base, but anyways, is there any collaboration when you're having requests for funding with Community Foundation Grey Bruce, for instance, and their kind of grantings streams that they do?

01:42:18 Speaker 01: I have a meeting with them on May fifth.

01:42:18 Speaker 01: Any more questions?

01:42:18 Speaker 01: So I sit on this committee with Miriam and Tiffany.

01:42:19 Speaker 01: So it is a new program, and we're all learning, and we'll definitely look at the funding streams going forward.

01:42:19 Speaker 01: Just to give maybe committee a little basis when we get all of the applications in front of us, and we have to make the decision.

01:42:19 Speaker 01: We see that we have twenty applications under the festival and events.

01:42:20 Speaker 01: We have two under marketing, and we have one under capital.

01:42:20 Speaker 01: Let's say so we start at the bottom, we eliminate from there, and then we try and move all the money that we can up to the festival and events.

01:42:21 Speaker 01: So it's not like we're saying marketing is ten thousand dollars in that stream.

01:42:21 Speaker 01: So we earmark it, but it has to stay in that stream.

01:42:21 Speaker 01: We don't.

01:42:22 Speaker 01: We move it up, and we try and utilize all the money that we can in the other streams where all of the applications are coming, so that we get the best bang for the buck.

01:42:22 Speaker 01: So that's the way we've been doing it so far.

01:42:22 Speaker 01: We'll look at it going forward.

01:42:23 Speaker 01: Maybe moving some money around in the streams, but we've, I think, done a good job for the first year and three months that we've been doing it.

01:42:23 Speaker 01: So, thanks for coming and presenting, and we'll look forward to the next one.

01:42:24 Speaker 01: Thank you.

01:42:25 Speaker 01: I will say just so that you guys have some information about the dollars, we were we had a hundred and ninety-six thousand dollars requested,

01:42:25 Speaker 01: and we only had less than sixty that we could give out because that's all the money we had.

01:42:25 Speaker 01: So just to put that into some sort of perspective, and then to speak to Melanie's comment, I am keeping notes, and as we go through, because this is obviously a new program,

01:42:26 Speaker 01: it's only our first year of going through it.

01:42:26 Speaker 01: So, as she mentioned, we do need to maybe move some money around because it's very heavy in the festival and event section.

01:42:27 Speaker 01: So, moving forward, we will be keeping.

01:42:27 Speaker 01: We'll be keeping an eye on those things and going to committee and figuring out what we need to do.

01:42:27 Speaker 01: Thank you, everyone.

01:42:28 Speaker 01: Great.

01:42:28 Speaker 01: Oh, one more.

01:42:28 Speaker 01: Yeah, go ahead.

01:42:28 Speaker 01: So you grant twice a year, do you?

01:42:30 Speaker 01: And is the funding sort of equal in the spring and the fall?

01:42:30 Speaker 01: Yes.

01:42:30 Speaker 01: So fall.

01:42:31 Speaker 01: So our next cycle will open September first.

01:42:31 Speaker 01: Moving forward, we will continue to do one fall and one spring, and we are trying to keep it equal for fall and spring, but again,

01:42:31 Speaker 01: we can only give out the money that we receive through the municipal accommodation tax of our portion, which is the two percent.

01:42:31 Speaker 01: So, those who weren't successful in the spring, do you encourage them to reapply in the fall, or do you just move their applications over?

01:42:31 Speaker 01: And if it fits within that time, so we ask them to reapply unless they were, for example, like Northlight Festival, that application will kind of stay put, and will unless anything changes,

01:42:32 Speaker 01: then I'll work with the individual, and we'll move forward that way.

01:42:32 Speaker 01: I the first round fall cycle, I did work with each individual person, whether they were successful or unsuccessful, and gave them feedback because it was also helpful for me as the facilitator,

01:42:32 Speaker 09: and then also to report back to the committee for feedback so that we can create a better program for the community, and then.

01:42:32 Speaker 09: We do ask them though to reapply if they weren't successful.

01:42:33 Speaker 09: So, for example, Motoring Festival—they applied the first time, they weren't successful, and they changed their event a little bit more and made it more specific to tourism in the City of Owen Sound.

01:42:33 Speaker 09: Then they were successful.

01:42:34 Speaker 09: Okay, great.

01:42:34 Speaker 09: Thank you for coming.

01:42:35 Speaker 09: All right, at 5C we have a verbal presentation from the Senior Advisor, External Relations and Investment Attraction, regarding updates on economic development initiatives.

01:42:35 Speaker 09: So we welcome Rebecca.

01:42:35 Speaker 09: I said verbal, but then I made you guys some really pretty pictures.

01:42:36 Speaker 09: All right, thank you so much, Chair Middleborough.

01:42:37 Speaker 09: I'm very excited to tell you all what I've been up to the past two months because you had a short reprieve from my reports.

01:42:37 Speaker 09: So this presentation is really intended to act as a bit of a supplement to the Q1 economic development quarterly newsletter that kind of goes out through the City website.

01:42:37 Speaker 09: It is called the Owensound Economic and Industry Brief.

01:42:37 Speaker 09: Thank you, Carly MacArthur, our communications advisor, for helping me to synthesize all of the activity that's happening within the External Relations and Investment Attraction Department because it is significant.

01:42:38 Speaker 09: So, just going through a few of the highlights.

01:42:38 Speaker 09: The report is linked there.

01:42:38 Speaker 09: You can also find it on the City website.

01:42:40 Speaker 09: We submitted the federal research grant for the Community and College Social Innovation Fund in partnership with Georgian College.

01:42:40 Speaker 09: This was in the January report before this committee.

01:42:40 Speaker 09: As part of that effort to apply for that three hundred and sixty thousand dollars in federal grant support for a Future of Belonging initiative and a.

01:42:41 Speaker 09: And the effort to establish a local community impact lab, we were able to collect 14 letters of support from cross-sector partners.

01:42:41 Speaker 09: This indicated that there is a broad appetite for this type of initiative.

01:42:41 Speaker 09: We're very excited because next week at the Healthy Communities Conference, which is taking place here in Owen Sound,

01:42:41 Speaker 09: the members of the Georgian College Department of Social Innovation will actually be on site to provide tours of the proposed Community Impact Lab space at Sedona Campus for conference attendees.

01:42:41 Speaker 09: They will also be leading an exercise in rural innovation as part of day two of the conference on April 28th at the Bayshore.

01:42:42 Speaker 09: So we're really excited to see what this space could look like if this initiative, you know, continues, and we are very keen to hear back from Enzirk on the success of the grant application.

01:42:43 Speaker 09: Finally, we also did a Rural Ontario Development grant application.

01:42:43 Speaker 09: This was part of the February report before this committee.

01:42:44 Speaker 09: We acted as a partner.

01:42:44 Speaker 09: We submitted that as a joint application between us and Grey County for some feasibility studies and other investment readiness initiatives.

01:42:44 Speaker 09: A couple other little updates.

01:42:44 Speaker 09: The Ontario budget was released, and it included a new funding model for colleges, which was one of the issues raised in our pre-budget submission.

01:42:44 Speaker 09: That was part of a January council update, and we also submitted comments as part of the federal impact assessment process for the proposed Ontario pumped storage project.

01:42:45 Speaker 09: And it was literally the letter that was approved by council or this committee in, I believe it was 2024.

01:42:46 Speaker 09: Okay, so one of the initiatives that we wanted to do, since this is a brand new role for the City of Owen Sound,

01:42:46 Speaker 09: was to conduct some site visits to go out into the community and visit some of our major employers, some of our motivated entrepreneurs, and business owners that are at the small, medium, and large scale.

01:42:46 Speaker 09: So this is just a few of the photos from the first quarter site visits.

01:42:46 Speaker 09: In January, we visited BWXT's facility here in Owen Sound, alongside Grey County.

01:42:47 Speaker 09: In February and March, we visited the Grey Bruce Maker Space, and I would encourage anyone to go and check it out if you haven't.

01:42:47 Speaker 09: It's been open for about 18 months, and the amount of activity is truly extraordinary.

01:42:47 Speaker 09: And my mind is blown every time I walk through those doors.

01:42:48 Speaker 09: And finally, we have Naked Basics, a local entrepreneur who has opened up shop on First Avenue West.

01:42:49 Speaker 09: If you walk in, you are immediately transported.

01:42:49 Speaker 09: It is this apothecary style space.

01:42:49 Speaker 09: Her workshop sells out immediately, and I can vouch for a number of her products because I have gone back repeatedly since going for this site visit.

01:42:50 Speaker 09: We visited a number of sites also in April.

01:42:50 Speaker 09: I'll explain a bit of the story behind this later.

01:42:50 Speaker 09: But effectively, through some contacts that we developed with the Ministry of Tourism, Culture, and Gaming, we, through a you know fortunate circumstance,

01:42:50 Speaker 09: were able to invite a couple of our regional development advisors to have a short tour of the city.

01:42:51 Speaker 09: This was thrown together very quickly,

01:42:51 Speaker 09: and I would like to emphasize how grateful I am to our internal and external stakeholders for coming together around the parameters of a four-day holiday weekend to pull this tour together and make it such

01:42:51 Speaker 09: a success.

01:42:52 Speaker 09: You really got to see the creativity, the innovation, and the collaboration that makes our community thrive.

01:42:52 Speaker 09: And further to the previous presentation, there was a strong appetite for that kind of capacity building, specifically around grants and funding initiatives.

01:42:52 Speaker 09: We visited.

01:42:54 Speaker 09: I have the list.

01:42:54 Speaker 09: We visited the Owen Sound and North Grey Union Public Library, the Tom Thomson Art Gallery, the Roxy Theatre.

01:42:54 Speaker 09: We had lunch at Jasmine's.

01:42:54 Speaker 09: You can see in the top right corner there.

01:42:55 Speaker 09: It involved a number of local community stakeholders in the arts and culture and tourism sectors.

01:42:55 Speaker 09: We went to Goods for Coffee, visited Georgian Bay School for the Arts.

01:42:56 Speaker 09: We poked our heads into Artists Co-op, into Intersections, and we got a personal tour of Noagan.

01:42:57 Speaker 09: Thank you, Chef Kishig, for accommodating us.

01:42:57 Speaker 09: We visited the Harmony Center.

01:42:58 Speaker 09: We spoke with the Georgian Bay Folk Society.

01:42:58 Speaker 09: We visited the Grey Roots Maker Space and Citadel Campus.

01:42:59 Speaker 09: Unfortunately, Grey Roots had to be left off the tour, but they are coming back for a multi-day visit next time,

01:42:59 Speaker 09: because they were so enthralled by our community and everything that we have to offer here.

01:43:00 Speaker 09: They kept saying that we had introduced them to everyone with the biggest hearts, and we had to keep saying, "Oh, we're so sorry, Colleen Trustyman was busy serving at OSHaRE,

01:43:00 Speaker 09: so she couldn't join us for lunch today."

01:43:00 Speaker 09: And it was just a remarkable day to watch everyone come together,

01:43:01 Speaker 09: and that lunch at Jasmine's was such an interesting way for the ministries' regional development advisors to really get to know our community in a way that they don't typically get to do.

01:43:02 Speaker 09: So we kind of hallmarked them, but they love us and they're coming back.

01:43:02 Speaker 09: All right, so that tour came as a result of the Energy Innovators Leadership Forum.

01:43:03 Speaker 09: We had extended an invitation to a number of our ministry colleagues to come up for this event, which was held in March.

01:43:03 Speaker 09: And as they were unfortunately unable to attend that event, that's how the April 8th visit happened with the Ministry of Tourism, Culture, and Gaming.

01:43:04 Speaker 09: This was a very successful event.

01:43:04 Speaker 09: We hosted it in collaboration with the Owen Sound and District Chamber of Commerce.

01:43:04 Speaker 09: They mercifully handled a lot of the event organization and details,

01:43:05 Speaker 09: and we really supported through programming and using our contacts within the clean energy sector and through the Clean Energy Frontier to draw a very high-quality panel together,

01:43:05 Speaker 09: and it effectively served as a briefing on local opportunities and regional opportunities in the clean energy sector.

01:43:06 Speaker 09: And I just like to point out the various technologies that were represented on this panel.

01:43:07 Speaker 09: We have beside me in the magenta jacket Herb Shields.

01:43:08 Speaker 09: He is with the Ontario Pump Storage Project project by TC Energy.

01:43:09 Speaker 09: Beside him is Bryce McConacher with Hydrogen Optimized.

01:43:09 Speaker 09: You'll recognize the man in the center—that is Mayor Ian Boddy.

01:43:10 Speaker 09: We have Chad Richards, formerly of the Nuclear Innovation Institute, now with Bruce Power.

01:43:10 Speaker 09: Bill Walker, former MPP, now BWXT's VP of Government Relations.

01:43:10 Speaker 09: And right beside him is Shannon Douglas with Atkins Realis, a CanDo Energy Inc. company.

01:43:11 Speaker 09: Now we had the initial panel set, and then Atkins Realis reached out to us to ask if there might be a role that they could play.

01:43:12 Speaker 09: And I would just like to emphasize that moment of and thank Mayor Boddy again for allowing us to bump him to closing remarks instead of opening remarks,

01:43:12 Speaker 09: because that is the kind of energy that I am hearing when I go out into the community when I talk about the investment attraction and the investment profile of Owen Sound.

01:43:12 Speaker 09: The feedback that I am getting is that the people that can make significant impacts in our area, they are looking at us, they are watching us, they are listening,

01:43:12 Speaker 09: they are getting really excited about what they're seeing locally.

01:43:13 Speaker 09: And I really need to emphasize that the story we've been telling about ourselves for the past fifteen, twenty years,

01:43:13 Speaker 09: is not the same as the story that's going to be told for the next twenty years.

01:43:13 Speaker 09: Okay, and this is where I talk about how busy you're keeping me.

01:43:14 Speaker 09: So, this is a list of the upcoming events.

01:43:14 Speaker 09: I'm not going to go through them all individually, but there are a couple that I would like to flag.

01:43:14 Speaker 09: We already spoke about the Healthy Communities Conference, May 5th to 8th.

01:43:15 Speaker 09: We are going to be in Hamilton for the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative Annual Conference.

01:43:15 Speaker 09: This is really exciting because this year we have representatives from here.

01:43:15 Speaker 09: We have representatives from the Township of Georgian Bluffs, the Municipality of Meaford, Township of Blue Mountains.

01:43:15 Speaker 09: I will be going as a representative for the City of Owen Sound, and a number of representatives with Grey County as well.

01:43:15 Speaker 09: So all of the kind of waterfront municipalities across Grey County will be attending the conference together.

01:43:16 Speaker 09: Canadian Innovation Week last week, or this would have been early April.

01:43:16 Speaker 09: I had the opportunity to meet with the members of the Rito Hall Foundation.

01:43:16 Speaker 09: We were all in Toronto at the same time, and they invited me to attend a very special event at DMZ.

01:43:17 Speaker 09: It's part of the Toronto Metropolitan University's venture-like investor firm.

01:43:17 Speaker 09: It's like an incubator, a very, very, very good tech incubator.

01:43:18 Speaker 09: They're one.

01:43:19 Speaker 09: They're also a Canadian Innovation Week partner, and we were there for the first ever Ingenius Plus Spark program, where the youth that are involved in the Ingenius Plus program,

01:43:19 Speaker 09: where Canadian youth aged like fourteen to eighteen, are given awards for their innovative ideas, and at this event, one hundred thousand dollars in funding was awarded.

01:43:20 Speaker 09: to three of the student teams, and in a few years, I want to see someone from this area getting that funding for their innovative projects.

01:43:20 Speaker 09: It was incredibly exciting, and I would also like to note that former Lieutenant Governor Elizabeth Dadsell was there and spoke very positively about her experience at Owen Sound earlier this or last year.

01:43:20 Speaker 09: Oh, and finally, this is kind of something to flag for your future notice, particularly for the councillors.

01:43:20 Speaker 09: Yesterday, we found out that the deadline for AMO delegation requests will be May 21st.

01:43:23 Speaker 09: This is a little earlier than we were expecting,

01:43:23 Speaker 09: and so we are going to be coordinating with Grey County to determine which of the issues that we have flagged will be advanced at the county level versus the lower-tier municipality level,

01:43:23 Speaker 09: and we are also working on a plan to coordinate across the different member municipalities to advance the joint delegations wherever possible.

01:43:24 Speaker 09: All right.

01:43:25 Speaker 09: So this is very exciting.

01:43:25 Speaker 09: This Canadian Innovation Week partnership is effectively a free national marketing campaign that we get to be part of because of all of the innovation happening locally.

01:43:25 Speaker 09: We reached out to Rideau Hall Foundation to become a partner in January.

01:43:26 Speaker 09: We were successful.

01:43:26 Speaker 09: They are incredibly excited to see a rural Ontario municipality participating in this.

01:43:26 Speaker 09: I believe that we are the first, and definitely the smallest, and it's part of their initiative to reach out into more rural, remote,

01:43:27 Speaker 09: and northern communities in order to talk about the innovation that's happening in those communities.

01:43:27 Speaker 09: That it's not just happening in the big cities.

01:43:28 Speaker 09: It's not just happening in tech.

01:43:28 Speaker 09: It's truly about innovation across Canada.

01:43:28 Speaker 09: So, as part of this, we are going to be working on a week-long social media campaign.

01:43:29 Speaker 09: In addition, on May 12th, we are going to be hosting a celebration of local innovation at Cidnam Campus in partnership with Grey County.

01:43:29 Speaker 09: And I can tell you, for the first time, that the programming is going to include updates from the Southwestern Ontario Isotope Coalition on the Isotopes for Hope campaign,

01:43:31 Speaker 09: talking about the local effort that's having a global impact on nuclear medicine, and that panel will include Mary Ann Boddy.

01:43:32 Speaker 09: There will be a fireside chat and a forged drinks sampling with a local culinary icon who shall go, who I will not name at this point, and a really exciting collaboration by the health, education,

01:43:33 Speaker 09: and arts communities to advance end-of-life care training.

01:43:33 Speaker 09: This event will also include networking with local innovators.

01:43:33 Speaker 09: It's going to be completely free to attend, so please register early.

01:43:34 Speaker 09: It will require an RSVP, and if this is successful, I would love to see this become an annual event.

01:43:34 Speaker 09: But again, we're going to trial it this year.

01:43:34 Speaker 09: We're working very closely with our partners at Grey County to advance this initiative, and we're really excited to celebrate and tell people about some of the incredible innovation happening here.

01:43:34 Speaker 09: All right, and more.

01:43:35 Speaker 09: So we have new rack cards.

01:43:37 Speaker 09: These are to promote the community profile.

01:43:38 Speaker 09: In lieu of printing out a number of additional booklets, we decided for something that was a bit more eco-friendly and portable.

01:43:38 Speaker 09: And we're going to be using these until we may do a short print run for the booklets again.

01:43:40 Speaker 09: But effectively, we're going to be gearing up for, as you will hear in the report later today,

01:43:40 Speaker 09: a refresh of that community profile once we have the 2027 release of the data from the new census survey.

01:43:40 Speaker 09: So in the meantime, this is a super portable way of promoting the community profile.

01:43:41 Speaker 09: It includes the QR code to drive people online, and we are planning a number of website updates based on the report you will see later tonight,

01:43:41 Speaker 09: as well as incorporating more of you know the site visits and the kind of tone and the nature of our investment attraction portfolio and the other investment readiness activities that we are developing.

01:43:41 Speaker 09: And that is it for me for this presentation.

01:43:42 Speaker 09: Do you have any questions?

01:43:42 Speaker 09: Thank you for all that great information.

01:43:43 Speaker 09: Does anyone have any questions for Rebecca?

01:43:44 Speaker 01: Seeing none.

01:43:45 Speaker 01: Okay.

01:43:45 Speaker 01: I guess we'll see you in a bit.

01:43:46 Speaker 01: Okay.

01:43:46 Speaker 01: So that brings us to number six, public forum, and I'm seeing no one here tonight.

01:43:47 Speaker 01: Correspondence received for which direction is required.

01:43:47 Speaker 01: We have nothing this evening, which brings us to number eight, reports of city staff.

01:43:47 Speaker 01: At eight a one, we have report CR 26039 from the committee and executive support coordinator regarding 2026 community services fees and charges update.

01:43:48 Speaker 01: So we will go to Christina.

01:43:48 Speaker 01: Thank you.

01:43:48 Speaker 01: So our deputy treasurer David was unable to be here tonight, but I also worked closely with staff this year and last year through the fees and charges process.

01:43:49 Speaker 01: So I'm going to present this update in his absence tonight.

01:43:49 Speaker 01: I don't usually have to speak this much at these meetings, so I'm going to keep it pretty quick.

01:43:49 Speaker 01: So this is part of the annual spring review that happens every year, and any changes take effect July 1st.

01:43:49 Speaker 01: Beginning in 2025, fees and charges reviews are now taking to each standing committee, which was a direction from council.

01:43:50 Speaker 01: And prior to that, they just all went directly to council together.

01:43:51 Speaker 01: Each standing committee reviews only the fees relevant to their portfolio.

01:43:51 Speaker 01: So tonight, this committee reviews the fees for building, planning, cemetery, and parks and recreation.

01:43:51 Speaker 01: Similar reports are being presented to the operations and corporate services committees this month as well.

01:43:51 Speaker 01: So this ensures that all departments have the opportunity to receive committee-specific feedback before the new bylaw is finalized.

01:43:52 Speaker 01: So all proposed changes, including those from other departments, will be consolidated and brought to council in May, and the updated bylaw will be presented in June, with changes coming into effect July 1st.

01:43:52 Speaker 01: Last year, all departmental fees and charges were divided into three-year review cycles.

01:43:52 Speaker 01: This was implemented as part of a service review project and aims to ensure that all fees are looked at at least once every three years,

01:43:53 Speaker 01: while also ensuring that no department has to conduct an in-depth review of their entire fee schedule in any given year.

01:43:54 Speaker 01: This will promote a more full summer review of each fee as they come up through the cycles.

01:43:54 Speaker 01: And it's important to note that this is a minimum review.

01:43:55 Speaker 01: Even if a fee isn't noted as up for review that year, sometimes it might still be changed due to operational changes or service levels or legislative requirements that come up.

01:43:56 Speaker 01: When reviewing fees, many factors are considered, such as comparators' costs, cost recovery for the service, and consideration of which fees are subsidized by the tax base.

01:43:56 Speaker 01: A large portion of fees are increased by approximately three percent annually.

01:43:56 Speaker 01: In this year, there wasn't too many changes to the community services fee schedules.

01:43:56 Speaker 01: Last year, we saw quite a few more changes than this.

01:43:57 Speaker 01: So, some of the main updates that you'll see here tonight include an increase to fees related to special event conversion costs.

01:43:57 Speaker 01: So that's like glass removal and wooden floor installation at the Bayshore, and those were increased to reflect actually actual recorded staff time and costs.

01:43:57 Speaker 01: The addition of a fee for the installation and removal of the newly acquired lacrosse turf at the Bayshore, which looks really amazing if you haven't seen it yet,

01:43:57 Speaker 01: and the addition of a special event deposit fee, so this will be used to tentatively hold dates for concerts and large special events.

01:43:58 Speaker 01: The consolidation of some bandshell and gazebo fees to include more flexibility and provide the ability to reserve additional open spaces,

01:43:58 Speaker 01: and the removal of some administrative and booking fees that are either no longer relevant or no longer used.

01:43:58 Speaker 01: One other thing that I will add is that going forward, the plan is for the annual fees and charges review to begin in the fall, in alignment with the operating budget process.

01:43:59 Speaker 05: This will give more time for staff to actually do a more in-depth review of fees, and it'll also help in turn to inform the operating budget.

01:44:00 Speaker 05: And that's all.

01:44:00 Speaker 05: So with that, we have the recommendation, which is to receive the report for information purposes.

01:44:00 Speaker 05: And if you have any questions, I will do my best to answer them with the help of the director.

01:44:01 Speaker 05: That's great.

01:44:01 Speaker 05: Thank you for that report.

01:44:02 Speaker 05: Does anyone have any questions or feedback on any of the fees?

01:44:02 Speaker 05: Seeing none, so I will call the question.

01:44:02 Speaker 05: Oh, sorry.

01:44:04 Speaker 05: Yes.

01:44:04 Speaker 05: Thank you, Travis, for moving the recommendation.

01:44:04 Speaker 05: Now I will call the question.

01:44:05 Speaker 05: All those in favor?

01:44:05 Speaker 05: And that is carried unanimously.

01:44:05 Speaker 05: So that brings us to eight b one, which is Report CM 26017 from the Senior Advisor External Relations and Investment Attraction regarding Economic Health Report Card, and I will turn it back to Rebecca.

01:44:06 Speaker 05: Thank you again, Chair Milgrom, Committee.

01:44:06 Speaker 05: Thank you once again.

01:44:06 Speaker 05: I'm here tonight to present Report CM 26017.

01:44:06 Speaker 05: CM 26017 regarding an economic health report card.

01:44:07 Speaker 05: For those of you who were on the committee in the fall, as part of the external relations and investment attraction action plan, we committed to developing more data-informed practices to support and promote economic growth.

01:44:07 Speaker 05: This economic health report card was one of those initiatives that was initially proposed as part of that action plan, and so we are advancing it here before you today.

01:44:08 Speaker 05: The recommendation before the committee is to receive this report for information purposes.

01:44:08 Speaker 05: So the Economic Health Report Card was really prepared in order to provide that at-a-glance snapshot resource using a combination of data sources.

01:44:08 Speaker 05: The goal of the initiative is not to duplicate data collection efforts.

01:44:08 Speaker 05: It's more to collate the available information from external and internal resources for the purpose of making informed decisions.

01:44:09 Speaker 05: So, Christine, if I could ask you to pull up the Economic Health Report Card, thank you.

01:44:09 Speaker 05: So, for the baseline 2025 Report Card, we chose nine metrics across three categories.

01:44:10 Speaker 05: So, for demographics, which largely graphics, which largely pulls on data from Environics Analytics.

01:44:11 Speaker 05: That's the subscription that we use through a joint initiative with Grey County and the member municipalities.

01:44:12 Speaker 05: And in demographics, we look at total population, the median age of the total population, and average household income.

01:44:12 Speaker 05: Under affordability, we are looking at the cost of housing, both purchased housing and average rent.

01:44:13 Speaker 05: We are also looking at the living wage for the region.

01:44:13 Speaker 05: Under development, which is mostly internal data, we are looking at a commercial residential tax rate ratio, new residential units by permits issued, and construction value.

01:44:13 Speaker 05: So I want to talk a little bit about why we chose these specific metrics, and it was to provide that baseline understanding that you know these metrics are going to shift over time.

01:44:13 Speaker 05: We've already seen that with, for example, the population figure.

01:44:13 Speaker 05: For example, the population figures, where the 2022 figure was pulled from a 2025 Environics Analytics data set,

01:44:13 Speaker 05: which since it's been updated now based on the new modeling that they put out a couple of times a year, it now says that our population is 24,190.

01:44:14 Speaker 05: When we dig into that data a little bit, and I asked Kalina Sand and I asked Kalina Stanford, who is our data person at the county level,

01:44:14 Speaker 05: to really help me understand why there was such a significant jump in like one year,

01:44:14 Speaker 05: because all of us who live here know that that's probably certainly not completely accurate to like the exact conditions on the ground right now.

01:44:14 Speaker 05: But it's important to understand that these are projections; these are data projections.

01:44:14 Speaker 05: They're essentially an educated guess that these modeling companies use for those inter-census periods between the official Canadian census.

01:44:14 Speaker 05: So, when we say projected to be above 24,000, that's what we mean is that there is a very confident data projection that our population has exceeded 24,000.

01:44:15 Speaker 05: We will know in early 2027 when Statistics Canada releases their updated census figures.

01:44:15 Speaker 05: What the most accurate picture is of our population in 2026.

01:44:15 Speaker 05: Right now, this is our best guess.

01:44:16 Speaker 05: And I also want to emphasize that when we look at when we're talking to entities like Invest Ontario, when we are logging into the partner portal and looking at the different properties that are available,

01:44:16 Speaker 05: when investors look at us, this is the data that they see.

01:44:16 Speaker 05: When you go into the Invest Ontario Partner Portal, you are looking at properties, and they have demographic data that is pulled from Envirodex Analytics specifically.

01:44:17 Speaker 05: So anyone who is looking at our community, anyone who is looking at available employment lands in our community, this is the picture that they're seeing,

01:44:17 Speaker 05: and that's why it's important for us to be aware of it too.

01:44:17 Speaker 05: So that's why if that number is making you know causing some discomfort, that's where it's coming from.

01:44:18 Speaker 05: It's our best, most educated guess from a highly reliable source.

01:44:18 Speaker 05: Going on to the median age of the total population, because this was quite interesting to us.

01:44:18 Speaker 05: When we're looking at the demographic shifts that we either are seeing in our community or expect to see in our community, we know that we are an aging population,

01:44:18 Speaker 05: and you are expecting to see that age go up.

01:44:19 Speaker 05: The fact that that age is going down means that we are probably seeing a couple of things happening at the same time.

01:44:19 Speaker 05: Number one, there is a population decline in terms of the, you know, the natural death rate of a population.

01:44:19 Speaker 05: We know that our natural birth rate in our population is not necessarily keeping up with that, which means that we are seeing in migration from other communities, other parts of the province,

01:44:19 Speaker 05: other parts of the world into the area.

01:44:19 Speaker 05: So we're going to be keeping an eye on that median age of the population because it's going to help to inform what kind of resources our new residents are going to need in our communities.

01:44:20 Speaker 05: And when we get to the prism profiles later, you're going to see that a lot of these are family-forming households involving that, you know, 30 to 40 year age group,

01:44:20 Speaker 05: and the needs of that age group and the needs of a household with small children is very different than you know,

01:44:20 Speaker 05: the needs of different demographics who are looking for a different kind of experience in the city, and we'll get into that with the prism profiles.

01:44:21 Speaker 05: In terms of affordability,

01:44:21 Speaker 05: we reached out to the Grey Bruce Poverty Task Force for some assistance with this because I was getting wildly different numbers from the Canadian Mortgage Housing Corporation and the data that you can see through

01:44:21 Speaker 05: other resources,

01:44:22 Speaker 05: either newspaper reports, there's seriously an unending sort like the fount of data out there that's available.

01:44:22 Speaker 05: So I checked in with our community partners, found out which resources they were using, which ones they trust, and in the end, instead of using the CMHC data,

01:44:22 Speaker 05: I opted to use third-party data sources for this, and I want to be very clear about why.

01:44:22 Speaker 05: And it's because when you send out a general survey about what people are spending on housing, and you want to do that as a measure of like what people are spending right now,

01:44:22 Speaker 05: that's great for understanding.

01:44:22 Speaker 05: You know, if someone moved into our community fifteen years ago,

01:44:22 Speaker 05: they would be spending a different proportion of their annual income on that rent or those housing costs than they would if they were moving into our community today.

01:44:23 Speaker 05: So I chose to prioritize the current market realities,

01:44:23 Speaker 05: so that this information would be more useful to people considering our community versus capturing the picture of the people who are already living here and may have lived here for some time,

01:44:23 Speaker 05: in which case that data would include you know historical housing costs versus current market realities.

01:44:23 Speaker 05: Finally, the development data, because this is really exciting, we actually I calculated it.

01:44:24 Speaker 05: The city saw a 10 percent increase in the number of permits issued for new residential units last year.

01:44:24 Speaker 05: It is so significant that we are skewing other data growth sets.

01:44:24 Speaker 05: I was in a meeting with the Bruce Grey Catholic District School Board where their growth projections were talking about the, you know,

01:44:24 Speaker 05: the amount of high density development housing developments that were happening across Bruce Grey County, and when I York County, and when I looked at the figures, I was like, "I'm sorry, that's us.

01:44:24 Speaker 05: That's all us."

01:44:25 Speaker 05: And it was really interesting because you get to see a really clear picture of how these data models and this data modeling efforts that may be a good option for some larger urban centers can

01:44:25 Speaker 05: be significantly thrown off by a shift like our development success last year in smaller communities,

01:44:25 Speaker 05: where when you look at that, like that figure of like 540 new apartments, condos coming into our housing stock, when you are a community with around 11,000 households,

01:44:25 Speaker 05: adding over adding 566 new households into a community of that size is going to have a significant impact, and we may not see that this year, obviously, although.

01:44:26 Speaker 05: I can see from the March development update that there is progress being made on those housing developments, but we are going to see that that growth realized at some point in our future,

01:44:26 Speaker 05: and we still have a number of development projects that have the site plans mapped out, and we're just waiting for those projects to have the shovels in the ground status.

01:44:26 Speaker 05: So, the final part that I want to draw your attention to.

01:44:26 Speaker 05: Is the Prism profile?

01:44:27 Speaker 05: Because when I was looking at the reports that I pulled back in early 2025 versus the ones that we pulled in November 2025 with the new data, I started seeing the Prism profiles shift.

01:44:27 Speaker 05: Christine, I'm not sure if you can go to Attachment to page seven.

01:44:27 Speaker 05: So when we look at, yeah, so this is the Prism Profile system.

01:44:28 Speaker 05: It is a proprietary categorization system by Environment Canada Analytics.

01:44:28 Speaker 05: I know that text is really small to see, but essentially they've grouped everyone in Canada into about, I think, around sixty to seventy different kinds of profiles.

01:44:29 Speaker 05: And so in Owen Sound, there were five Prism segments that made up about a little over seventy-five percent of our population.

01:44:29 Speaker 05: And when you look at it, it's, you know, yes, twenty-five percent is the Suburban Recliners, consisting primarily of older individuals and couples living in affordable suburban neighborhoods surrounding smaller and mid-sized cities.

01:44:29 Speaker 05: But we also have fifteen percent of a segment called "Just Getting By," which features younger adults and single-parent families living in large urban centers.

01:44:31 Speaker 05: You can see from these profiles; I won't read them all out to you, that the economic realities of the people who live here shift wildly depending on which segment you're part of.

01:44:31 Speaker 05: And by digging into the variety of these segments, we have Juggling Acts, which is a vibrant blend of young singles, couples, and families, particularly in small and medium-sized cities such as London, Kitchener, Cambridge,

01:44:31 Speaker 05: Owen Sound.

01:44:31 Speaker 05: Slow Lane Suburbs is another one that's around that fourteen percent, older singles and couples, primarily over the age of 55, residing in mid-sized cities.

01:44:32 Speaker 05: And Old Town Roads, which sounds so charming, and it is a segment of older couples and individuals living in Canada's quaint small towns.

01:44:32 Speaker 05: So, digging into these profiles, you really get a sense of who your neighbors are and what they might be dealing with on a day-to-day basis,

01:44:33 Speaker 05: especially if that experience is different from the one that you are experiencing.

01:44:33 Speaker 05: This is the majority of our population, and you can see that from the other data sets.

01:44:33 Speaker 05: You know, we have forty-two percent rented households in our community, and that represents forty-five percent of the rental housing across Grey County,

01:44:33 Speaker 05: which means that Owen Sound residents are disproportionately affected by things that impact our rental housing stock.

01:44:33 Speaker 05: The fact that we are adding a lot of high-density housing into our region means that we are set up well to, you know,

01:44:34 Speaker 05: absorb a lot of those new residents coming from other small and mid-sized cities who have historically rented, aren't yet ready to buy, but may be wanting to save up for, like,

01:44:34 Speaker 05: a first home.

01:44:34 Speaker 05: Being aware of what our current profile is and why our city is attracting those individuals helps to inform the plans that we make when we're looking at resident attraction initiatives and other things like that.

01:44:34 Speaker 05: So with that, I've shared a lot of data with you tonight.

01:44:35 Speaker 05: As a next step, this, along with the site visits and other investment readiness activities that we are doing, are going to inform a future resident attraction marketing campaign that we're putting together.

01:44:35 Speaker 05: We're not funding it yet.

01:44:35 Speaker 05: This will probably be part of a ROD application in the future, and we're going to be working with our internal and external partners to develop that campaign.

01:44:35 Speaker 05: But basically, the impression that I want to leave you with is that we are paying attention to the signals,

01:44:37 Speaker 05: and they are telling us a different story than the one that has happened historically in our town.

01:44:37 Speaker 05: It's a really exciting time to live here, and I can't wait to see what the next five to ten years bring.

01:44:37 Speaker 05: Thank you.

01:44:38 Speaker 05: Any?

01:44:38 Speaker 05: That's great.

01:44:38 Speaker 05: Thank you for that, and it's great to see all the development happening and where we're headed.

01:44:38 Speaker 05: Kudos to councils before us who've set the conditions, and we're reaping the rewards.

01:44:39 Speaker 05: Does anyone have any questions or comments?

01:44:39 Speaker 05: Go ahead, Allie.

01:44:39 Speaker 05: Thanks for that.

01:44:39 Speaker 05: I was curious about on page three.

01:44:39 Speaker 05: You mentioned that there's interest in getting commercial or residential vacancy rates in the future, but it wasn't feasible for this time.

01:44:40 Speaker 05: I was curious when that happened and what would it take to get that information because it seems like really worthwhile for us to know, especially with looking at like housing crisis.

01:44:40 Speaker 05: How much of a crisis are we in?

01:44:40 Speaker 05: Through you, Chair.

01:44:40 Speaker 05: My understanding of the vacancy rates, we're too small of a community to really get that data.

01:44:40 Speaker 05: I believe that Statistics Canada, the new census, is going to give us better insights into that.

01:44:41 Speaker 05: But a lot of the data out there is through the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

01:44:41 Speaker 05: So we're really reliant on, you know, third-party entities to provide us with that bigger picture outlook on those things.

01:44:41 Speaker 05: Ideally, the census, the statistics, the Statistics Canada data is going to give us a clearer picture.

01:44:41 Speaker 05: But one thing I can say is that my understanding, and perhaps the Director could correct me if I'm wrong, but in the past, particularly around when the River District Action Plan was developed,

01:44:41 Speaker 05: there were people who were able to go door to door effectively and catalog, like, oh, this shop is vacant.

01:44:43 Speaker 05: This shop is not vacant.

01:44:43 Speaker 05: There was a lot of work that went into the development of those plans and strategies, and that work was part of that.

01:44:43 Speaker 05: And so, in the future, there's the possibility that as those action plans come up again or are reviewed, that that amount of effort could be included in them.

01:44:43 Speaker 05: But for a report like this, where we're really just looking at the data that was available, it wasn't feasible to go around knocking on everyone's doors at this time.

01:44:43 Speaker 05: But we will take that into consideration.

01:44:43 Speaker 05: Oh, go ahead, Pam.

01:44:46 Speaker 05: Thank you, Madam Chair.

01:44:46 Speaker 05: And if I could, I was just looking at the links in a Teams meeting I attended last Friday.

01:44:46 Speaker 05: The Affordable Housing Community of Practice.

01:44:47 Speaker 05: We had a presentation from CMHC.

01:44:47 Speaker 05: A presentation from CMHC, and I will get that presentation because they did have vacancy rental or rental vacancy rates for residential in Owen Sound.

01:44:47 Speaker 05: So I think we can get that.

01:44:47 Speaker 05: In terms of River District, we have an unsophisticated data collection method, but we apply it consistently.

01:44:47 Speaker 05: Unsophisticated, and we do that a couple of times a year.

01:44:48 Speaker 05: So Vivica will collect that, report it through the River District.

01:44:48 Speaker 05: This year, prior to the work we're going to do to update the River District Action Plan, we're hoping to work with our GIS and make that a more interactive and visual layer.

01:44:48 Speaker 05: So we'll be able, as Rebecca has described, to see what's occupied and what's vacant.

01:44:49 Speaker 05: So, great.

01:44:49 Speaker 05: Does anyone have any other questions, comments?

01:44:49 Speaker 09: Righten, go ahead.

01:44:50 Speaker 09: Just looking at the report card here, it does show a lot of information, kind of where we have been and where we're going.

01:44:52 Speaker 09: Is there any consideration for future report cards, just to include like benchmarking or goals on where we want to reach?

01:44:52 Speaker 09: Just one like kind of example.

01:44:52 Speaker 09: Thinking about like the commercial residential tax rate ratio, we see one point seven two.

01:44:53 Speaker 09: How does that maybe compare to similar communities?

01:44:54 Speaker 09: Is that good?

01:44:54 Speaker 09: Do we want it to be different?

01:44:54 Speaker 09: Just to kind of give us a little more context with some of the numbers that are in the report.

01:44:55 Speaker 09: Through Chair, I think those tax ratio information is nicely packaged and presented as part of the BMA study.

01:44:55 Speaker 09: That report is wrapped up by the Director of Corporate Services and presented through, I'll forget the name, but I'll say Corporate Services Committee for now.

01:44:55 Speaker 09: But we can certainly make sure that Rebecca has access to that and if she can integrate it into the work she's doing, absolutely.

01:44:56 Speaker 09: Anything further?

01:44:56 Speaker 09: So there is a recommendation to receive the report for information purposes.

01:44:56 Speaker 09: If I could get someone to move that, Mary, go ahead.

01:44:56 Speaker 09: Thank you.

01:44:57 Speaker 09: So I will call the question.

01:44:57 Speaker 09: All in favor?

01:44:57 Speaker 09: And that carries.

01:44:58 Speaker 09: That's great.

01:44:58 Speaker 09: So that ends our reports for this evening.

01:44:58 Speaker 09: At number nine, we have no matters postponed.

01:44:58 Speaker 09: At number ten, motions for which notice was previously given, we have none.

01:44:59 Speaker 09: At number eleven, correspondence provided for information.

01:45:00 Speaker 09: There are three items of correspondence on the docket tonight at 11 a.

01:45:00 Speaker 09: Memorandum from the chief building official and manager of planning and heritage regarding the development update for March.

01:45:00 Speaker 09: Pam, are you speaking to this?

01:45:01 Speaker 09: Thank you, Madam Chair.

01:45:01 Speaker 09: A bit of a slower start to this year,

01:45:01 Speaker 09: but I can't tell you how exciting it is to drive along either East Bayshore Road or the Eddie Sargent and see SkyDev coming out of the ground and why.

01:45:01 Speaker 09: Out of the ground and watch the foundation work that's happening at Harbor West.

01:45:02 Speaker 09: So, for me, those projects are really exciting.

01:45:02 Speaker 09: Next week, the chief building official was so you'll see here they had one hundred and fifty-nine inspections in March.

01:45:02 Speaker 09: Next week they have two hundred inspections booked.

01:45:02 Speaker 09: So that team of three is going to be extraordinarily busy.

01:45:03 Speaker 09: And with that, I would also note that Alexandra Del Deegan, our new development coordinator, started this week.

01:45:03 Speaker 09: She came to us from Hamilton, and we're really excited to have Alexandra here.

01:45:03 Speaker 09: You'll see in the permits the alteration and tenant fit up at Heritage Grove.

01:45:03 Speaker 09: So I think everybody wondered what was going to happen in the PetSmart building.

01:45:03 Speaker 09: So that's a Best Buy and a new SpecSaver.

01:45:04 Speaker 09: And you'll see work, you know, moving along really well on the Princess Auto.

01:45:05 Speaker 09: Something else of note is a new medical clinic in the Keystone building.

01:45:05 Speaker 09: So, not only is it a great permit, but a really amazing service for the community.

01:45:05 Speaker 09: Planning applications on the next page.

01:45:06 Speaker 09: It's been a really busy start to the year.

01:45:06 Speaker 09: So, while building permit revenues, these things go in cycles, and I think we'll finish the year.

01:45:06 Speaker 09: Certainly won't promise five hundred and sixty-six residential units this year, but we're busy and expecting another good year.

01:45:07 Speaker 09: Okay, that's great.

01:45:08 Speaker 09: At 11B this evening, we have correspondence from the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario regarding heritage helping housing grant.

01:45:08 Speaker 09: I'm actually going to turn it over to Ali because she's the one that flagged this correspondence for committee.

01:45:08 Speaker 09: And go ahead.

01:45:08 Speaker 09: Thank you.

01:45:09 Speaker 09: Yeah, I wanted to see this brought to committee.

01:45:13 Speaker 09: It seems like a really worthwhile kind of advocacy campaign that the ACO is undertaking.

01:45:13 Speaker 09: They first released it last fall, and it kind of sprung back into my mind, seeing that Soggy Shores actually passed a motion that they were going to formally support this initiative.

01:45:14 Speaker 09: So, with that, I they've attached some information regarding this.

01:45:14 Speaker 09: It's basically encouraging the repair and reuse of existing buildings.

01:45:15 Speaker 09: This offers a faster, cheaper, and more sustainable path to affordable housing.

01:45:15 Speaker 09: It seems kind of like a win-win, really, and encouraging us to use the existing building stock of what makes Owen Sound unique,

01:45:16 Speaker 09: and I think so much of our downtown could also be reimagined through this lens as well.

01:45:16 Speaker 09: There's a lot of arguments you could be making for in terms of thinking about the embodied carbon of all the materials that are within the buildings that already exist,

01:45:16 Speaker 09: but I think ACO is making a pretty great case for that.

01:45:16 Speaker 09: I do have a motion that we could be bringing forward.

01:45:16 Speaker 09: It replicates a lot of what we saw at Soggy Shores.

01:45:17 Speaker 09: If I don't know if we want to have more discussion or if I should just jump right into that.

01:45:18 Speaker 09: Why don't you make your motion, and then it allows people to speak to the motion and have some discussion before we call the question on that.

01:45:18 Speaker 09: Sounds great.

01:45:19 Speaker 09: I'm going to take a sip of water before I start.

01:45:19 Speaker 09: Whereas older buildings have inherent sustainability and provide economic, environmental, and social benefits for Ontario communities, and whereas reuse of existing buildings reduces the need for increased infrastructure that accompanies new builds,

01:45:19 Speaker 09: such as sewer and water services, new roads, and sidewalks, and whereas reuse of existing buildings can reduce construction waste and extend the expectancy of landfills,

01:45:20 Speaker 09: and whereas keeping older buildings helps a community remain visually richer and enhances identity while building its tourism brand and appeal, and whereas creating a new application-based matching grant program of $10 million a year,

01:45:20 Speaker 09: modeled after an existing Alberta program, would incentivize owners and smaller developers to keep, fix, and reuse heritage buildings to create new housing,

01:45:20 Speaker 09: and whereas a grant program would provide an alternative to the Ontario Heritage Property Tax Relief Program, which has limited impact on developers and reduces municipal revenues,

01:45:21 Speaker 09: and whereas such a grant program would provide a simpler and more direct way for heritage building owners to fund renovations or conservation efforts,

01:45:21 Speaker 09: and whereas Ontario developers surveyed by the National Trust of Canada in two thousand and fourteen ranked a heritage revolving fund as the top incentive to encourage heritage development,

01:45:21 Speaker 09: if the grants are simple to apply for, to and to administer, and the fund is large enough to meet at least thirty-three percent of the demand,

01:45:22 Speaker 09: so that applicants have a reasonable chance of recovering the cost and effort of applying.

01:45:22 Speaker 09: Therefore, in consideration of item eleven B listed in correspondence on the April twenty-one, two thousand and twenty-six community services.

01:45:23 Speaker 09: 2026 Community Services Committee agenda.

01:45:24 Speaker 09: The Community Services Committee recommends that City Council one endorse the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario's proposal to include $10 million a year in the 2026 provincial budget for the Heritage Helping Housing grant funding,

01:45:24 Speaker 09: and direct staff to send this resolution to the Premier, Minister of Finance, Minister of Citizenship and Multiculturalism, MPP Paul Vickers, and the Association of Municipalities across Ontario.

01:45:24 Speaker 09: Okay.

01:45:24 Speaker 09: Does anyone have any questions or comments on that motion?

01:45:24 Speaker 09: Go ahead, Lam.

01:45:25 Speaker 09: Just very quickly, I support this.

01:45:25 Speaker 09: I think it's a tremendous initiative, and I'm really grateful that the member brought it forward in this fashion.

01:45:25 Speaker 09: So I certainly support it.

01:45:27 Speaker 09: Great.

01:45:27 Speaker 09: Anyone else?

01:45:30 Speaker 09: Okay.

01:45:30 Speaker 09: So she's brought forward the motion, and that like we don't need a second or a mover.

01:45:30 Speaker 09: So.

01:45:30 Speaker 09: I can just call the question.

01:45:30 Speaker 09: Okay, there's nothing further, then I will call the question.

01:45:31 Speaker 09: All those in favor, and that carries unanimously.

01:45:31 Speaker 09: Thank you for doing that, Ali.

01:45:31 Speaker 09: At 11C, we of course.

01:45:31 Speaker 09: Oh, oh, sorry, Pam.

01:45:31 Speaker 09: Go ahead.

01:45:32 Speaker 09: No, it's been a long night, but I just I you know really appreciate the motion coming forward this evening, and I just wanted to share with the committee.

01:45:32 Speaker 09: Just sitting here thinking tonight about this is a great way to incentivize reusing old buildings.

01:45:33 Speaker 09: But what has the city done already that this sort of builds on?

01:45:33 Speaker 09: And the new official plan and zoning bylaw support this.

01:45:33 Speaker 09: The zoning in the River District does allow residential in a certain area of the main floor.

01:45:33 Speaker 09: Council has waived the requirement for new parking spaces for ARUs.

01:45:33 Speaker 09: There's a heritage property tax rebate where there's does.

01:45:34 Speaker 09: Where there's designated buildings, DCs and existing buildings usually have credits pretty well equal to any DCs that would be owing, and then we have a CIP grant for vacant buildings.

01:45:34 Speaker 09: So, I don't want to pick on the sort of constant legislative changes, but these types of things are small and they lead to incremental construction.

01:45:35 Speaker 09: So, anyways, I think it's a great plan.

01:45:35 Speaker 09: Okay, great.

01:45:36 Speaker 09: And again, at eleven C correspondence from Community Heritage Ontario regarding spring quarterly newsletter.

01:45:36 Speaker 09: Did anyone have any questions/comments on that?

01:45:36 Speaker 09: You do.

01:45:36 Speaker 09: Okay, go ahead, Ellie.

01:45:36 Speaker 09: Sorry, a bit of my wheelhouse, so it's draws questions.

01:45:37 Speaker 09: I saw that this newsletter talks a lot about the extended deadline for designation of heritage properties.

01:45:37 Speaker 09: As of right now, January twenty twenty seven is the deadline for properties to be registered, or the heritage register will be effectively removed.

01:45:37 Speaker 09: And I was curious to know in this.

01:45:37 Speaker 09: There's a headline that says, "Would your municipality want an extended deadline?"

01:45:39 Speaker 09: I'm curious if Owen Sound is considering any of that.

01:45:40 Speaker 09: I know there was this deadline has already been extended, so I have a bit of a two-part question: Is do we want an extended deadline?

01:45:40 Speaker 09: Is that something we'd like to support?

01:45:41 Speaker 09: The second is, when the deadline was initially, two thousand and twenty-five, January two thousand and twenty-five, we had sent a pushout to properties on the list.

01:45:42 Speaker 09: Register?

01:45:42 Speaker 09: Are we interested in doing that again?

01:45:43 Speaker 09: Because maybe there's someone who missed it the first time and is encouraged to now.

01:45:43 Speaker 09: Yeah, those are my two questions.

01:45:43 Speaker 09: Through the chair and thanks for the question.

01:45:43 Speaker 09: We would absolutely support an extension, and yes, we could do another sort of reminder.

01:45:43 Speaker 09: There was a couple of designations that actually came out of that.

01:45:43 Speaker 09: At least one.

01:45:44 Speaker 09: So great that you remembered that old report and our strategy, and we're happy to do a push again using our communications team and and just a letter.

01:45:45 Speaker 09: So, if there's nothing further, do we need a motion to receive?

01:45:46 Speaker 09: Does someone want to move receipt of those?

01:45:46 Speaker 09: I'll go to Morgan for that.

01:45:46 Speaker 09: Nothing further.

01:45:46 Speaker 09: I will call the question. All those in favor? And that carries. All right, so that moves us to number twelve. Discussion of additional business, which we have none. At number thirteen, notices of motion. Do we have any notices of motion? Seeing none, then we are officially adjourned. Thank you, everyone. It is seven fifteen. That was a great meeting.