Owen Sound Committee - Corporate Services Meeting Transcript — July 10, 2025

00:10:45 Speaker 01: Quantitative standpoint, but to the qualitative standpoint, the community values those highly and thinks that they're in great condition.

00:10:51 Speaker 01: So this is something that our crew is going to have to work with going forward, is tying those qualitative and quantitative measurements together into the plan.

00:11:01 Speaker 01: The core asset network has a replacement value of one million three hundred thousand dollars.

00:11:07 Speaker 01: So that's our roads, bridges, stormwater, water, and wastewater.

00:11:10 Speaker 01: This is up one hundred and forty million dollars from the 2022 asset management plan.

00:11:16 Speaker 01: We're seeing kind of the impacts of inflation post-pandemic that we're starting to see kind of level out a little bit, but it has increased the costs.

00:11:27 Speaker 01: This does not include any of the tariff stuff that's going on in the world because it hasn't necessarily impacted us greatly at this point.

00:11:34 Speaker 01: But it's something that, as we continue to work with these documents in the future,

00:11:38 Speaker 01: we'll continue to update the replacement values versus us having hired a consultant and just doing that as a snapshot in time.

00:11:44 Speaker 01: If we get good news or we see prices come down in some areas, we can reflect it into the plan.

00:11:50 Speaker 01: The non-core asset replacement values are three hundred million dollars, and that's the same as last fall.

00:11:55 Speaker 01: So that hasn't been indexed since last fall.

00:12:01 Speaker 01: Both of the asset management plans identify that the assets are in fair condition when they're looked at as a whole.

00:12:08 Speaker 01: So I think that's a good thing for the city.

00:12:10 Speaker 01: We have a couple poor assets, but we also have some good ones, and they're all just kind of middling around that middle.

00:12:16 Speaker 01: So it shows that we are making an investment into these assets.

00:12:20 Speaker 01: And on the next one with the average annual financial overview, it shows what the average annual funding need is, and that includes our operating and capital expenditures for those assets,

00:12:30 Speaker 01: as well as what the average annual need is, based on the current level of service.

00:12:35 Speaker 01: And what I would say our current level of service is is that we're funding what we can, and we're very reactive in nature.

00:12:42 Speaker 01: So there's not a lot of preventative maintenance built into our operating projects, nor is there a lot of early intervention on our capital assets,

00:12:51 Speaker 01: and that's something that we'll have to work on going forward as we address our funding gap.

00:12:56 Speaker 01: Our annual funding gap is thirty-eight million dollars.

00:13:02 Speaker 01: Of that, eleven million dollars is tax-supported, so that's in the roads, the bridges, the stormwater arenas, those parks and our open spaces assets.

00:13:12 Speaker 01: With the remainder coming from our water and wastewater rates.

00:13:15 Speaker 01: An eleven million dollar funding gap.

00:13:18 Speaker 01: If we were to wave a wand and get rid of that on the tax-supported side, it would be a one-time 30% tax increase,

00:13:24 Speaker 01: and we know that's something that's not necessarily in the best interests of the city or its taxpayers.

00:13:31 Speaker 01: So we will have to continue to work on strategies to lessen that gap.

00:13:36 Speaker 01: I don't believe there's a municipality anywhere in Ontario or the world that would be able to completely eliminate their funding gaps, but we'll strive to address those, minimize them,

00:13:48 Speaker 01: and continue to share these numbers with upper-tier levels of government.

00:13:52 Speaker 01: You are going to see in all of our grant applications and all of our communications to the province, to the federal government, the 38 million dollars.

00:13:59 Speaker 01: This is going to be a number that we're going to hit them with every time we submit something to them, letting them know that this does exist.

00:14:10 Speaker 01: The next step is the levels of service.

00:14:13 Speaker 01: So in the province's mind, that we would have all done a great job of getting through 2024, and that between July 2024 and July 2025,

00:14:22 Speaker 01: we would all have been really able to move these asset management plans along further, and develop proposed levels of service based on the findings of the 2022 and the 2024 asset management plans.

00:14:34 Speaker 01: For the purposes of this plan, our current levels of service, as I said, are just replacing things more or less when they break or when they get to the point of failure.

00:14:42 Speaker 01: We do have some proactive exercises mainly in our roads, and our bridges and culverts, but that is because we've had many years of inspections and recommendations for those asset classes.

00:14:55 Speaker 01: So we've known for a lot of years how many kilometres of road we had in the condition, and the bridges.

00:14:59 Speaker 01: It's a legislative requirement to do those.

00:15:02 Speaker 01: So those programmemememememememes are a little bit more advanced compared to the parks and open spaces, which we physically went around and collected the data on last year.

00:15:08 Speaker 01: So in some aspects, we knew how many picnic tables, or we knew we had picnic tables.

00:15:12 Speaker 01: We didn't know how many, so this has been an exercise in us collecting that information, and now it allows us to start to build those capital plans.

00:15:20 Speaker 01: The next part is kind of taking that quantitative measurement and matching it up with the qualitative, making sure that if we have a hundred community or picnic tables, is that something that the community wants?

00:15:31 Speaker 01: Do we have enough?

00:15:32 Speaker 01: Do we have too many?

00:15:33 Speaker 01: How are we going to deal with that going forward?

00:15:36 Speaker 01: And that's going to be an exercise of our internal asset management committee, the community, and council to work through as we move forward.

00:15:45 Speaker 01: We did some high-level engagement back this past spring.

00:15:49 Speaker 01: We used our city engagement website to collect information from the public.

00:15:53 Speaker 01: We didn't have a great turnout.

00:15:55 Speaker 01: It was about I think 60 to 70 participants that completed the survey.

00:16:00 Speaker 01: And the key point that we took out of that was we put a video in there to explain what asset management was a couple times, including "Did you watch this video?"

00:16:08 Speaker 01: And a lot of people still clicked "No, we didn't" watch the video, so it kind of skewed the results.

00:16:13 Speaker 01: And but at the end of the day, the community was relatively happy with the quality, reliability, and availability of most of these non-core assets.

00:16:24 Speaker 01: The reason why we did this was because, as you're aware, in 2022, the province dictated the levels of service for the qualitative and quantitative measures,

00:16:33 Speaker 01: but did not provide that in the legislation for the 2024 assets.

00:16:36 Speaker 01: So we were kind of left to our own.

00:16:38 Speaker 01: We got this quality, reliability, and availability idea from our larger Grey Bruce Asset Management group as we talked through these together.

00:16:45 Speaker 01: But as a group, we weren't even really able to agree on a set document that we would all use going forward.

00:16:51 Speaker 01: And that's something that I want to take to that group so that we can work through these things together.

00:16:56 Speaker 01: So that we're not trying to answer something that our neighbouring municipality is trying to answer at the same time.

00:17:01 Speaker 01: Let's put our heads together and work on that.

00:17:02 Speaker 01: So it's something that we'll take to the table as Owen Sound and see if we can get a group to work on this together.

00:17:08 Speaker 01: The other thing that we tried to drive home in the survey was that levels of service are not about the day-to-day operations, like how often snow is cleared,

00:17:15 Speaker 01: the number of staff that the city has, or the waste collection schedule being the day of the week.

00:17:20 Speaker 01: Those are very operational and come with larger, either legislative requirements or contractual requirements.

00:17:26 Speaker 01: This was about the availability of those assets and how many parks we have in the community, how many arenas, and everything like that that comes with that.

00:17:34 Speaker 01: The levels of service are evaluative.

00:17:35 Speaker 01: Levels of service are evaluated by the city every day, and it's something almost on every council agenda.

00:17:40 Speaker 01: There's some level of service being discussed that's very operational in nature.

00:17:46 Speaker 01: So, what the survey results were that we were able to measure those into whether or not the community felt that they were in good, fair, or poor condition from their aspect on the quality.

00:18:01 Speaker 01: So, how good they were, the reliability is enough.

00:18:03 Speaker 01: Is the arena open?

00:18:04 Speaker 01: Going is that bridge open for you to cross?

00:18:07 Speaker 01: And then the availability, the frequency that these assets are in the neighbourhood and available for residents across the city to use, not just in one specific area.

00:18:17 Speaker 01: The one key one that we've talked about.

00:18:19 Speaker 01: I know the Deputy Mayor brought it up last November was the arena and the community centres and why they score so poorly from an asset condition rating.

00:18:30 Speaker 01: But as you'll see here, the community is quite happy with the quality, reliability, and availability of those, and it's really driving home the life cycle costs of those arenas.

00:18:39 Speaker 01: And at that time, at the 2024 plan, the Bayshore Community Centre, the floor needed to be replaced, the boards needed to be replaced, the Julia MacArthur Regional Recreation Centre.

00:18:51 Speaker 01: This was before we awarded the contract for the roof replacements.

00:18:55 Speaker 01: We've scheduled the next set of roof replacements at the Julia MacArthur for 2030.

00:19:00 Speaker 01: Those will get updated and should make those conditions look better on these buildings as we keep them up to date.

00:19:05 Speaker 01: So if we continue to use the 2024 report, those will look poor.

00:19:09 Speaker 01: But as we make those investments and update these documents regularly, the condition side of things will start to match what the community levels of service are for that building as well.

00:19:22 Speaker 01: The matrix kind of this was generated by our Asset Management Coordinator, who's unfortunately left us to do asset management at another municipality.

00:19:31 Speaker 01: She took the results and put it into a matrix to kind of show the probability of failure and the consequence of failure, merging the qualitative and quantitative measures,

00:19:42 Speaker 01: and this will allow us to kind of focus our attention on the areas that we need to work out as Asset Management staff to develop some levels of service, some Asset Management strategies,

00:19:52 Speaker 01: and some financing strategies.

00:19:54 Speaker 01: So the road network, while it is in good shape from a technical standpoint, the community still doesn't feel like their roads are in good shape,

00:20:02 Speaker 01: and a lot of that can be driven by localized issues.

00:20:05 Speaker 01: Whereas we are evaluated from the entire lane kilometres, so we have some good roads and we know we have some bad roads.

00:20:13 Speaker 01: Generally, those bad roads we hear about the most.

00:20:16 Speaker 01: We don't get phone calls telling us how good our roads are.

00:20:19 Speaker 01: We get phone calls telling us how bad they are.

00:20:20 Speaker 01: So, how can we address that, but also keep the average pavement condition up for levels of service that we can look at in the future?

00:20:30 Speaker 01: Are levels to maintain an average Pavement Condition Index of a certain number on our arterial roads.

00:20:36 Speaker 01: But on our local dead-end roads, are we going to be happy with reducing that?

00:20:42 Speaker 01: It'll help from our financial standpoint, but it's going to lead to decreased customer satisfaction on those.

00:20:47 Speaker 01: So that'll be something that we work through as we look to integrate those condition scores, but also add in things like the daily traffic on those roads,

00:20:56 Speaker 01: the number of repairs over the course of the years;

00:20:58 Speaker 01: we're going to add more factors into the decision-making so that when we get down to picking the one road that can be done out of the five,

00:21:07 Speaker 01: we'll have a bit more data behind it than strictly just relying on the PCI and not getting the best bang for the buck for our limited dollars.

00:21:15 Speaker 01: And then on the low end, the arenas and trails, we'll probably not focus as much attention on the levels of service and strategies on those because we're still collecting a lot of the data,

00:21:25 Speaker 01: or there's already significant investment happening in those over the next couple of years.

00:21:31 Speaker 01: So this is an example of how we can generate a plan after working on this together.

00:21:38 Speaker 01: Is that what kind of activities do we need to look at for our road network, for our outdoor facilities?

00:21:43 Speaker 01: And as you see, the assets that have the low level of risk, a lot of that is just operating and maintenance type expenses and programmemememememememes.

00:21:51 Speaker 01: But with the road networks, it'll be us looking at the major rehabilitation or phased replacement,

00:21:56 Speaker 01: and this is all before we look at what we have to factor from our water and wastewater infrastructure that's underneath those.

00:22:02 Speaker 01: So we have to do a good job of tying those all in together, so that we're looking at this holistically rather than just one specific asset class at a time.

00:22:14 Speaker 01: The last part of the survey was just asking people their high-level opinions.

00:22:19 Speaker 01: Once again, this is only representing about sixty to seventy City ratepayers, and not all of them having watched really the video on what Asset Management was, what they would be interested in funding moving forward.

00:22:32 Speaker 01: Having answered all the questions about the quality, the quantity, and the availability and the reliability of our assets, there is an interest in increased funding for both core and non-core assets in the future.

00:22:45 Speaker 01: But once again, this survey was focused on Asset Management.

00:22:47 Speaker 01: At that point, it didn't include all the operating budget pressures that Council will likely hear about this fall.

00:22:52 Speaker 01: So it seems like a good idea right now, but I think when we get further into the budget process, that number could slightly change,

00:22:59 Speaker 01: or we could have another sixty to seventy people telling us something different.

00:23:03 Speaker 01: So this isn't how I'm going to drive the plan and tell you to add the thirty percent to the capital budget and just resolve our plan.

00:23:10 Speaker 01: But it's something that we'll look at and continue to monitor as we move forward.

00:23:17 Speaker 01: Taking the condition data and then moving through the levels of service, the next step is to develop an Asset Management strategy, and this is really going to be a staff-led initiative to implement what staff,

00:23:29 Speaker 01: the community, and Council want to see from a level of service, and it'll help drive the Asset Management and capital programmemememememememe going forward.

00:23:37 Speaker 01: So it's developing the set of planned actions that we can use going forward.

00:23:43 Speaker 01: So an example on this slide is that we would say this is a road that has a thirty-five year lifespan.

00:23:51 Speaker 01: If we build that road new this year, let it go for thirty-five years and run it into the ground, the replacement at that time will be sixty million dollars.

00:23:59 Speaker 01: If we can put some proactive maintenance or some rehabilitation strategies into it in different intervals, like adding an additional resurfacing in year twenty-five or thirty, milling that up, putting another one down,

00:24:14 Speaker 01: and protect the base underneath that road.

00:24:17 Speaker 01: Those are going to be smaller projects at lower values.

00:24:22 Speaker 01: And as long as that main asset, being the base underneath the road, doesn't deteriorate, we can extend the life of that road.

00:24:28 Speaker 01: So we can continue to do it and extend that road asset up to sixty-five years, and incur, for this example,

00:24:36 Speaker 01: forty million dollars worth of work instead of looking at sixty to one hundred and twenty million dollars worth of work.

00:24:41 Speaker 01: This would be similar to arena equipment, making sure that we're doing the timely investments when we have the summer months off for the arenas,

00:24:49 Speaker 01: doing the rehabilitation of the pumps early in the process to keep those pumps up and going, and not letting them get to the point of costly failure.

00:24:56 Speaker 01: This looks great when I'm sitting behind my computer and preaching this, and it's going to be difficult to build those in,

00:25:02 Speaker 01: but that's the kind of strategies that we need to look at for all asset classes.

00:25:06 Speaker 01: And as I said earlier, roads and bridges, the engineers, and over the years and the legislature, the legislative requirements have done a great job of us understanding what we need to do at different points.

00:25:16 Speaker 01: We don't have that understanding for other asset classes,

00:25:18 Speaker 01: so it's something that we're going to have to work on as staff and build those plans in order to reduce the life cycle cost for that asset over its lifespan.

00:25:29 Speaker 01: The other part is once we develop the Asset Management strategies, that then we build the financial strategy around it.

00:25:36 Speaker 01: But once again, sitting behind the desk and only having my Asset Management hat on, it doesn't reflect the other documents that the City produces over an annual or over a year,

00:25:47 Speaker 01: over a life or a term of Council, or over long terms.

00:25:50 Speaker 01: We have other strategic priorities.

00:25:52 Speaker 01: We have long-term financial plans, multi-year budgets.

00:25:55 Speaker 01: This is where we need to tie this together so that the decisions made in the capital budget and through the Asset Management plan are also being reflected in our operating budget.

00:26:04 Speaker 01: So if we start to ignore some asset classes or not invest heavily in them, we're going to see increased operating costs for those,

00:26:13 Speaker 01: and increased operating costs and maintenance requirements could have negative impacts on the City going forward.

00:26:19 Speaker 01: In order to meet those requirements, it's going to mean the closure of some assets where we just simply have to board them up because we can't continue to use them into the future.

00:26:28 Speaker 01: Those still incur operating costs because you still have to do security on them, check on them, and do basic maintenance so that we maintain compliance with all the other legislation,

00:26:38 Speaker 01: including our own Property Standards bylaws, and things like the Occupational Health and Safety Act and the Occupiers Liability Act.

00:26:44 Speaker 01: We have to make sure that they are also safe, so those do incur costs.

00:26:50 Speaker 01: So it's a mixed web on how we're going to tie this together.

00:26:53 Speaker 01: We're not exactly sure how it all fits together at this standpoint,

00:26:56 Speaker 01: but it's just something that we have to develop that culture of staff to be mindful of not looking at one document at a time,

00:27:02 Speaker 01: understanding how all of these various programmemememememememes and plans are all tied together.

00:27:10 Speaker 01: So the next steps is that hopefully with the Committee receiving this tonight and not telling me not to post it to our website,

00:27:19 Speaker 01: we'll get it posted after the Committee meeting or minutes are approved by Council.

00:27:24 Speaker 01: So on July twenty-second, we'll post this plan to our City website and open up the ability for the public to provide feedback on this plan between the twenty-second of July and August twenty-ninth, twenty-twenty-five,

00:27:36 Speaker 01: so that we can review the feedback and do some analysis and see how we can incorporate it into either this Asset Management plan or make an improvement plan or discuss with Council how we can

00:27:49 Speaker 01: integrate some of this into future exercises.

00:27:51 Speaker 01: So if it's not necessarily applicable to the plan at this time, what can we do to implement it?

00:27:56 Speaker 01: I think based on my conversations with other groups in different parts of my job, I suspect that there's going to be a request for an increased climate lens on the plan.

00:28:06 Speaker 01: So it's not necessarily a requirement of Oreg 5817, but it is something that some of the more progressive municipalities are factoring into their plans.

00:28:16 Speaker 01: So how could we address that, or when is a good time to address that?

00:28:21 Speaker 01: Another example is our development part because we're under twenty-five thousand people.

00:28:25 Speaker 01: It's not something that is legislated, but if all of the buildings get built that have been approved, we're going to progress towards that twenty-five thousand sometime over the lifespan of this plan.

00:28:37 Speaker 01: How are we going to address that?

00:28:39 Speaker 01: Not considering all of the other changes that are coming down from the development charge side of things, and how it seems to be changing by the minute,

00:28:46 Speaker 01: but we will have to build those into future iterations of this plan as well.

00:28:52 Speaker 01: So the next step is that this really should have been instead of steps, more of a circle.

00:28:55 Speaker 01: Is that the goal here is to continue to update the plans?

00:28:59 Speaker 01: This is why you're going to see the very repetitive document, 500 pages.

00:29:03 Speaker 01: We've constructed that document into a series of what I'm calling our report cards, and that's where we'll update those to our various divisional managers,

00:29:11 Speaker 01: but also bring those back to the various standing committees to review, so that it's not one council or one committee reviewing all 500 pages at a time.

00:29:20 Speaker 01: We'll bring these documents back and update them, not on an annual basis because I don't think we would be able to pull that off as staff, but we'll set up a plan and say, okay,

00:29:29 Speaker 01: the roads one—the roads get inspected every three years.

00:29:31 Speaker 01: We're going to bring this plan back every three years and update it, moving forward.

00:29:37 Speaker 01: So the recommendation for today is that, in consideration of staff report CR 25091, respecting the 2025 asset management plan endorsement, the Corporate Services committee recommends that City Council receive the report for information purposes.

00:29:52 Speaker 02: And with that, I'm happy to take any questions.

00:29:56 Speaker 02: Okay.

00:29:57 Speaker 02: That, and thank you for all the work that you've done on this.

00:29:59 Speaker 02: I know it's been a lot on your plate.

00:30:05 Speaker 02: Does anyone have any questions for Brady?

00:30:06 Speaker 02: Neil, go ahead.

00:30:09 Speaker 03: First, I'll move that we recommend the recommendation to council through the chair.

00:30:17 Speaker 03: Brady, thanks for all your commentary because it helped me understand a lot of stuff that I didn't completely understand in the report.

00:30:22 Speaker 03: I have a frustration with the overall presentation report, and that to me it would lack detail for making any decisions.

00:30:31 Speaker 03: So I'm wondering, is there more in some other report, or like I just think about the trails and the parks.

00:30:37 Speaker 03: I don't know which trails or which parks this is talking about that are poor.

00:30:41 Speaker 03: So it would be difficult for me as a councillor or as a ratepayer to review this and comment on any of the things that are in the report.

00:30:49 Speaker 03: Thanks.

00:30:53 Speaker 01: Thank you to the member, Madam Chair.

00:30:56 Speaker 01: Yes, in asset management, the plan's intention is to be high level and collect a series of those documents.

00:31:03 Speaker 01: What you'll see over time is that there will be the detailed assessments that staff are completing, and I believe the intention would be to bring those reports back to the Standing Committee.

00:31:12 Speaker 01: So I know this summer we're actually hiring a company to do the trail assessments.

00:31:16 Speaker 01: They'll do a condition scoring of each of our trail sections, and they'll make a recommendation plan for us that we'll use.

00:31:22 Speaker 01: The cost to put into this high-level plan, but there will be a series of smaller reports that are operating in the background, similar to our bridge inspections.

00:31:31 Speaker 01: Every two years, we have to inspect the city bridges.

00:31:33 Speaker 01: We hire a consultant; they go out and do the detailed inspections.

00:31:36 Speaker 01: We get four to five hundred pages of information back.

00:31:39 Speaker 01: To put that into a plan or into this document would create a three to five thousand-page document.

00:31:45 Speaker 01: So we just take the results of those, put it into the high-level plan, but there will always be something behind the scenes that will be shared with committees, council, or posted to our websites.

00:31:57 Speaker 01: Does anyone else have any questions?

00:32:00 Speaker 01: No. Go ahead, Deputy Mayor Greig.

00:32:04 Speaker 01: Just two questions internally.

00:32:07 Speaker 04: Building the plan to begin with is much more work than just sustaining this part of it.

00:32:12 Speaker 04: So I'm just wondering what kind of a staffing contingent is needed.

00:32:16 Speaker 04: You mentioned a staffing.

00:32:20 Speaker 04: Resources left us and went to another community.

00:32:23 Speaker 04: I think some communities are probably still further behind us in the development of their plans.

00:32:30 Speaker 04: So, what are the needs operationally, annually, kind of to maintain this?

00:32:37 Speaker 04: And also, it'd be kind of nice just to have.

00:32:39 Speaker 04: Is there a source where yourself or municipalities are going to allow themselves to compare their positioning across the province.

00:32:51 Speaker 04: Like we could have people say your roads are terrible, and then I might be like, have you drove through downtown Amira or on York Boulevard in Hamilton lately?

00:33:01 Speaker 04: Like, yeah, but okay.

00:33:04 Speaker 04: Like, let's let's see how we stack up and compare.

00:33:08 Speaker 04: And every municipality across the board is going to say, well, we're underfunded by thirty percent, sixty percent, seventy percent.

00:33:15 Speaker 04: So it'd be nice to have like a benchmark, like what's really bad in our comparators.

00:33:21 Speaker 04: What's you know not too not too bad in comparison.

00:33:26 Speaker 04: So just some comments there.

00:33:28 Speaker 04: Thanks.

00:33:30 Speaker 01: Thank you to the Deputy Mayor through, Madam Chair.

00:33:33 Speaker 01: The first one with the staffing.

00:33:35 Speaker 01: We have a dedicated asset management and risk management coordinator.

00:33:40 Speaker 01: The current incumbent is off on a maternity leave.

00:33:44 Speaker 01: We've had to fill that position twice over the term of the contract, so it's currently vacant until the individual comes back from maternity leave in August.

00:33:54 Speaker 01: That person's responsibility will be to continue to take this plan and move it forward.

00:33:57 Speaker 01: You'll recall in the 2024 plan, it was led by Sierra Patino.

00:34:01 Speaker 01: She did the presentation and walked everybody through.

00:34:04 Speaker 01: We support all of the departments and divisions so that we have that corporate lens on it.

00:34:10 Speaker 01: So before each individual department generated their own plans, submitted their own budgets, and it wasn't really coordinated through finance as well.

00:34:18 Speaker 01: So that's why the role of the Corporate Services department is to support the operations that way.

00:34:23 Speaker 01: We are we operate with an internal asset management committee, so that at the table we have engineering, public works, water, wastewater, parks, facilities.

00:34:33 Speaker 01: We all operate in a group, so that role helps coordinate everybody together to make sure information is consistent, so that we're presenting it all in a consistent fashion going forward.

00:34:43 Speaker 01: The other part of that role is that mixed in with the risk management is that obviously as we make decisions with this going forward, it's going to lead to potentially increased risk for the city.

00:34:53 Speaker 01: So this role can also work with individual divisions to help mitigate against some of that risk as well.

00:35:00 Speaker 01: So I don't we don't track the number of hours that we dedicate to this, but I would say that role probably 80% of it is asset management.

00:35:10 Speaker 01: In some aspect, we've incorporated like our tangible capital asset reporting for the audit into that rule.

00:35:16 Speaker 01: The disposal of assets.

00:35:17 Speaker 01: So when we sell assets, it's all coordinated through one rule going out, so that we don't have a bunch of assets sitting there.

00:35:22 Speaker 01: We don't buy a pickup truck and hide another one in the back forty.

00:35:26 Speaker 01: We make sure that when that new truck comes in, somebody's saying, "Okay, old truck out," so that we're not incurring costs going forward.

00:35:32 Speaker 01: Then there's also percentage of my time as well as our GIS coordinator, and as the members of council and the committee will recall,

00:35:39 Speaker 01: we added eighty thousand dollars in grant funding to our operating budget through our Ontario Community Infrastructure Funding Programmemememememememe to offset those staff operational costs.

00:35:51 Speaker 01: We are permitted to do that within the funding programmemememememememe, so we implemented that for 2025.

00:35:55 Speaker 01: So it offsets the cost of the asset risk management coordinator myself and our GIS coordinator.

00:36:01 Speaker 01: It's something that when I talk to other municipalities, I say this is an easy win for you to build the staff capacity to do it,

00:36:09 Speaker 01: but everybody's so focused on keeping their roads in good shape using that money and not necessarily using the holistic fashion that we at the city use.

00:36:20 Speaker 01: The what was the other part of the question?

00:36:24 Speaker 01: Was the comparators?

00:36:25 Speaker 01: Yeah, and that's what we struggle with.

00:36:29 Speaker 01: The 2022 asset management plan did a great job of requiring us to list our pavement condition indexes, our bridge condition indexes.

00:36:36 Speaker 01: and all those quantitative measures, but they did not provide that for the 2024 plan, and that's where we struggle here, as well as in our larger Bruce Grey Asset Manager group.

00:36:45 Speaker 01: Is how do we compare our arenas against each other, and there's no real industry standard unless we do it all the same.

00:36:54 Speaker 01: So some municipalities, I know Saugeen Shores, Meaford, Town of Blue Mountains, here at the City,

00:37:00 Speaker 01: we did building condition assessments that generates a facility condition index number that we can now compare because there's a standard tool that everybody evaluates their buildings.

00:37:11 Speaker 01: But if another municipality just looks at it and says, "Yep, this looks good," then it's difficult to compare.

00:37:18 Speaker 01: So that's what we're going to try and work towards.

00:37:21 Speaker 01: The Ministry understands this.

00:37:24 Speaker 01: They are reviewing everybody's asset management plans.

00:37:28 Speaker 01: We've heard rumblings that they will make us have to potentially audit our asset management plans going forward.

00:37:35 Speaker 01: That will probably come with a cost, but hopefully it'll be something that will be an eligible expense under their programmemememememememe to do that.

00:37:42 Speaker 01: We're not sure exactly where that's going to go, but they did change their funding model for the programmemememememememes, like the Ontario Community Infrastructure Funding Programmemememememememe, to being more data-driven.

00:37:51 Speaker 01: And now we share our information with them on the replacement values of our assets, and then they compare those against each other.

00:37:59 Speaker 01: And if there's a number that is out of whack, if we say it's $1,000 a metre to replace a metre of water main, but a neighbouring municipality says $100,

00:38:09 Speaker 01: they will take a look at both of us and they might move it more to the average.

00:38:12 Speaker 01: So if they see across all 444 municipalities that it's $500 a metre is the average, they'll weigh our allocations towards those replacement values so that I can't lie and make our condition, our financial condition,

00:38:25 Speaker 01: look worse than it is.

00:38:30 Speaker 01: Okay, you good?

00:38:35 Speaker 04: If the Province wants to impose additional costs, I hope you come back to Council so we can formalize a letter to oppose such an action,

00:38:43 Speaker 04: because it would be tremendously unnecessary and wasteful of the Province to do such.

00:38:50 Speaker 04: Anyone else have any questions, comments?

00:38:53 Speaker 02: No, I believe you move the recommendation, so we have the recommendation on the floor.

00:38:59 Speaker 02: And I'll call the question.

00:39:00 Speaker 02: All in favour, and that carries.

00:39:04 Speaker 02: So that ends our reports from City staff for the evening.

00:39:08 Speaker 02: We have no matters postponed.

00:39:10 Speaker 02: We have no motions for which notice was previously given.

00:39:14 Speaker 02: Correspondence provided for information.

00:39:17 Speaker 02: We have none, and additional business.

00:39:20 Speaker 02: We have none.

00:39:20 Speaker 02: But I will welcome our new member to the committee.

00:39:23 Speaker 02: Megan Robertson is joining us for the first time this evening.

00:39:26 Speaker 02: And does anyone have any notices of motion?

00:39:30 Speaker 02: Seeing none, it is 6:09 p.m., and I will call this meeting adjourned.

00:39:36 Speaker 02: Thank you, everyone.