Owen Sound Council Meeting Transcript — September 9, 2026

00:00:30 Speaker 01: Good morning.

00:00:30 Speaker 01: This is the Service Review Implementation Ad Hoc Committee, City of Owen Sound.

00:00:35 Speaker 01: It is September 9, 2026, at 9 a.m.

00:00:38 Speaker 01: We'll call the meeting to order.

00:00:39 Speaker 01: Is there any additional business?

00:00:42 Speaker 01: Not seeing any hands going up.

00:00:45 Speaker 01: Declaration of interests.

00:00:47 Speaker 01: Not seeing any hands going up.

00:00:48 Speaker 01: Confirmation of minutes from the meeting back in June 10th.

00:00:52 Speaker 01: Melanie is moving them.

00:00:55 Speaker 01: Any questions?

00:00:56 Speaker 01: No. Call the question on aye.

00:00:57 Speaker 01: No, call the question.

00:00:58 Speaker 01: All in favour?

00:00:59 Speaker 01: It's carried.

00:01:00 Speaker 01: Number five, we have no deputations or presentations.

00:01:03 Speaker 01: Number six, public forum.

00:01:05 Speaker 01: There is nobody in the room to ask any questions.

00:01:09 Speaker 01: There are no correspondence items being presented for consideration at number seven.

00:01:14 Speaker 01: So we get to number eight.

00:01:15 Speaker 01: A report from the City Manager regarding the Service Review Implementation Ad Hoc Committee summary and next steps report.

00:01:24 Speaker 01: Tim, go ahead.

00:01:27 Speaker 02: Thank you, Mayor.

00:01:28 Speaker 02: Members of committee, good to go, good to go.

00:01:35 Speaker 02: So, I've created a small slide deck and a few written remarks to share as we close out this term of council's committee, this Service Review committee.

00:01:48 Speaker 02: So, the Service Review began as an opportunity to see how the City delivers services and uses its resources.

00:01:55 Speaker 02: And perhaps most would have simply defined the outcome as cost savings and cost avoidance.

00:02:01 Speaker 02: However, over the past two and a half years, it became something much broader—a corporate modernization initiative that has strengthened how we plan, manage, and deliver and evaluate municipal services.

00:02:15 Speaker 02: What began with our first committee meeting in February of 2024, as a response to 49 approved actions, quickly grew into a much broader review of how the City operates.

00:02:26 Speaker 02: The committee received approximately six to eight reports over the past two years, covering operational reviews, technology modernization, service levels, governance, financial analysis, and organisational planning.

00:02:39 Speaker 02: The work touched virtually every area of the corporation and created a much clearer picture of what we do, what it costs, and where future pressure exists.

00:02:49 Speaker 02: Slide, please.

00:02:51 Speaker 02: Some of the most important results are, quite frankly, not individual savings or completed projects.

00:02:56 Speaker 02: They are the systems and practices that will continue to produce value over time.

00:03:00 Speaker 02: Some actions are immediate, some savings are immediate, but this is working toward a future state for the City five to ten years from now.

00:03:08 Speaker 02: Project team replaced disconnected spreadsheets with a corporate approach to project coordination, budgeting, and reporting.

00:03:15 Speaker 02: Standardized onboarding improved consistency for new employees.

00:03:19 Speaker 02: The City also established stronger work planning, service level reviews, fleet planning, cost allocations, agreement management, and performance measurement practices.

00:03:28 Speaker 02: These are foundational changes in how we, as the organisation, operate.

00:03:34 Speaker 02: Although much of the work happened behind the scenes, a goal was better service for residents, businesses, and visitors.

00:03:40 Speaker 02: Cloud permit modernized permit processing and customer access.

00:03:44 Speaker 02: Virtual City Hall and other online tools expanded our digital service delivery.

00:03:49 Speaker 02: The tourism pilot at the Tom Thomson Art Gallery improved visitor experience, collabouration, staffing resilience, and service continuity.

00:03:57 Speaker 02: These initiatives show that better service can come from stronger coordination, technology, and improved ways of working, rather than simply adding resources.

00:04:08 Speaker 02: A major challenge at the beginning of Service Review was that some of the information needed to support decisions either did not exist or was not available in a usable form.

00:04:18 Speaker 02: And this graphic just really—I put it in because I was amazed when you look back at what Parks and that group did.

00:04:24 Speaker 02: They've inventoried 5,100 park assets and classified those.

00:04:30 Speaker 02: Another example is the fleet management strategy that created the City's first comprehensive corporate fleet framework.

00:04:37 Speaker 02: The addition of resource alignment to our staff report template gives Council and the public a more complete view of financial information, staffing, technology, timing, and operational implications.

00:04:51 Speaker 02: The result of that is better questions, better information, and ultimately better decisions.

00:04:56 Speaker 02: The Service Review has generated more than two million dollars through savings, new revenue, operational efficiencies, and cost avoidance.

00:05:06 Speaker 02: Examples include more than three hundred seventy thousand dollars annually through the court security agreement, expected annual municipal accommodation tax revenue of four hundred thousand dollars,

00:05:16 Speaker 02: between one hundred eighteen thousand and two hundred fifty thousand dollars in annual soft savings through corporate services modernization, and additional close to six hundred thousand in cost avoidance through the parks and playground work.

00:05:29 Speaker 02: Not every benefit appears as a direct budget reduction, but reduced manual work, faster processes, and avoided future costs all improve the City's capacity to deliver services.

00:05:42 Speaker 02: This work was all undertaken while employees continued delivering core municipal services and completing more than one hundred operating and capital projects.

00:05:51 Speaker 02: The pace of change required a significant commitment from staff across the organisation.

00:05:56 Speaker 02: Not every initiative was completed exactly as first envisioned, as priorities, legislation, staffing changes, and operational demands evolved.

00:06:05 Speaker 02: However, approximately eighty percent of the projects are complete or near completion, and the work has left the City considerably stronger than when it began, and I believe that effort really deserves recognition.

00:06:19 Speaker 02: The next chapter will move this work through into the Resilient Community Advisory Committee.

00:06:24 Speaker 02: The conclusion of this committee's mandate does not mean the work is ending.

00:06:28 Speaker 02: The City is now managing 157 projects through its organisational work plan, supported by stronger project management, planning, service level review, and performance measurement practices.

00:06:39 Speaker 02: This next chapter, so to speak, again will continue through the Resilient Committee.

00:06:43 Speaker 02: As mentioned, the lasting value of the Service Review is not simply the projects completed or dollars saved.

00:06:49 Speaker 02: It's a stronger organisation with better systems, more reliable information, and a growing culture of continuous improvement.

00:06:56 Speaker 02: With that, I want to thank this committee and past committee members for all of the work through the Service Review project.

00:07:01 Speaker 02: And as I started out, I don't know exactly what was envisioned.

00:07:05 Speaker 02: We envisioned that we'd go into this again, looking at cost savings and cost avoidance,

00:07:11 Speaker 02: but perhaps maybe not as much about the modernization and setting the organisation up for where we go over the next five, ten, or fifteen years.

00:07:17 Speaker 02: And with that, that's the presentation this morning.

00:07:23 Speaker 02: Took me longer to read it.

00:07:27 Speaker 02: Questions?

00:07:27 Speaker 02: Comments?

00:07:29 Speaker 03: Yep.

00:07:31 Speaker 03: No questions.

00:07:31 Speaker 03: Just comment.

00:07:33 Speaker 03: I've had the privilege of sitting on this committee the entire time that it's been run.

00:07:36 Speaker 03: Time that it's been running, and I think it's one of the most valuable committees that we've had over the last term.

00:07:45 Speaker 03: You're right that it may not be dollar-sign savings, but seeing how we've evolved with you know virtual City Hall and the project management software, you know,

00:07:55 Speaker 03: developing the service levels across parks and and you know understanding more what the assets are and how we can you know meet the demands, I think has been very valuable.

00:08:06 Speaker 03: And I hope that this does continue on.

00:08:08 Speaker 03: Maybe not in in you know these 49 actions over a term, but I think it is very valuable,

00:08:17 Speaker 03: and I'm happy to see that we're going to be continuing in some capacity in the new term under the new committee.

00:08:24 Speaker 03: So, well done.

00:08:29 Speaker 03: Yes, I echo that.

00:08:32 Speaker 03: Also, it's important to note that over the last couple of years,

00:08:35 Speaker 04: hopefully Council was conscientious of the work that was being undertaken by staff to support advancing these actions and not throw additional items onto work plans,

00:08:50 Speaker 04: somewhat disregarding the amount of work that was already in your plans.

00:08:53 Speaker 04: So, I think we did that as a Council, trying to note the workload that was already in place.

00:09:01 Speaker 04: Just a couple questions coming from this.

00:09:05 Speaker 04: The first one, the MAT revenues caught my eye in terms of the reporting.

00:09:12 Speaker 04: So this would be our 50 per cent share, I would presume, and not the overall.

00:09:19 Speaker 04: In which case, like that $418,000, I think was the number.

00:09:25 Speaker 04: It would take about $10.5 million in revenue to generate $418,000.

00:09:29 Speaker 04: It would take $21 million to, if it's 50/50, and that's just our share.

00:09:37 Speaker 04: The fact that it's projected to be significantly lower in 2026 jumped off the page to me.

00:09:43 Speaker 04: So I wonder if how is that responded to?

00:09:48 Speaker 04: Then at the committee level, we have the River Precinct role that evaluates different KPIs, but this one kind of is a broader sense,

00:09:58 Speaker 04: and that's a significant amount of revenue missing to generate that four per cent to see it decrease.

00:10:07 Speaker 04: So that was the first question I had in reading the report: is just how we monitor that and we ensure that we're working on keeping heads and beds and support in the hotels.

00:10:19 Speaker 04: I guess or are we missing collection points?

00:10:25 Speaker 04: The second one is fleet reporting, and we didn't actually get eyeballs at budget time in June and July when we were deliberating the capital budget.

00:10:36 Speaker 04: And I didn't say too much at that point.

00:10:38 Speaker 04: I thought I'll just leave this for the new Council to assess what staff plans on the fleet reporting back at budget time again in the future because we really didn't get eyeballs on it.

00:10:51 Speaker 04: We've implemented the new fleet strategy,

00:10:56 Speaker 04: but what will we see on report back initiatives on how that's going and and what we're buying in the future like you know in June and July Council has no idea if we're buying a

00:11:08 Speaker 04: new grader next year or front-end loader.

00:11:10 Speaker 04: It was never reported so what staff planning there through the Mayor to Deputy Mayor Greig.

00:11:19 Speaker 02: Good questions on the MAT tax.

00:11:22 Speaker 02: That $400,000 is an old overall gross, so 50 per cent comes directly back into the City, and we do have policies set up for how that's allocated into capital, tourism, Tom,

00:11:32 Speaker 02: etc. But I count all of that as part of Service Review because the initiative for the Municipal Accommodation Tax was undertaken by this group, and even though 50 per cent stays with the organisation,

00:11:45 Speaker 02: it's still going out to.

00:11:46 Speaker 02: We get so many requests for, can the City support this event or that event or this action?

00:11:53 Speaker 02: So, indirectly by us moving forward with the MAT, creates those revenues for those groups.

00:11:58 Speaker 02: Are they coming directly from us?

00:11:59 Speaker 02: But no. But indirectly, we set the foundation and the legwork to have that done.

00:12:05 Speaker 02: Significantly may have been a little bit too strong of a word for me.

00:12:09 Speaker 02: I think this year we're projecting to have about $370,000, $375,000 in MAT tax collected, rather than about $425,000.

00:12:18 Speaker 02: So it is $50,000 less.

00:12:21 Speaker 02: I don't know if that's just a small blip.

00:12:24 Speaker 02: I know some of the hotels have said summer has been good, not quite as good, but their winter months have been exceptionally better.

00:12:30 Speaker 02: So it does come down to room rentals.

00:12:33 Speaker 02: I think some of the hotel properties.

00:12:35 Speaker 02: I know we recently had a groundbreaking for the new refurbished hotel here.

00:12:41 Speaker 02: Those things will add to room nights.

00:12:43 Speaker 02: I know we have one, two, two hotel projects in planning stages, potentially a third.

00:12:49 Speaker 02: So increasing our inventory should be a focus for the City.

00:12:54 Speaker 02: On you know, if we can get another property with another 125 rooms and another property with another 125,

00:13:00 Speaker 02: all of a sudden when we can add 250 plus rooms into the hotel inventory for that MAT tax, should see improved movement going forward on revenue.

00:13:09 Speaker 02: So at this stage, last year was the first year.

00:13:12 Speaker 02: This is year two.

00:13:13 Speaker 02: I don't know that we can make a trend yet of where it's going, but I think it's still significant dollars coming in.

00:13:20 Speaker 02: As for fleet, again we're back into the first year of the fleet strategy.

00:13:25 Speaker 02: I'll be working with the interim Director of Public Works and Engineering, where all and also Corporate Services.

00:13:31 Speaker 02: We're determining where fleet will fully exist.

00:13:34 Speaker 02: It is a corporate function now.

00:13:36 Speaker 02: We're looking at the possibility of creating a fleet working team, and then we'll look at a reporting structure back into.

00:13:42 Speaker 02: I would assume it'll come back into Resilient Community because that's going to be the financial governance and stuff rather than an Governance and stuff,

00:13:47 Speaker 02: rather than the newly formed Operations Committee that will be coming forward.

00:13:52 Speaker 02: But it will come back into that, and we'll have a report.

00:14:00 Speaker 05: Thank you, Your Worship.

00:14:02 Speaker 05: Not a whole lot of questions.

00:14:03 Speaker 05: Just a quick comment, and I totally echo the comments made by Councillor Middlebro' and Deputy Mayor Scott.

00:14:10 Speaker 05: I think this was a very valuable committee, and gave us a very clear and practical approach of how we all talk about in the Council meetings the goals, objectives, and works.

00:14:21 Speaker 05: But this actually was a practical review of the deliverables, and I hope that moving forward, this work gets incorporated into the new Resilient Committee.

00:14:33 Speaker 05: Thank you for all the hard work and the efforts to bring all those wonderful reports forward.

00:14:39 Speaker 05: Thank you.

00:14:39 Speaker 05: We're trying to start.

00:14:44 Speaker 05: Which end to start at?

00:14:46 Speaker 01: Back when I came onto Council in 2010, a lot of answers I got were, "This is the way we've always done it.

00:14:54 Speaker 01: We don't need to change, or we don't have any money for that.

00:14:57 Speaker 01: We can't afford that.

00:14:58 Speaker 01: We can't do that."

00:14:59 Speaker 01: And if anything, my goal over the years has been to leave the City in a better place than we found it, which means being able to look forward,

00:15:09 Speaker 01: not handcuffing future Councils and administrations to be able to do the things we want to do.

00:15:16 Speaker 01: I think this started with a consultant's report that we got a grant for that came back in, and Council wasn't satisfied with what came from that.

00:15:28 Speaker 01: I think there was an offer to from the consultant to continue for another contract to look at things, and Council really pushed to say, "No,

00:15:40 Speaker 01: we need to look at these things," and so staff did it.

00:15:47 Speaker 01: You know, we can take credit from Council for having pushed it, and for us coming to a meeting once a month or once a quarter, whatever it's been.

00:15:54 Speaker 01: However, I think about the people that have come to that microphone in front of me from all ends of the City.

00:16:01 Speaker 01: Not only just directors coming to the microphone; it's been different members of staff and.

00:16:13 Speaker 01: I hate to use the word lower, but lower positions in the flow chart that are presented and come up with ideas.

00:16:20 Speaker 01: We looked at Service Review a few years ago.

00:16:22 Speaker 01: It was when Wayne was here, and it was a lot of promises made, and then they weren't able to be carried out a month later, and it was or a year later,

00:16:38 Speaker 01: and that was more cuts-oriented.

00:16:40 Speaker 01: That we couldn't possibly put down salt on the streets for what we thought we could put down salts.

00:16:46 Speaker 01: We couldn't, you know, we couldn't cut back in some of those things.

00:16:49 Speaker 01: I think this one is so much more successful because we've had Michelle in the position and the position there from a strategic point of view that we wouldn't have had a number of years ago.

00:17:02 Speaker 01: So, number of years ago, it's more set on the directors to try and figure out what they're doing off the corner of their desk while they're doing everything else, and something needed to be coordinated,

00:17:12 Speaker 01: and it's certainly that position and Michelle Linnet that helped move it forward.

00:17:16 Speaker 01: So thanks to all staff, thanks to Michelle, thanks to directors, Tim, Council.

00:17:22 Speaker 01: Unfortunately, the general member of public is not going to see any results from this.

00:17:31 Speaker 01: It's not going to be visible to them.

00:17:33 Speaker 01: How the City operates is, you know, I bet you there isn't another municipality in Ontario that's modernized like we have in the last four years.

00:17:40 Speaker 01: That we're going to be ahead of every other municipality in the structures, in the way we approach things, in the systems that we've got in place.

00:17:49 Speaker 01: General public isn't necessarily going to see that or be able to see a colour change, see a different bus.

00:17:57 Speaker 01: They're not—you know, it's still going to be; they're still going to see how it's operated,

00:18:00 Speaker 01: but they hopefully will learn from this report on how much has been done and how it's going to be so much more efficient for the municipality to provide those services and move forward into the

00:18:18 Speaker 01: future.

00:18:20 Speaker 01: Same thing with the strategic plan, which is thinking long-term about the future and leaving the corporation better than we found it.

00:18:31 Speaker 01: So thanks to everybody that's done this pretty big report, pretty important report, I think.

00:18:45 Speaker 01: Is it still possible that when these minutes come to council, that this whole report gets attached to the minutes for all of council and for media and everybody to be able to see?

00:18:55 Speaker 01: Because sometimes these reports are—you know—over here in the minutes of a meeting, and nobody digs that deep.

00:19:02 Speaker 01: Or if it's right in the council agenda, everyone gets to see it.

00:19:07 Speaker 01: Do you have your hand up?

00:19:15 Speaker 06: No. No. We don't need a motion.

00:19:17 Speaker 06: We can attach it to the council agenda.

00:19:21 Speaker 07: Okay.

00:19:21 Speaker 07: So, any other comments on Tim's report?

00:19:24 Speaker 07: If not, I think we got to move to receive it.

00:19:31 Speaker 07: You move the first one.

00:19:35 Speaker 07: Suneet is moving it.

00:19:39 Speaker 07: Last motion of this committee.

00:19:41 Speaker 07: Yes.

00:19:42 Speaker 07: So all in favour.

00:19:44 Speaker 07: That is received and carried.

00:19:48 Speaker 07: So number nine, we've got no matters postponed.

00:19:51 Speaker 07: Number ten, we've got no motions.

00:19:54 Speaker 07: Number eleven, we've got no correspondence.

00:19:56 Speaker 07: We've got no additional business to discuss.

00:19:59 Speaker 07: We've got no notice.

00:20:00 Speaker 07: Oh, do we have any notices of motion?

00:20:02 Speaker 07: No, we've got no notices of motion.

00:20:04 Speaker 07: So at 9:20, another record-setting meeting.

00:20:07 Speaker 07: We can adjourn.

00:20:08 Speaker 07: Thanks, everybody.