Owen Sound Council Meeting - Special Meeting Transcript — June 2, 2025

00:01:08 Speaker 01: Good morning, everybody.

00:01:09 Speaker 01: It's June second.

00:01:10 Speaker 02: This is a special meeting held by City Council, City of Owen Sound.

00:01:16 Speaker 02: It's good to be back after being off for a couple weeks.

00:01:19 Speaker 02: My voice is kind of shot from having a ventilator, and hopefully it comes back.

00:01:25 Speaker 02: I may have to run in and out of the room, so I'll be handing the gavel to Scott from time to time.

00:01:32 Speaker 02: All councillors present: Councillor Farmer and Councillor Dodd, and City Manager Tim Simmonds are out at a flag raising right now and will be joining us in a minute.

00:01:47 Speaker 02: Otherwise, we're all here, so we'll call the meeting to order.

00:01:51 Speaker 02: Are there any declarations of interest?

00:01:55 Speaker 02: Seeing none, motion to move council into committee of the whole.

00:02:01 Speaker 03: Moved by myself, seconded by Councillor Merton, that City Council now moves into Committee of the Whole to consider reports of city staff, deputations, and presentations.

00:02:12 Speaker 03: And all in favour, and that is carried.

00:02:17 Speaker 02: At four a.m., we have a report from the Director of Community Services with regard to road closing.

00:02:27 Speaker 02: Thank you, Your Worship.

00:02:29 Speaker 04: The city has received two new requests for event-related temporary street closures.

00:02:34 Speaker 04: As first-time events, approval from council is required under the bylaw to regulate temporary closing of streets.

00:02:41 Speaker 04: So the first of these events is this Friday.

00:02:44 Speaker 04: So hopefully this is on your calendar.

00:02:46 Speaker 04: It's the Downtown River Precinct Phase Two Opening Celebration, and the second event is the Pride Block Party.

00:02:54 Speaker 04: So the Downtown River Precinct Phase Two opening is an event to officially open the 900 block of First Avenue East.

00:03:02 Speaker 04: The closure will be the 900 block of First Avenue East and extend from just north of that access to the Sydenham Building's parking garage.

00:03:12 Speaker 04: The event begins at three till eight thirty on Friday, and the road closure will begin at noon.

00:03:18 Speaker 04: So this event is a way to invite River District businesses, property owners, residents, and the public, along with Council, to celebrate this new space.

00:03:27 Speaker 04: The event will feature opening remarks, entertainment by Gracie Jet and Midlife Midlife Crisis.

00:03:34 Speaker 04: There will be a licenced area supported by the Milkmaid, using a catering endorsement.

00:03:40 Speaker 04: We'll have portable washrooms, and Fairmount Security will be providing private security.

00:03:46 Speaker 04: We've provided notice to those River District businesses as well; invitations have been sent.

00:03:53 Speaker 04: The second event, a Pride Block Party, is being organised by Maxine Kiddo and Joanna Botrel, both own businesses in the River District.

00:04:02 Speaker 04: The event is proposed for the 900 block between Second and Third Avenues East.

00:04:07 Speaker 04: It is proposed on Saturday, June twenty-one, beginning at two p.m. till eleven p.m.

00:04:13 Speaker 04: With the road closure beginning at eleven a.m. and teardown being completed by midnight.

00:04:19 Speaker 04: So, the road closure is requested in that two sorry the 200 block of Ninth Street East, and in addition,

00:04:29 Speaker 04: council is requested to grant permission for a one day patio area adjacent to the Rumpus Room.

00:04:35 Speaker 04: The alcohol service would be in the Rumpus Room, and consumption would be in the building as well.

00:04:43 Speaker 04: Proposed for an enclosed patio.

00:04:45 Speaker 04: In closed patio, just the day of the event, the organisers proposing private security, and in addition, there would be paid duty.

00:04:56 Speaker 04: Council's permission to licence the space is required.

00:05:01 Speaker 04: The event organiser and city staff have been in touch with both Bayshore Broadcasting as well as the Roxy Theatre to ensure coordination.

00:05:09 Speaker 04: I would note this is the same day, June twenty-first, for doors open, and there is a special celebration as part of that event happening at Bayshore Broadcasting.

00:05:20 Speaker 04: The River District Action Plan encourages public spaces that are consistently engaging, so that the public have a reason to frequently and repeatedly visit the area.

00:05:29 Speaker 04: In the last two years, the city has received feedback that having events that welcome people to the River District are positive for the services and businesses in the area,

00:05:39 Speaker 04: and it's important that they be well planned and safe.

00:05:44 Speaker 04: The proposed temporary street closures were circulated with comments received from Owen Sound Police Services, as well as Public Works.

00:05:52 Speaker 04: The Public Works comments are attached.

00:05:55 Speaker 04: If approved, a joint meeting with Owen Sound Police Services, our Operations Department, the River District Coordinator, AGCO, as well as the organisers, to ensure a well-planned and coordinated event is recommended.

00:06:08 Speaker 04: Owen Sound Police Services will have the opportunity to approve the operational plan, which is a requirement of the municipal alcohol policy.

00:06:19 Speaker 04: As well, you'll see condition eleven related to the private event on Ninth Street allows for paid duty,

00:06:26 Speaker 04: and that would be paid for by that event organiser as a condition of council's approval of the road closure and the licenced area.

00:06:41 Speaker 04: The other event requirements, things like washrooms, insurance, waste management, damage, clean and tidy condition, are all recommended as part of those approvals.

00:06:54 Speaker 04: So the approval, the first three conditions deal with the Ninth Street event, and the last three conditions deal with the DRP opening celebration.

00:07:04 Speaker 04: The recommendation is, in considering the report, council would approve the use of Ninth Street from Second Avenue to Third Avenue East to host a licenced Pride Block Party on Saturday, June 21st,

00:07:17 Speaker 04: from 2 to 11 p.m.

00:07:19 Speaker 04: They authorise staff to enact the temporary street closure of Ninth Street from 11 a.m. on Saturday, June 21st,

00:07:27 Speaker 04: and you approve a licenced area as part of the Pride Block Party within a fenced area adjacent to the Rumpus Room,

00:07:34 Speaker 04: subject to the conditions outlined in Attachment Two A. With respect to the DRP event, again, Council would approve the use of the 900 block of First Avenue East for a licenced event on Friday,

00:07:49 Speaker 04: June six.

00:07:50 Speaker 04: Then it should read from three till ten p.m.

00:07:53 Speaker 04: Subject to the conditions in Two B, you would authorise staff to enact the temporary street closure beginning at noon that day,

00:08:02 Speaker 04: and you approve a licenced area as part of the opening celebration to be provided through a catering endorsement from the Milkmaid.

00:08:09 Speaker 04: Happy to take any questions, Your Worship.

00:08:12 Speaker 04: Council, any questions?

00:08:13 Speaker 04: Yep, go ahead.

00:08:16 Speaker 04: Through you, Mr. Mayor.

00:08:17 Speaker 05: Just a quick question to the director, that you just mentioned that we always have the feedback from the bus, the police services and public works,

00:08:27 Speaker 05: in events like these because it does involve the closure of the street where the businesses are actively open, so do we get any feedback from the business owners whether they want events like that?

00:08:40 Speaker 05: Like I understand, we want more people to the River District.

00:08:43 Speaker 05: So, because in the past we've heard that it's a mixed response.

00:08:47 Speaker 05: So, do we have any feedback from the business owners how it affects them?

00:08:54 Speaker 04: That's a great question, and we try to plan events that really have a positive impact on businesses.

00:09:01 Speaker 04: Of impact on businesses.

00:09:02 Speaker 04: In this case, there's one event being planned by the city, and Vivica has delivered invitations and notices to every business in that area.

00:09:13 Speaker 04: The Ninth Street event.

00:09:14 Speaker 04: There has been the event organiser.

00:09:18 Speaker 04: I know specifically has spoken with the Roxy Theatre and Bayshore Broadcasting, because, you know, on a Saturday afternoon, both of those businesses have events.

00:09:31 Speaker 04: I know the bakery there has has been consulted.

00:09:35 Speaker 04: But if council approves us, we can certainly ensure that that communication happens.

00:09:43 Speaker 04: When we have events, we do get feedback after council will recall the street closure for the hospital fundraising event wasn't really well received by the business community.

00:09:53 Speaker 04: It didn't bring the people that we were looking for, and we do certainly always look for feedback and following those events to see how we can make them better.

00:10:06 Speaker 04: Thank you, Your Worship.

00:10:08 Speaker 06: Through you to the director, you mentioned a Doors Open event on the same day as the Pride event.

00:10:15 Speaker 06: Can you tell me about the conflict there in the times?

00:10:21 Speaker 06: Doors Open.

00:10:21 Speaker 06: Now you're testing my memory.

00:10:23 Speaker 04: I think we have 19 sites on Doors Open this year.

00:10:26 Speaker 04: It happens Saturday, June 21st.

00:10:27 Speaker 04: June 21st from ten till four p.m., Bayshore Broadcasting is celebrating what I want to say their 85th anniversary, and they're hosting a barbecue in their parking lot.

00:10:41 Speaker 04: So, part of the coordination will be making sure that they can get into their parking area and set up for their barbecue, you know, prior to the street closure happening,

00:10:51 Speaker 04: which should be fine because that event starts at ten a.m.

00:10:56 Speaker 04: I don't think there's... oh, the Roxy Theatre is also a Doors Open site, so pedestrian access through the area will be maintained during that day.

00:11:06 Speaker 06: And you may have already mentioned this, but have both of those organisations been talked with about the event?

00:11:16 Speaker 07: Yes, both the event organiser and Vivica, the River District coordinator, has been in touch with Roxy Theatre and Bayshore Broadcasting, and I don't want to speak for them,

00:11:26 Speaker 07: but I think they were quite enthusiastic about the events.

00:11:32 Speaker 07: I'm going to go to Melanie next.

00:11:35 Speaker 07: Thank you, through you, Chair.

00:11:36 Speaker 08: It says in the financial implications that the cost for Public Works staff to place and remove barricades is approximately two thousand dollars for each event.

00:11:45 Speaker 08: Are we recouping that from the organisers of the Pride event?

00:11:52 Speaker 07: Through you, Your Worship, there isn't currently a fee in charge for street closures.

00:11:56 Speaker 07: I think that's certainly something that Council could look at going forward if it's something you want to be able to recover.

00:12:08 Speaker 08: So we're doing all of this, and like the two thousand dollars,

00:12:13 Speaker 08: that's just a blanket cost because you're also noting that there's going to be significant overtime because this is happening at one in the morning.

00:12:21 Speaker 08: Like, is the two thousand the amount, or is it two thousand plus all of these overtime hours that we're going to be paying?

00:12:32 Speaker 09: Through your Worship to Councillor Middlebro', it's... it's an estimate based on all of those factors.

00:12:38 Speaker 09: So wages, equipment, overhead, overtime, all of those things would be factored into that two thousand dollars.

00:12:53 Speaker 10: Yeah, I've got a couple questions that are somewhat related to some of the questions already asked.

00:12:59 Speaker 10: They just came forward with the request May 16th.

00:13:03 Speaker 10: I said in the report, I always like to think that there's been adequate consultation and communication with different businesses.

00:13:14 Speaker 10: A period of two weeks has me a little bit concerned that... yeah, they've reached out to Bayshore Broadcasting and the Roxy, but I'm not confident all the other businesses have been contacted.

00:13:26 Speaker 10: And you mentioned the ball hockey one was a... you know, it brought people downtown.

00:13:31 Speaker 10: For the retailers and some of the restaurants, they didn't purchase as shoppers, and that's ultimately what you're looking to get out of bringing people downtown for some of the retail.

00:13:46 Speaker 10: I mean, just exposure is good, but some of those stores close at two in the afternoon on Saturday, so I'm aware it's probably not that big of an item.

00:13:58 Speaker 10: Some of those stores do have parking in behind,

00:14:01 Speaker 10: so I'm just wondering what will be the means of allowing those tenants and or staff at different establishments to be able to leave in the afternoon through road closure.

00:14:16 Speaker 10: Secondly, it does state one or two businesses, particularly one in the report.

00:14:26 Speaker 10: Do we collect from these road closure costs from any organisation right now, or like is there none that pay?

00:14:33 Speaker 10: Because just in reading the report, whether it's one dollar or a million dollars, the Municipal Act precludes you from being able to bonus,

00:14:41 Speaker 10: and this kind of just has a little bit of a feel of... kind of bonusing involved with one business perhaps.

00:14:53 Speaker 10: So I guess those are my concerns just so I can be confident that traffic does move still from some of those properties and the best we can do for communication is pivotal because two weeks

00:15:07 Speaker 10: is not a big time frame to move forward with a street closure request.

00:15:13 Speaker 10: And be confident that we've already solicited input.

00:15:17 Speaker 10: I know for the First Avenue flyers were passed out to all the businesses many weeks ago, so all the businesses were well aware.

00:15:26 Speaker 10: I'm just less confident that this has happened this time.

00:15:29 Speaker 10: And then I guess the bonusing question.

00:15:32 Speaker 10: Thanks, through your Worship to Deputy Mayor Greig.

00:15:44 Speaker 11: Those... that was a lot of those were a lot of questions, but I'll answer them as such.

00:15:48 Speaker 11: For the notice, we acknowledge that there was very little notice given.

00:15:55 Speaker 11: Staff have done their best to try to accommodate this event because in the past that has been the appetite to try to accommodate events when possible.

00:16:08 Speaker 11: So we've done that.

00:16:09 Speaker 11: That being said, we do still have ongoing concerns.

00:16:13 Speaker 11: That leads to your comment about the egress from the area during the road closure.

00:16:23 Speaker 11: That has not been nailed down yet.

00:16:27 Speaker 11: We've issued comments to that effect that you can't just be opening up barricades and having people driving through the entertainment area during the course of the event, so that needs to still be coordinated.

00:16:42 Speaker 11: That has not been finalized.

00:16:46 Speaker 11: The last point that should probably be noted is that there is a good deal of coordination that needs to happen with this event.

00:17:01 Speaker 11: We don't recover costs from any of the events again because that has been Council's appetite, I guess, in the past.

00:17:13 Speaker 11: That when an event organiser comes to Council and they show the benefit, whether that's an amenity to the community or some kind of economic spinoff for stimulating additional traffic in the downtown or whatnot,

00:17:33 Speaker 11: it has traditionally been Council's position for the City to provide that labour in kind to support the event.

00:17:44 Speaker 11: So that is why we don't recover those costs at this point in time.

00:17:49 Speaker 11: We can,

00:17:50 Speaker 11: but that hasn't been a high priority because the sentiment really seems to be that there's sort of no point in putting a dollar figure on it if we're going to waive it every time anyway,

00:18:07 Speaker 11: but staff can continue to calculate that cost for each individual event and put it in the financial implications for these reports.

00:18:18 Speaker 11: So I guess to answer your last question, no, I don't...

00:18:21 Speaker 11: In my opinion, I don't think it's bonusing because this is a service that the City has been providing to support business to support events that provide a greater amenity or benefit to the area.

00:18:38 Speaker 07: Pam, if I could, through you, Your Worship, in terms of the parking lots, if we're closing the street at 11 a.m. and we could look at the extent of that closure,

00:18:51 Speaker 07: does it need to be inclusive of the TD Bank, or could it be east of their access, providing access?

00:19:01 Speaker 07: Providing a three-hour window before the event closure would allow probably most people that are parked at the bank time to leave.

00:19:09 Speaker 07: We understand from Bayshore Broadcasting that because they're hosting a barbecue in their parking lot that day, that the barbecue vehicle would be there, but not a lot of other parking.

00:19:19 Speaker 07: So that should eliminate that.

00:19:21 Speaker 07: Pedestrian access through the area will continue to be allowed, and as you know, several of those businesses, particularly on the south side of Ninth Street, like Jasmine's Restaurant, do have rear entrances,

00:19:35 Speaker 07: which would be accessible from that municipal parking area as well.

00:19:39 Speaker 07: And I think I mentioned that the municipal sidewalks will remain accessible during the day.

00:19:51 Speaker 10: Yeah, I think I'm comfortable hearing that you're still working to refine the exact setup so that... set up so that those concerns, particularly that lane,

00:20:01 Speaker 10: for any vehicles that may be parked back in that lane, still have means of getting in and out.

00:20:09 Speaker 10: Because I'm very familiar with road closures.

00:20:13 Speaker 10: I go to events all over the place, and I've seen police officers, which are very expensive, but are necessary,

00:20:22 Speaker 10: or book seven equivalent at least to maintain the safety and the proper egress in and out.

00:20:29 Speaker 10: So it's good to hear that you're still trying to make sure that any vehicles that might have to move through there can move through safely.

00:20:40 Speaker 10: Thanks, Carol.

00:20:43 Speaker 12: Through you, Your Worship, there is no doubt that our City is going to be vibrant and resilient and celebratory.

00:20:55 Speaker 12: Through these initiatives, it is what we've said we want.

00:20:59 Speaker 12: We've said we want to be able to bring people downtown to assist in various ways.

00:21:08 Speaker 12: There are three components for me that come to mind, and that is event planning and the timing to be able to plan an event in a comprehensive, thorough way.

00:21:23 Speaker 12: Director Coulter mentioned about having a safe event, and I think that that's absolutely critical for everyone—participants, public, business owners, emergency vehicles.

00:21:38 Speaker 12: That's critical.

00:21:40 Speaker 12: I think having adequate time to do the event planning is an absolute essential need.

00:21:48 Speaker 12: We need coordination of all of the individuals, groups, and agencies involved, and we need an effective communication strategy that allows the public to know what's happening, how it's happening,

00:22:02 Speaker 12: and what they may choose to do around access and egress from the area.

00:22:10 Speaker 12: The other component that is not in that list of three is around the adequate resources, including policing, and certainly for fire as well, for our community safety.

00:22:26 Speaker 12: My question is: This block party is a new event.

00:22:31 Speaker 12: We've just heard about it a little while ago.

00:22:34 Speaker 12: Meanwhile, we have budgeted for parks and budgeted for police.

00:22:41 Speaker 12: Do we have enough human resources to adequately staff?

00:22:45 Speaker 12: And we've heard approximate costing from Director Widdifield, but we need to also find out from our policing service.

00:22:56 Speaker 12: Are there enough resources, and what will the cost be if there's additional overtime hours that are needed to be paid for?

00:23:04 Speaker 12: And I don't see that in the implications.

00:23:07 Speaker 12: So it's a critical component, so that in the future, if this is going to be an ongoing event, when we do our budget,

00:23:16 Speaker 12: we need to incorporate these additional costs as part of the overall budgeting process.

00:23:22 Speaker 12: Thank you.

00:23:25 Speaker 04: If I could, Your Worship, the reports before council, because they're first-time events, ask you to consider and approve components related.

00:23:35 Speaker 04: I think we're talking mostly about the Ninth Street event.

00:23:38 Speaker 04: There is the same day a parade celebration being planned that is under the bylaw delegated to staff.

00:23:48 Speaker 04: You're absolutely right.

00:23:50 Speaker 04: Those two events, the resources of police services to support both of those events need to be coordinated and planned.

00:23:58 Speaker 04: If council approves us today, I think I mentioned that a meeting needs to happen with the event organisers, AGCO, Owen Sound Police Services, to make sure that you know those both events, you know,

00:24:14 Speaker 04: the parade isn't talked about in this report, but that they can be coordinated and supported.

00:24:22 Speaker 04: Mary, thank you, Your Worship.

00:24:25 Speaker 06: In the report, at the bottom of page five, it mentions the River District membership will be notified if council approves a closure.

00:24:33 Speaker 06: Why would we wait until after the fact to consult the River District membership?

00:24:41 Speaker 06: Maybe they have some issues that need to be resolved prior to.

00:24:48 Speaker 07: Given the timing of the application, we have been consulting with the businesses in this area, but not the entire membership.

00:24:57 Speaker 07: Part of the notice under the bylaw would be that there would be a notification through the River District Administrative Support to all the businesses, but we would also be undertaking a communication plan: media releases,

00:25:13 Speaker 07: and the 511 notice for emergency services, as well.

00:25:17 Speaker 06: Has the River District Board been made aware that this is taking place at their last meeting, or not?

00:25:26 Speaker 07: Through you, Your Worship, I don't believe they were made aware of the DRP celebration, but I don't think they were made aware of the Ninth Street closure.

00:25:43 Speaker 02: Okay, from my point of view, I'm thrilled about this.

00:25:46 Speaker 02: I think there's such a neat opportunity in that back alley for Casero and Parkwood to do something there that I think would be really, really cool.

00:25:57 Speaker 02: We've done events on Ninth Street before.

00:25:59 Speaker 02: The Roxy celebrated an anniversary out there.

00:26:03 Speaker 02: We've closed Eighth Street down for a bicycle thing a week ago.

00:26:06 Speaker 02: Now there wasn't a lot of alcohol.

00:26:08 Speaker 02: I've got to be careful.

00:26:09 Speaker 02: Apparently, when I'm sarcastic, I get criticized.

00:26:12 Speaker 02: It's clearly there wasn't any alcohol there for children stuff, but everything that we get criticized for with regard to people on the street is they're afraid to come downtown,

00:26:25 Speaker 02: and we keep being told that we need to have more events, get more people downtown.

00:26:29 Speaker 02: And here's a prime example of somebody coming forward that really we just have to approve the street.

00:26:34 Speaker 02: They have to look after policing.

00:26:36 Speaker 02: They have to do it.

00:26:36 Speaker 02: They're carrying the freight.

00:26:39 Speaker 02: They're doing all the work to attract people.

00:26:42 Speaker 02: Ninth Street is perfect because there's X number of restaurants in that street.

00:26:46 Speaker 02: Big institutional properties on each side of the street that seem to be okay with it.

00:26:53 Speaker 02: Sure, parking lot for TD Bank, but this is a great opportunity to try something that brings people downtown.

00:27:00 Speaker 02: Meets our goals of what we're trying to do, and where it can go in the future can only get better.

00:27:08 Speaker 02: So I'm honestly thought when I read it last night that this would be read a report, move and vote quickly.

00:27:15 Speaker 02: But it just seems to be such a good idea.

00:27:19 Speaker 02: So can we have a motion and do something with it?

00:27:24 Speaker 02: Yeah.

00:27:25 Speaker 02: Thank you, Worship.

00:27:25 Speaker 02: I'd be happy to move that recommendation.

00:27:28 Speaker 02: Okay.

00:27:28 Speaker 02: Can I call the question?

00:27:30 Speaker 02: All in favour?

00:27:31 Speaker 02: Carried.

00:27:32 Speaker 02: Good.

00:27:33 Speaker 02: Thanks.

00:27:33 Speaker 02: I am.

00:27:34 Speaker 02: Good.

00:27:34 Speaker 02: Thanks, Pam and Laura.

00:27:36 Speaker 02: Four B, Manager of Corporate Services and Fire Chief, with regard to station expansion.

00:27:42 Speaker 13: Good morning, Mayor and members of Council.

00:27:59 Speaker 14: Today, we are here to provide a project update on the fire station expansion and renovation project that was approved as part of the 2025 to 2029 multi-year capital plan update back in December 2024.

00:28:12 Speaker 14: The project has also been included in the draft 2026 to 2030 multi-year capital plan based on the proposed construction date starting in 2026.

00:28:23 Speaker 14: As I think all members of council are aware, the draft 2026 to 2030 multi-year capital plan was presented to the various committees.

00:28:32 Speaker 14: This project fell under the purview of the Corporate Services Committee that met on May eighth, twenty twenty-five.

00:28:38 Speaker 14: The feedback on the multi-year capital plan focused specifically on this project and asked staff to bring back a report to today's special council session to further discuss the project.

00:28:49 Speaker 14: The aim of this report that has been provided just reiterates what was provided to council last year,

00:28:56 Speaker 14: but is also looking to seek the approved budget to be included in the 2026 to 2030 multi-year capital plan that will be presented to Council on June twenty-third,

00:29:06 Speaker 14: and will allow staff to proceed with the development of the request for proposal for architectural or consulting services for the project.

00:29:14 Speaker 14: A recap of the project is that the fire station is over fifty years old and requires significant capital investment, to the value of 2.5 million dollars over the next five years.

00:29:25 Speaker 14: The projects that are included in that 2.5 million dollars are: 1.5 million dollars are effectively a like-for-like replacement of existing building components,

00:29:32 Speaker 14: and does not allow for the addition of components to match legislative requirements and to allow continued use of the facility for a service standpoint for the next twenty to twenty-five years.

00:29:43 Speaker 14: In 2024, White Line Architects prepared a pre-design study for the city that suggested a renovation and expansion worth approximately 5.7 million dollars.

00:29:53 Speaker 14: The 5.7 million dollars included the results of the 2023 building condition assessment, as well as reviewed the building needs with fire services staff, with a focus on the continued use of the building,

00:30:05 Speaker 14: best practices in incorporating legislative changes that will be coming forward in the future.

00:30:11 Speaker 14: The report suggested renovating 30% of the facility and adding an approximately 4,000 square foot addition to the rear of the building.

00:30:19 Speaker 14: The renovation on the second floor, except for the recently completed kitchen, will allow for a more diverse fire service.

00:30:27 Speaker 14: The expanded apparatus bay will allow for additional training space and sufficient storage of the apparatus, which are continually getting larger.

00:30:35 Speaker 14: And we've added one more vehicle to the fleet since this time.

00:30:39 Speaker 14: The proposal also includes the addition of a decontamination area and a bunker gear storage area to improve storage, hygiene, and safety for the site.

00:30:49 Speaker 14: The relocation of the existing exercise area from the basement mechanical space up to the main floor;

00:30:56 Speaker 14: the suggestion was also the addition of a multi-purpose artifact storage area and a larger training space to be added to the second floor.

00:31:06 Speaker 14: Understanding that staff have had concerns stemming from the conversation or the council session last December,

00:31:13 Speaker 14: staff have gone through and looked at the pre-design study to determine what was a core feature of the renovation and what was something that was maybe non-core,

00:31:24 Speaker 14: with the exception of the multi-purpose artifact display area and the associated second floor training room.

00:31:30 Speaker 14: Staff have determined that the decontamination area, the additional space in the apparatus bay, and the relocation of the fitness area up to the main floor were very key components,

00:31:41 Speaker 14: and have suggested in the report the alternative solution to remove the multi-purpose artifact display area and the second-floor training space to bring the budget down for this project to $5.1 million.

00:31:56 Speaker 14: The previous approved number in the pre-design study was just shy of $5.7 million, and now we are just over $5.1 million.

00:32:06 Speaker 14: The associated financial implications of this is that the annual debt repayment would decrease from $677,000 down to $607,000, resulting in total cost savings of $700,000 over the duration of the project and its financing period.

00:32:24 Speaker 14: The alternate design will provide cost savings while mitigating deferred costs because we need to continue to move forward with the projects that are identified in the building condition assessment,

00:32:35 Speaker 14: regardless of whether the building expansion renovation is approved.

00:32:39 Speaker 14: It will also make sure that the fire service has an adequate building for at least the next 25 to 50 years.

00:32:46 Speaker 14: The kind of summary of the report is that the project aims to address critical renovation needs while staying fiscally responsible.

00:32:53 Speaker 14: The next phase will focus on detailed project design and timely communication with the involved stakeholders.

00:32:59 Speaker 14: So, just the drawings that have been appended to the pre-design study or included in today's report: those are conceptual space needs.

00:33:10 Speaker 14: Those are not the final drawings.

00:33:12 Speaker 14: Those are not the final layouts or finishes; this is what staff would provide to the architect to start the process given this pre-design study.

00:33:21 Speaker 14: Any subsequent decisions from council, the building condition assessment—we will hand that all over to an architect.

00:33:26 Speaker 14: They would continue then to refine the building to match the mechanical and electrical needs.

00:33:31 Speaker 14: The pre-design study did not engage all of those subconsultants, so that would be the next step of the project.

00:33:39 Speaker 14: Similar to when we proceed with any other capital project through the multi-year capital plan, as numbers come in through various design processes, we bring those numbers back to council.

00:33:49 Speaker 14: If there is a change to the positive or to the negative, council would continue to see the proposed construction cost throughout the process.

00:33:59 Speaker 14: So,

00:33:59 Speaker 14: what the Chief and I are here today is included in the recommendation of the report to direct staff to remove the multi-purpose artifact display area and the second-floor training space from the space needs conceptual

00:34:11 Speaker 14: floor plan and cost estimate identified in the 2024 fire station renovation expansion pre-design study for the design and construction of the fire station expansion and renovation project to establish the maximum capital budget for the

00:34:25 Speaker 14: project so that staff can include that revised budget in the upcoming review of the draft 2026 to 2030 multi-year capital plan.

00:34:35 Speaker 14: With that, staff are happy to take any questions.

00:34:40 Speaker 14: Go to Brock.

00:34:40 Speaker 15: Your Worship, I'm actually going to move that we move into closed session regarding labour relations and employee negotiations, and that I would ask the City Manager, the directors, and the Chief to stay.

00:34:57 Speaker 02: Okay, I'm going to call that question.

00:35:03 Speaker 02: All in favour?

00:35:06 Speaker 02: That's carried.

00:58:40 Speaker 02: We're good.

00:58:41 Speaker 02: Okay.

00:58:44 Speaker 02: Sorry, I forgot where we left off before we went into close.

00:58:47 Speaker 02: But go ahead.

00:58:51 Speaker 02: Oh, I need to report out of close.

00:58:53 Speaker 02: Okay, council went into a closed session on the motion of Councillor Hamley to discuss matters with regard to labour relations and contract negotiations.

00:59:05 Speaker 02: We stuck pretty firmly to that information, those topics, and no direction was given to staff.

00:59:14 Speaker 02: So that's my report.

00:59:15 Speaker 02: Under closed, okay John.

00:59:19 Speaker 16: Through the Mayor, I'm one of the things that I've learned during this term on council is that value engineering is expensive, and as we look at the cost of this,

00:59:31 Speaker 16: my understanding is that one way or another, we want to be fiscally responsible.

00:59:37 Speaker 16: That was the nature of the conversation at Corporate Services in reducing the scope to just the core needs of the facility.

00:59:45 Speaker 16: In the report, we see that cost avoidance; we're in for $2.5 million anyway, just to bring the facility to a functional place in the current millennium.

00:59:58 Speaker 16: We have the opportunity to spend an additional $3 million on top of that to make sure that we've got something that's going to carry us forward to the point when maybe some of our kids

01:00:07 Speaker 16: are old enough to sit at this table and still be meeting those needs.

01:00:11 Speaker 16: But I don't know where in this project we are between the fear of value engineering and starting to do things or trying to do things with a small enough bottom line that we feel good

01:00:23 Speaker 16: right now,

01:00:24 Speaker 16: and that future councils are saying, "Why did they do that to us in 2025?"

01:00:28 Speaker 16: And where we are with an appropriate scope for this project: if we don't need a tiny museum to complement the handful of other local museums that we have,

01:00:36 Speaker 16: I'm wondering if staff could speak to whether or not we are value engineering beyond the point of usefulness, or whether we're bringing the facility up to date to yesterday, or whether Option 2,

01:00:49 Speaker 16: as reformed based on committee comments, will actually meet our needs for the next 50 years.

01:01:02 Speaker 17: Thank you, Councillor Farmer, and through you, Mr. Mayor.

01:01:05 Speaker 17: No, the $2.5 million does not create a functional fire hall to today's standards.

01:01:11 Speaker 17: It replaces the wires in the wall, the plumbing in the wall, the rain leaders, the sewage pipes, the windows, doors, the furnaces—I'm forgetting HVAC in the hall.

01:01:26 Speaker 17: So it will do that, but you're smashing holes in walls and leaving pipes exposed for the new pipes.

01:01:35 Speaker 17: It's not putting the hall back together, and it's certainly not getting us to a functional fire hall where there are proper washroom facilities, where there is proper storage, where there is proper decon.

01:01:45 Speaker 17: That's above and beyond the two-point-five.

01:01:48 Speaker 17: The two-point-five is the do-nothing just to keep the pipes from leaking anymore.

01:01:58 Speaker 16: And sorry, just through the chair for clarification: proper decon—like, do we not have?

01:02:05 Speaker 16: What do we have for decontamination right now?

01:02:07 Speaker 16: Is there anything?

01:02:08 Speaker 16: What's that new standard?

01:02:10 Speaker 16: Sure.

01:02:10 Speaker 17: If any member of council would really like to get into the technical details of how we decon, what a proper room looks like, what space is needed for today's standards of decon,

01:02:20 Speaker 17: and what ministry labour requires, I'd be really happy to take you to Hanover, where there's a brand-new example of a properly laid-out fire station with decon,

01:02:31 Speaker 17: and you can understand better why the spaces are needed and how somebody would come through that area.

01:02:40 Speaker 02: So, Council, just before we move too much further, I think there's a consensus around this table that we need to replace pipes.

01:02:47 Speaker 02: We need to replace all those things you just listed: HVAC pipes, to bring it up to standard.

01:02:57 Speaker 02: At least four of us were here and we did this building.

01:03:01 Speaker 02: We know what has to be done.

01:03:03 Speaker 02: We get that.

01:03:06 Speaker 02: If that apparently doesn't include the dressing rooms for the gender relations thing, but is that debatable or not amongst councils?

01:03:14 Speaker 02: That's something that we think has to be done.

01:03:19 Speaker 02: Are there other things like that that we recognize to be in the year 2025 that those things have to be done?

01:03:33 Speaker 02: But are there things that you think are beyond that, let's just say that you're hesitating on, or you know, is there a dollar value?

01:03:47 Speaker 02: Why don't we start off with just if anyone wants to say that we shouldn't meet the building standards that we need to upgrade first, let's just start with that category.

01:04:01 Speaker 02: Is anyone got any opinions against that?

01:04:05 Speaker 16: Through the mayor, maybe to make the conversation smoother, I'd be happy to move the recommendation with option two as included in the project update as included in the report, if that's helpful.

01:04:22 Speaker 02: The alternative budget, which was five-point—I got a funny feeling we're not going to get there.

01:04:37 Speaker 18: Scott, I will be gladly glad to speak in support of that motion.

01:04:45 Speaker 18: It's easy to shrug our shoulders and push these buildings off, but this is a core city facility,

01:04:54 Speaker 18: like a lot of other government buildings that are easy to put off for decade after decade after decade, and they age no different than our home.

01:05:04 Speaker 18: We just underwent a similar project at the Conservation Authority, where by the time we hit demolition, there were tiles missing in all the bathrooms.

01:05:14 Speaker 18: Some of the equipment was no longer functioning.

01:05:18 Speaker 18: It's—it's just a reflection of being unable to spend or being undesirable to commit monies to projects that might be somewhat unfavourable in the eyes of some within the community,

01:05:37 Speaker 18: but it doesn't—it doesn't remove the problem.

01:05:39 Speaker 18: I mean, you have mentioned it's similar.

01:05:42 Speaker 18: We've got leaking pipes.

01:05:44 Speaker 18: You can go and try to piecework it, and piecemeal project by project.

01:05:49 Speaker 18: But your contingency for doing such is probably going to have to be significantly more elevated, if that's the approach you take, as opposed to more of a thorough demolition and reconstruction.

01:06:04 Speaker 18: Further, this is not a building that we are entertaining while we do the renovation, relocating ourselves to another.

01:06:13 Speaker 18: So we are still committing ourselves to having to function within that building while undertaking a significant overhaul in the building.

01:06:22 Speaker 18: That too is expensive.

01:06:23 Speaker 18: That's going to have a contingency to it.

01:06:26 Speaker 18: But I think it's—it's less dangerous than if council decides to try to slash the budget down to two-and-a-half or three million dollars,

01:06:36 Speaker 18: and you're going to find yourself in a world of hurt as you try to walk through the repairs that are necessary.

01:06:42 Speaker 18: As opposed to, you know what, it's a kitchen project, it's a bathroom project, and it's a full demolition, and we go at it.

01:06:50 Speaker 18: I'm comfortable with the alternative budget.

01:06:52 Speaker 18: I did have concerns with extra space because again, it's just not something that we can afford.

01:06:58 Speaker 18: It's nice to have.

01:07:00 Speaker 18: It'd be lovely to have, but we're not entertaining having school children come through and a call come in, and then what?

01:07:09 Speaker 18: We've got a fire hall full of children, and the team is leaving to respond.

01:07:15 Speaker 18: It's not the core mandate of fire services.

01:07:18 Speaker 18: Core mandate is community safety.

01:07:20 Speaker 18: So I can be comfortable with the removal of that.

01:07:24 Speaker 18: I did have a question in the report.

01:07:28 Speaker 02: Just before you get your question, I didn't actually recognize John's motion.

01:07:33 Speaker 02: I had hesitated, and you went ahead.

01:07:35 Speaker 02: So, just to put it on the table, I recognize John's motion, which he set out clearly.

01:07:43 Speaker 10: The report notes about seven hundred thousand in total savings.

01:07:47 Speaker 10: Just quick scribbles here.

01:07:51 Speaker 10: I've got around eight hundred and thirty thousand as the difference between the four-point-eight-six-two million—the 4.862 million in the alternative budget and the approved budget of 5.692 million.

01:08:05 Speaker 10: It's still about 130 thousand dollars, but I'm just wondering what's that 130 thousand dollars about that's not appearing in the 700 thousand calculation?

01:08:14 Speaker 10: Because shorthand, it looks like about 830 thousand.

01:08:19 Speaker 14: To the deputy mayor, through your worship, we spoke about it in December and maybe—not necessarily in this report, but in consultation with the Director of Corporate Services.

01:08:30 Speaker 14: At that point, we added a little bit of a buffer to deal with inflation, kind of between 2026 and the end of 2028, when we're anticipated to take on the debt.

01:08:40 Speaker 14: So, the Treasury has a debt calculator that estimates that for the future.

01:08:45 Speaker 14: So it's been padded a little bit on that part.

01:08:47 Speaker 14: It's just not necessarily part of the total project budget at this time.

01:08:54 Speaker 10: And the other thing I would say is I am completely in favour of the dignity of male and female separate washrooms.

01:09:00 Speaker 10: I think that is something that we should be moving forward with absolutely.

01:09:05 Speaker 12: Carol, through your worship, I just need clarification.

01:09:12 Speaker 12: The two million dollars would only repair current facility.

01:09:18 Speaker 12: The issue of clarification is about meeting the standards for decontamination.

01:09:24 Speaker 12: Are you saying that we need an enhanced, expanded facility to be able to adequately decontaminate equipment and the human resources that go to the fires?

01:09:37 Speaker 12: Yes, that is correct.

01:09:38 Speaker 17: We need space to make sure those contaminants aren't spread all through the fire hall.

01:09:43 Speaker 17: They're in a room when the firefighters come back.

01:09:45 Speaker 17: They dress down, they shower, they wash their bunker gear in an area, and that's the flow or the technical—the flow or the technical, what I could show you in a modern facility,

01:09:54 Speaker 17: but we do need that extra area for that.

01:10:01 Speaker 17: Thank you, Worship.

01:10:02 Speaker 19: And I will be honest: when we looked at this back in corporate services, option one was the only one presented, obviously.

01:10:10 Speaker 19: So to see something coming back that had a significant reduction, remove some of those extra pieces—was great to see.

01:10:17 Speaker 19: I don't think anyone on council is questioning whether or not one on council is questioning whether there should be adequate spacing for multiple genders.

01:10:23 Speaker 19: I don't think that's a question at all.

01:10:24 Speaker 19: So I think that's a very open concept for everyone to say.

01:10:27 Speaker 19: That is obviously something we're going to support.

01:10:29 Speaker 19: So having decontamination space, having appropriate exercise space, those things are the importance.

01:10:39 Speaker 19: Everyone's going to do it, and it's just going to be the same thing.

01:10:41 Speaker 19: It all comes to money, right?

01:10:43 Speaker 19: We know it's not anything against the fire department, nothing against the parks department.

01:10:48 Speaker 19: When we make a decision about one of their office spaces, it's nothing to do with the operations of that department.

01:10:55 Speaker 19: It's money, right?

01:10:57 Speaker 19: We hear every single day we come to budget, we get letters and says we have no money.

01:11:01 Speaker 19: How are you continuing to raise your taxes?

01:11:03 Speaker 19: You have no money, or our capital deficiency is X amount of dollars of unfunded capital.

01:11:08 Speaker 19: How are we going to continue to do this?

01:11:10 Speaker 19: That's where it comes down to.

01:11:12 Speaker 19: So when we have these discussions, it's not about picking on one department more than the other or anything.

01:11:21 Speaker 19: It's about how are we going to properly afford it and do it in the most fiscal way, right?

01:11:25 Speaker 19: And I just want to make sure staff and members of council are all aware of that because when we have these discussions and these debates about what we've tried to do,

01:11:33 Speaker 19: it's not based off of challenging what your expertise is or what you're trying to provide to us.

01:11:39 Speaker 19: It's but how are we doing in the most cost-effective way?

01:11:42 Speaker 19: So I appreciate what you've done.

01:11:44 Speaker 19: I would echo the comments of saying, you know, moving into the training area and removing the museum component.

01:11:52 Speaker 19: You know, I think those were positives.

01:11:57 Speaker 19: You mentioned Hanover.

01:11:57 Speaker 19: Hanover has a beautiful new fire hall.

01:12:00 Speaker 19: I think it cost them thirteen million dollars or twelve million dollars, eight million dollars, something like that.

01:12:04 Speaker 19: It was one hundred percent net thing that we said we weren't going to do because it was going to cost us way more than anything else.

01:12:12 Speaker 19: But the other part about Hanover, or the new Paisley Fire Hall, or any of the ones that have just been going up is partnerships with the others.

01:12:20 Speaker 19: Trillium Foundation donated X amount of dollars to both of those fire halls.

01:12:27 Speaker 19: X Y Z sponsors the bunker room.

01:12:31 Speaker 19: So when we're talking about what are our other options out there or what policies are we putting in play,

01:12:36 Speaker 19: because if it's the big component of saying are we spending five million dollars on a project, it'd be nice to know that we.

01:12:41 Speaker 19: It'd be nice to know that we've explored the other areas, not just the federal and provincial grant funding models that we know we're not going to get unless it's 100% net.

01:12:48 Speaker 19: So where else are we?

01:12:51 Speaker 19: Have we reached out to the Trillium Foundation?

01:12:53 Speaker 19: Have we reached out to the fire services that we have?

01:12:57 Speaker 19: We've got two massive fire prevention private companies here in Owen Sound.

01:13:02 Speaker 19: That have we looked at sponsorships of certain pieces of our facilities?

01:13:07 Speaker 19: I know we've talked about it for other arenas, other areas, but what other partnerships have we brought in to discuss with these capital enhancements?

01:13:19 Speaker 17: I'll let Brady answer, but I can say absolutely it would be premature now before Council's approved a plan to go out and reach out to those partners.

01:13:30 Speaker 17: But insurance companies, the fire supply companies you've talked about, we would look for from every opportunity for sponsorship of the five million, I guess.

01:13:41 Speaker 19: So, more of my question was: Do we have a policy that's already hitting that?

01:13:45 Speaker 19: Because we don't do that anywhere yet.

01:13:48 Speaker 19: So, if that is something that you need prior to having this, is that a policy that we need to do as a Council first to allow for those kind of initiatives to begin?

01:14:02 Speaker 14: To Councillor Daltry, Your Worship, the two parts of that with Trillium.

01:14:07 Speaker 14: I've been successful with that grant in another municipality.

01:14:10 Speaker 14: Its focus is on rural, so I was speaking with the Chief about that and how we would have to structure an application because we don't have those rural candidates,

01:14:20 Speaker 14: but we do provide support to the other municipalities.

01:14:23 Speaker 14: So that's how we would have to structure a grant around that one.

01:14:25 Speaker 14: But it is a relatively easy one for somebody to get being in those municipalities.

01:14:31 Speaker 14: The second part about sponsorship is I believe it's December of this year, towards the end of this year,

01:14:36 Speaker 14: there is a service review project dealing specifically with sponsorship and establishing the policy and helping guide staff.

01:14:43 Speaker 14: So I'm not necessarily sure something that is dealt with today, but I think would be put in the back of your mind for towards the end of the year.

01:14:53 Speaker 14: Okay.

01:14:53 Speaker 14: Anyone else that way?

01:14:54 Speaker 14: Speak to the motion.

01:14:59 Speaker 14: This is a lot of money, and it.

01:15:02 Speaker 14: I agree that we need to update the building.

01:15:05 Speaker 08: We need to, you know, absolutely do the gender work, all that sort of stuff.

01:15:09 Speaker 08: My question would be pertaining to final costs and an upset limit.

01:15:19 Speaker 08: Like, how can we make sure?

01:15:20 Speaker 08: Because this is what a cost estimate was.

01:15:23 Speaker 08: Like, when we go through the RFP and we get the like, where do we get another say down the road to put an upset limit on this thing?

01:15:31 Speaker 08: Set limit on this thing because if the cost estimates come in and now we're up to eight million dollars because it's 2026 and something like how does this process work going forward?

01:15:43 Speaker 08: Can we set an absolute upset limit?

01:15:49 Speaker 08: Correct to Councillor Middlebro, Your Worship.

01:15:51 Speaker 08: Yes.

01:15:52 Speaker 14: So once we determine the budget today, that would be the number that we'd proceed with putting into the multi-year capital plan, and would allow us to start the design.

01:16:01 Speaker 14: The design work has already been funded, so we can proceed with that.

01:16:04 Speaker 14: The next step in the project would be we would come back to council if we know that the budget is going to be significantly higher or lower through multi-year capital plan update.

01:16:14 Speaker 14: So, as you remember, we'll do this in June and December.

01:16:18 Speaker 14: So, if we are proceeding along the lines of being within that budget, we would probably just remind council at that next update.

01:16:25 Speaker 14: If we needed more or we are going to not need as much money, that would also be part of a future update.

01:16:31 Speaker 14: So council would see this again, basically, every six months, and have opportunity to ask for that again.

01:16:42 Speaker 15: So let's just say we go forward, and hypothetically, all this stuff comes back, and it's six point five, seven point five.

01:16:50 Speaker 15: Like we're gonna have to have another conversation about what we're paring back, are we not?

01:16:58 Speaker 15: Through you, Mr. Mary, that's exactly right.

01:17:00 Speaker 17: What we're asking for is for Council to set an upset budget of five million dollars today.

01:17:06 Speaker 17: If we see any trending that it's above that, we have to revisit the project and we have to come back to Council.

01:17:14 Speaker 02: Then we're taking out the plumbing and we're putting an outhouse in the backyard.

01:17:18 Speaker 02: Okay, Mary, and I think missed you along the way.

01:17:20 Speaker 02: Thank you, Worship.

01:17:21 Speaker 02: Just a quick comment.

01:17:23 Speaker 06: When we did the city hall renovations, we had a renovations committee, and there were council members on that committee that kind of kept the pulse, their thumb on the pulse of what was taking place.

01:17:35 Speaker 06: At some point, it might not be a bad idea to have the same thing with this project.

01:17:42 Speaker 06: Okay, good.

01:17:46 Speaker 02: Can I call the question, which is John's motion that's on the table?

01:17:51 Speaker 02: All in favour?

01:17:53 Speaker 02: And that's carried.

01:17:55 Speaker 02: Trav, did you have a subsequent motion?

01:17:58 Speaker 02: Thank you, Worship.

01:17:58 Speaker 19: I think I'm going to save my motion until after I hear the service review report coming back in December about the corporate sponsorship.

01:18:05 Speaker 19: Perfect.

01:18:06 Speaker 19: Thanks, Marian.

01:18:08 Speaker 19: Did you have a subsequent motion?

01:18:11 Speaker 06: If it is appropriate at this time, Your Worship, I would move that we establish a fire hall renovation and expansion committee to be informed as the project moves along, with three members of council.

01:18:31 Speaker 02: Do I ask for a report back for us to consider that would have a little more terms of reference and all that type of stuff?

01:18:40 Speaker 02: That would be fine, Your Worship.

01:18:41 Speaker 06: But I will ask for a report to return to us with the terms of reference.

01:18:46 Speaker 06: Perfect.

01:18:46 Speaker 06: Any discussion on that one?

01:18:48 Speaker 06: Yep.

01:18:50 Speaker 06: My discussion would be.

01:18:53 Speaker 06: Perhaps a question then to the city manager.

01:18:55 Speaker 18: He's already undertaking this year, looking at potential committee structure changes.

01:19:02 Speaker 18: We used to even have a fire committee, and I think it's probably quarterly.

01:19:06 Speaker 18: Maybe it met.

01:19:07 Speaker 18: So I'm just wondering, should we hear from the city manager on, you know, reporting back with what he could be working on?

01:19:16 Speaker 18: I'm interested in the same, but we don't know yet what we might be undertaking in the back half this year.

01:19:23 Speaker 02: I suspect that that would come as part of the report, though.

01:19:31 Speaker 02: Thank you, Mayor, to Deputy Mayor.

01:19:33 Speaker 02: Good observation on that.

01:19:35 Speaker 20: The Clerk and I will be beginning work on that.

01:19:37 Speaker 20: But our intent with that report and looking at the committee structure is really to define a committee structure for 2026 and beyond,

01:19:45 Speaker 20: because this council's committee structure is set on you know these are our statutes.

01:19:48 Speaker 20: You know, these are our statutory committees, etc., etc. So, I think what Councillor Koepke is asking for it ties in, but it doesn't tie in timing-wise.

01:19:57 Speaker 20: So, I think the report on a terms of reference for a fire hall expansion and renovation project would probably need to come first.

01:20:06 Speaker 20: Okay, so can I call the question?

01:20:08 Speaker 20: All in favour?

01:20:10 Speaker 20: And that is carried.

01:20:11 Speaker 02: So we are at ten twenty.

01:20:14 Speaker 02: I think Branda said she's budgeted time to start with Hampson at 10:30.

01:20:19 Speaker 02: So, can we take a 10-minute break or a 12-minute break and come back?

01:20:22 Speaker 02: Let's take a 10-minute break and come back at 10:28.

01:33:08 Speaker 02: Okay.

01:33:10 Speaker 02: Okay, I think we've got everybody back in the room now, so we'll reconvene.

01:33:15 Speaker 02: Brady, over to you.

01:33:19 Speaker 02: Good morning again.

01:33:22 Speaker 02: Today is our levels of service.

01:33:25 Speaker 14: What I'm going to call is more of a workshop than an education session.

01:33:28 Speaker 14: And what we've done is we've asked Andrew Mirabella from Hemson Consulting to come facilitate this workshop with council.

01:33:37 Speaker 14: Hemson has worked with the city on various projects, including development charges and most recently the water and wastewater rate study.

01:33:43 Speaker 14: So they have a great understanding of the city's needs, but they also provide asset management consulting to other municipalities, and I'll let Andrew speak to that a little bit more.

01:33:52 Speaker 14: The purpose of the workshop today is really for council to have that conversation.

01:33:56 Speaker 14: Staff are here to kind of support questions.

01:33:59 Speaker 14: I'm going to be sitting at the back and really letting Andrew lead that with you to go through levels of service to support the 2025 asset management plan.

01:34:07 Speaker 14: One of the items that we talk about regularly internally, and thanks to Michelle for bringing it up again today, is just what levels of service are not.

01:34:17 Speaker 14: So the workshop today isn't talking about the frequency of our snow plowing or the frequency of the road patrolling.

01:34:24 Speaker 14: Like those are legislated or other documents.

01:34:27 Speaker 14: What we're talking about is the conversations around sidewalks on both sides of the street versus one side of the street, like we have official plan documents and things,

01:34:35 Speaker 14: and there's so many different documents that tie into the city's asset management plan that drive where these projects are coming from.

01:34:43 Speaker 14: We have master plans that talk about rehabilitation, replacement, but also enhancement of assets.

01:34:49 Speaker 14: How do we all kind of wrap this together?

01:34:51 Speaker 14: Council is aware of through the 2022 and the 2024 asset management plan that we do have a deficit in our capital spending,

01:34:59 Speaker 14: and it just came up recently with the conversation about the fire station is that we're asking for something, but we're also coming every other meeting saying we're struggling to meet the requirements of this.

01:35:10 Speaker 14: The fire station was another great example in that we were talking about what is a core city building versus a non-core city building.

01:35:18 Speaker 14: So when you look at the asset management plan for corporate facilities, we have those facilities such as the police station built in there, but we also have the buildings that we support,

01:35:27 Speaker 14: the Billy Bishop Museum, the Waterfront Heritage Centres.

01:35:30 Speaker 14: Those all have financial needs.

01:35:32 Speaker 14: They all have very similar requirements of the city.

01:35:35 Speaker 14: How do we balance out funding those?

01:35:38 Speaker 14: When we try, how do we compare these buildings against our roads versus our playgrounds?

01:35:43 Speaker 14: So Andrew will help kind of walk through some of the different classifications, but also kind of spark some conversations to get an idea of what council really values when they're looking at this.

01:35:52 Speaker 14: I know in the past we've talked about adding one percent to the asset management plan, and that conversation will come after today.

01:36:00 Speaker 14: But this will help us kind of drive how we recommend that to council.

01:36:03 Speaker 14: Where would that one percent go based on what council is asking for?

01:36:08 Speaker 14: Some places do this a little bit differently.

01:36:09 Speaker 14: They go to the public first, or staff generate the levels of service.

01:36:14 Speaker 14: But I was very hesitant to do that, and I didn't want to develop these levels of service, build an asset management plan based on that,

01:36:21 Speaker 14: and then come back to council and have us not agree on what we're looking for.

01:36:24 Speaker 14: So today is we're not committing to anything.

01:36:27 Speaker 14: We're coming back later with those levels of service and using something similar to the tracker that has been identified in the training session today or the workshop today, and we'll bring that back to council.

01:36:37 Speaker 14: That will mean that we do not or will not be able to include this in our 2025 Asset Management Plan at this point to meet the legislative requirements.

01:36:45 Speaker 14: We'll just continue to use the percentage of assets in good condition as the baseline,

01:36:50 Speaker 14: and then we'll continue to work with council staff and the public going forward to make our asset management plan something that we can work with,

01:36:58 Speaker 14: rather than something that's going to collect dust on the shelf had we gone another route.

01:37:03 Speaker 14: So as I said, please feel free to talk amongst each other when Andrew is going through the different conversations, and we as staff will be documenting this behind the scenes,

01:37:15 Speaker 14: and then we'll come back and continue to refine them later, and then go out to the public after that, and then incorporate them into the plan.

01:37:22 Speaker 02: Just before you sit down, I think it's 67 buildings or structures that we maintain.

01:37:30 Speaker 14: Through you, Mr. Mayor, it's closer to 80 when including some of those really small structures, but probably 67 are kind of ones that have common elements.

01:37:38 Speaker 14: Thanks.

01:37:43 Speaker 14: Welcome.

01:37:50 Speaker 14: All right.

01:37:50 Speaker 14: Good morning, Mayor, members, Council.

01:37:53 Speaker 14: Thanks again for having me.

01:37:54 Speaker 14: My name is Andrew Mirabella, associate partner at Hemson.

01:37:58 Speaker 21: So staff asked me to come up to City Hall here to talk a little bit about levels of service and asset management, some of the work that we're doing in other municipalities,

01:38:08 Speaker 21: and just kind of start the discussion around levels of service and how that could influence your asset management plan and some of the things that you might want to consider as you're kind of building

01:38:17 Speaker 21: out the programmememe.

01:38:20 Speaker 21: So in terms of some of the workshop and our agenda here today, so I won't spend a ton of time on the overview and the asset management legislation,

01:38:27 Speaker 21: but I will talk a little bit about it.

01:38:28 Speaker 21: What's been done, and then kind of where we're going forward from here.

01:38:33 Speaker 21: I'll provide a very high level overview of your 2022 and 2024 AMP in terms of the valuation and the condition of the assets.

01:38:41 Speaker 21: I'll try and spend a bit more time on the determination of our proposed levels of service, the process that we've seen, what's worked at least in our view, from what we've done in other communities,

01:38:52 Speaker 21: and then how that relates back to your life cycle strategy and your financing strategy, and then we'll kind of get into that kind of funding the full cost and the requirements and the regulation,

01:39:02 Speaker 21: and how you can use that information going forward, and how we're going to plan better forward in the future.

01:39:07 Speaker 21: We're really seeking to, to Brady's point, the feedback from council here today in terms of some of the level of service measures.

01:39:14 Speaker 21: So we're going to go through each of the different service areas, some of the levels of service that you have in your plan,

01:39:18 Speaker 21: and perhaps just start to gauge the discussion of where council wants to go in some of the terms of those measures, adding new ones, kind of deviating from the current structure itself,

01:39:29 Speaker 21: and then the levels of service within it.

01:39:31 Speaker 21: And obviously, the conversation following today will be: Well, how does that impact the costs?

01:39:35 Speaker 21: Has that impacted your financing strategy?

01:39:37 Speaker 21: And how do we go from there?

01:39:41 Speaker 21: So, just as a very simple overview in terms of your overall infrastructure, in terms of what we call as the core assets, as part of the regulatory requirements,

01:39:50 Speaker 21: you're looking at a valuation of about $1.2 billion back in 2022 dollars from when your core AMP was done.

01:39:56 Speaker 21: And when we think about core infrastructure, water, wastewater, roads, bridges, culverts, stormwater, that's the way it's framed under the legislation, recognizing things such as fire are critical,

01:40:08 Speaker 21: but not necessarily core in terms of the conversation.

01:40:10 Speaker 21: What we're looking at that value, I would expect after we've seen the inflation.

01:40:15 Speaker 21: Run that we're at is probably thirty percent higher from what we're seeing in that number there.

01:40:20 Speaker 21: But we just represented it as it was in your 2022 plan.

01:40:24 Speaker 21: Overall, those assets in the core plan are in good condition.

01:40:28 Speaker 21: You know, we always want to be cognizant of those assets that are in the fair category, as well as the poor and very poor.

01:40:36 Speaker 21: Those are the ones we need to address.

01:40:37 Speaker 21: But the ones in fair, from an asset management perspective, are quite critical.

01:40:41 Speaker 21: Those assets in fair condition, if built properly, fair condition.

01:40:42 Speaker 21: If without the proper maintenance and management of that infrastructure, they can easily fall into that poor, very poor category.

01:40:48 Speaker 21: So we always want to make sure that we pay close attention to that category.

01:40:52 Speaker 21: But that represents about twenty percent of that overall base.

01:40:58 Speaker 21: On the non-core side, the valuations lowered around three hundred million dollars with the overall assets in fair condition.

01:41:06 Speaker 21: I would say, just generally speaking, one of the things that we found is the core, the non-core assets.

01:41:11 Speaker 21: The valuations in previous iterations have been a little bit lower, but I think as data improves and we get better with our asset management programmememe,

01:41:20 Speaker 21: we're starting to see significant kind of upward pressure on those replacement values.

01:41:24 Speaker 21: We have better information on our land improvements.

01:41:26 Speaker 21: We have better information of all the buildings, the replacement values.

01:41:31 Speaker 21: So we start to improve our data sets and we start to see that number kind of improve again.

01:41:35 Speaker 21: That's just the overall working element from an asset management programmememe.

01:41:40 Speaker 21: We're supposed to be living documents.

01:41:41 Speaker 21: They're supposed to be improved upon as we go forward here.

01:41:47 Speaker 21: So the City has been obviously proactive in the asset management front.

01:41:50 Speaker 21: Here, you've met the requirements of the regulation, but this has really started kind of way back in 2009, I would say,

01:41:57 Speaker 21: as kind of one of the early stages of the asset management programmememes where municipalities had to document their tangible capital assets as part of their PCF 3150 requirement.

01:42:07 Speaker 21: From that point, we had our Ministry of Infrastructure release on the Building Together Guide in 2013, which required municipalities to prepare an asset management plan to get grant money.

01:42:17 Speaker 21: So every municipality had to prepare an AMP to substantiate any grant funding application,

01:42:22 Speaker 21: and that really spearheaded municipalities to prepare a plan that was going to be allowing you to kind of get grant money when those applications came forward.

01:42:32 Speaker 21: So virtually all municipalities prepared a plan.

01:42:35 Speaker 21: They were under varying kind of levels of maturity, and they all kind of took somewhat different forms, and really set the stage for the next regulation, which was Oreg 5817,

01:42:47 Speaker 21: which was part of the Infrastructure and Jobs Prosperity Act, and that really set a little bit more consistency in terms of the way municipalities undertook asset management plans.

01:42:57 Speaker 21: And within that period, we had some changes in terms of your federal gas tax requirements.

01:43:02 Speaker 21: We saw changes on the development charge side of things, where the DC Act was refined to include an asset management plan element, recognizing that there were municipalities who, as they construct new infrastructure,

01:43:14 Speaker 21: even though the first round capital is development charge funded, you are now responsible for maintaining that infrastructure, renewing it, and replacing it at the end of its life.

01:43:22 Speaker 21: So we wanted to make sure that municipalities and councils were really aware of those long-term fiscal impacts of all that new infrastructure that was coming online.

01:43:30 Speaker 21: So that really kind of, as you know, over the last ten or so years, there's been quite a bit of changes in the asset management world, and municipalities, kind of prior to 2009,

01:43:41 Speaker 21: did things called such as reserve fund adequacy studies, which were very similar to asset management plans, but just didn't have that formal name.

01:43:47 Speaker 21: But it's gotten a lot more consistent now.

01:43:49 Speaker 21: We have the regulations.

01:43:50 Speaker 21: We have exactly what needs to be done, and certain steps that have to be adhered to, which really kind of follows the next slide here.

01:43:59 Speaker 21: So the regulation of 5817 is what every municipality in Ontario was working towards.

01:44:06 Speaker 21: In July 1st of 2019, you had to prepare a strategic asset management policy.

01:44:11 Speaker 21: Subsequent to that, you had to have your asset management plans.

01:44:14 Speaker 21: What they had it under is an existing level of service framework for your core infrastructure starting July 1st of 2022, and then following that, you had to have your non-core infrastructure, so all remaining assets,

01:44:25 Speaker 21: still under an existing level of service framework for July 1st of 2024, where most municipalities are right now is their proposed level of service framework,

01:44:35 Speaker 21: and that has to be prepared for this July for all your municipal assets under that target level of service framework.

01:44:42 Speaker 21: And the target level of service framework is really kind of really the focal point of today.

01:44:46 Speaker 21: Is trying to get municipalities to think a little bit about where we need to go as a community in terms of our level of service,

01:44:53 Speaker 21: and that'll help manage the way we think about our infrastructure because the infrastructure is really there to support the service.

01:44:59 Speaker 21: So if we understand the service that we're trying to deliver, then it's about managing the infrastructure in order to deliver that,

01:45:05 Speaker 21: and that could have very different funding implications depending on which way we want to go with it.

01:45:10 Speaker 21: There's a really important element here, which I don't think gives you know, we often don't talk about enough.

01:45:16 Speaker 21: There's going to be annual updates after July 1st, 2025,

01:45:20 Speaker 21: that municipalities have to come to council with and give a bit of a progress report on how we're kind of managing along with our municipal infrastructure, how we're managing to gain certain levels of service.

01:45:30 Speaker 21: So there's going to be really good opportunities here for staff to come forward to council and continue to re-engage these discussions on level of service and how we're matching against our financing strategy.

01:45:38 Speaker 21: So I think that's going to be a critical element here as we move forward in keeping these asset management plans alive.

01:45:44 Speaker 21: There are five-year AMP renewal updates following that for that July 1st, 2025 need, but certainly within that period,

01:45:51 Speaker 21: you're going to see kind of asset management still continue to be at the council level year over year.

01:46:01 Speaker 21: So, what's really changed here with the July deadline?

01:46:04 Speaker 21: Here, so your current plan, you've met all the stages up to your 2024, and you'll be able to leverage a lot of your existing information to meet your 2025 deadline.

01:46:13 Speaker 21: But it's both kind of going beyond that going forward here, and that's why I was brought in to kind of just talk a little bit about where you're going to go from this point on.

01:46:21 Speaker 21: But the plan for under your proposed level of service framework has to be for all municipal infrastructure.

01:46:26 Speaker 21: So different from the way the legislation was set out before.

01:46:29 Speaker 21: You did your core assets first, and then a couple of years later, you did your non-core ones.

01:46:33 Speaker 21: This one will cover all municipal assets in one category, and it'll cover under what we call that proposed level of service framework.

01:46:40 Speaker 21: We have to set our targets on a ten-year basis, at minimum.

01:46:44 Speaker 21: So most municipalities that we've been working with have been looking out to ten years and setting your targets on that front.

01:46:51 Speaker 21: We talk.

01:46:51 Speaker 21: We're going to talk a little bit about the lifecycle activities and the life.

01:46:52 Speaker 21: The lifecycle activities and the lifecycle activities is what we need to identify in order to meet those proposed levels of services.

01:46:59 Speaker 21: So, when we think about lifecycle activities, we have to think about them in the asset management context.

01:47:03 Speaker 21: So, what could we do as a City to increase our replacement activities?

01:47:07 Speaker 21: Do we need to be increasing our renewal strategies in our assets?

01:47:10 Speaker 21: Do we need to top up our maintenance in our operating budget for our facilities in order to meet our level of service?

01:47:16 Speaker 21: So, where are the lifecycle activities that we need to adjust in order to meet the levels of services that we're looking at, sometimes when we think about levels of service,

01:47:26 Speaker 21: we get mixed in with operating budget type stuff and things that don't really have to do with the management of infrastructure.

01:47:32 Speaker 21: It could be additional FTEs or things that don't really always relate back to the management of infrastructure.

01:47:37 Speaker 21: So we always try to think about the life cycle activities as a way you're managing your assets.

01:47:43 Speaker 21: And as part of the life cycle activities, there's costs associated with it.

01:47:46 Speaker 21: So if we're increasing our frequency of replacements, then that might be an additional cost to the City that you'll have to incur, and we want to think about what those additional costs are,

01:47:56 Speaker 21: as well as the associated risks, and we think about risks in the context of meeting or not meeting the levels of service.

01:48:04 Speaker 21: So if there, if we fall short of our level of service, are there really any risks to the corporation by doing that?

01:48:09 Speaker 21: And I think that's part of what we have to do as part of this overall exercise.

01:48:17 Speaker 21: So just talk very briefly about the line of sight for asset management,

01:48:21 Speaker 21: and one of the things that we find that's a little different than the way we're thinking about this next stage of your AMP programmememe is keeping levels of service at the forefront of our decision-making.

01:48:32 Speaker 21: Where I think when I look back at the AMPs that were prepared for the first side of the regulation back in 2013, the levels of service were documented,

01:48:41 Speaker 21: but they didn't really relate to the financial strategy that you're trying to achieve.

01:48:45 Speaker 21: Where in this iteration, where the iterations were at least with our view of the legislation of the province,

01:48:51 Speaker 21: is if you're trying to make your levels of service being one of the fundamental criteria for meeting the regulation, it's going to be the one that's driving your decisions.

01:49:03 Speaker 21: So if we think about your levels of service, what you want to go as the corporation, that will kind of feed into the operating and budget impacts that you might be incurring,

01:49:15 Speaker 21: and then that'll inform how you're going to meet your levels of service, and you're going to follow your risk analysis associated with that.

01:49:21 Speaker 21: And we think about the levels of service again.

01:49:24 Speaker 21: Usually, there's a CAPEX on the capital budget side impacts, or on the OPEX on the operating budget side of the impact.

01:49:35 Speaker 21: So we'll get into a little bit on the process to determine the proposed level of service.

01:49:41 Speaker 21: So when we think about our levels of service, the general definition here is it's referring to a quality or a quantity of a service or any particular service itself.

01:49:51 Speaker 21: They're really useful when you're trying to compare options and you're determining the service impacts, trying to optimize your decision-making framework.

01:49:58 Speaker 21: And there's the big distinction here between the current level of service, it's kind of where we are today, and then your future levels of service, your proposed level of service,

01:50:06 Speaker 21: or where we want to be going tomorrow.

01:50:08 Speaker 21: And you know, as part of our process here, we're trying to understand really how you got to the level of services you're at today.

01:50:16 Speaker 21: The current performance is set.

01:50:17 Speaker 21: You know you've made a series of decisions and you manage your infrastructure along the way in order to get there.

01:50:23 Speaker 21: Now, how do we want to see that level of service change over that planning period?

01:50:27 Speaker 21: And that proposed level of service doesn't necessarily have to be an increase from where you're currently at.

01:50:33 Speaker 21: You know this could be looking at well our proposed level of service is maintaining our existing position.

01:50:38 Speaker 21: It could be at a number lower than what you're currently at, and all those types of decisions are going to have implications in terms of your budget.

01:50:46 Speaker 21: So there's no requirement in the legislation says you have to be increasing them.

01:50:50 Speaker 21: This is about trying to understand as you as the city trying to best determine your path forward, which could have ups or downs from there.

01:50:57 Speaker 21: Yep.

01:50:57 Speaker 21: See a question through the mayor, just Andrew.

01:51:00 Speaker 16: So when we think about proposed level of service, where do we want to be tomorrow?

01:51:04 Speaker 16: As we're thinking about that, is that kind of a relative trend, or is that we should be thinking about a kind of static state that we are trying to get to,

01:51:15 Speaker 16: rather than a position of relative change.

01:51:18 Speaker 16: Like right now in our but capital budgeting, we say we're going to increase our expenses by one percent every year.

01:51:24 Speaker 16: Is that a proposed level of service to be trending, or is we want everything to be at level X as our future state and just keep that there?

01:51:37 Speaker 16: So through the mirror, that's that's a great question.

01:51:39 Speaker 21: So they kind of work in tandem, where when we think about your point, your increasing your contributions by one percent,

01:51:48 Speaker 21: we would almost think about that as being your financial strategy to achieve your proposed level of service.

01:51:53 Speaker 21: So we've set the target levels of service, and let's just use roads as a simple example.

01:51:58 Speaker 21: If we want to maintain our current 72 PCI, then it's about well, in order to do that,

01:52:05 Speaker 21: we need to continue to increase our capital contributions to reserve by one percent every year in order to maintain that.

01:52:11 Speaker 21: So it's still annualized in terms of our contribution requirements, but we are looking at it kind of over a ten-year horizon of where we want to go.

01:52:18 Speaker 21: Recognizing within that period, you might see some ebbs and flows on that PCI trend as it happens.

01:52:26 Speaker 21: Pavement condition index.

01:52:26 Speaker 21: Sorry, yeah, yeah, I jumped ahead on the slides here.

01:52:29 Speaker 21: So your pavement condition index might go up and down a little bit, but you're trying to still maintain a certain target over the period.

01:52:36 Speaker 21: That helps answer.

01:52:40 Speaker 21: Thank you.

01:52:40 Speaker 21: Just clarifying through the Mayor.

01:52:42 Speaker 16: So, as I'm envisioning this different level of service to say we want a sidewalk on both sides of every street.

01:52:52 Speaker 16: and we want the condition index of that asset to always be across the city be 50 percent.

01:53:03 Speaker 16: Through the Mayor, that's right.

01:53:03 Speaker 21: So those would be two different levels of service, and you can track as many as you want.

01:53:07 Speaker 21: And part of that is understanding as we get more mature that you know the more levels of services we have, those are obviously influencing our funding decisions.

01:53:14 Speaker 21: But it's a really good way to measure if our funding strategy is actually working towards the level of service that we set.

01:53:20 Speaker 21: So if you're setting sidewalks on both sides of the street, those are capital intensive type levels of service.

01:53:25 Speaker 21: Then we have to make sure we have the financial resources in order to undertake that.

01:53:32 Speaker 21: Great.

01:53:38 Speaker 21: So when we think about the levels of service, so the regulation kind of speaks to kind of two parts of here.

01:53:42 Speaker 21: We have our customer levels of service, and we have our technical level of service.

01:53:46 Speaker 21: So on the customer level of service side, it's more the specific standards that the municipalities how you're going to establish those measures on how the residents are receiving the service.

01:53:55 Speaker 21: So these are a little bit more qualitative, general descriptions of the way the residents would see the level of service.

01:54:01 Speaker 21: We want access to our recreation centres.

01:54:03 Speaker 21: We want our roads to be safe, drivable.

01:54:06 Speaker 21: We need to get from point A to point B. So they're not as you know technical as the way the municipality would be looking at how we're actually measuring the delivery of that service.

01:54:15 Speaker 21: But nonetheless, the regulation requires that part of it to understand what those qualitative, those customer level services are, and we can think of them at a more detailed level.

01:54:25 Speaker 21: In some of the more mature municipalities, we've broken them down into these categories.

01:54:28 Speaker 21: We have capacity and use.

01:54:28 Speaker 21: We have capacity in use, so thinking of more of your availability of your resources, are our road networks at capacity?

01:54:36 Speaker 21: Is our recreation centre at capacity?

01:54:39 Speaker 21: And that's going to kind of help determine you know what the trigger on the cost side of the analysis is going to look like.

01:54:45 Speaker 21: We have function, we have quality.

01:54:47 Speaker 21: So thinking again, quality of our services: are our bridges in good condition?

01:54:51 Speaker 21: Are our water network in good condition?

01:54:54 Speaker 21: Very simplistic on the quality side of things.

01:54:57 Speaker 21: The regulation we call it could be you might have heard the term community level service or customer.

01:55:03 Speaker 21: They're kind of interchangeable in terms of that respect, but that's just the one part of the of the spectrum.

01:55:10 Speaker 21: The technical level of service is where the municipality does more of the heavy lifting here,

01:55:15 Speaker 21: and that's the more specific technical measures that you're going to actually use to see the success of your customer level of service.

01:55:22 Speaker 21: So we have our general statements that the customer wants to see: your roads in good condition.

01:55:29 Speaker 21: We want to get from point A to point B. You're going to look at that from a pavement condition index, the PCI.

01:55:34 Speaker 21: You're going to look at that from how we actually are managing that particular piece of infrastructure.

01:55:39 Speaker 21: On your buildings, you're going to look at your condition of your buildings itself.

01:55:43 Speaker 21: You're what they call the facility condition index.

01:55:45 Speaker 21: So there's an FCI calculation to it.

01:55:47 Speaker 21: So you're going to want to make sure that you are meeting these very stringent technical level of service to it,

01:55:52 Speaker 21: and that's going to measure how you're going to do your performance targets and that's really set on the asset management plan.

01:55:58 Speaker 21: And this is really where the heavy lifting will come from the municipality and council to understand what those technical levels of services are going to be,

01:56:06 Speaker 21: and you're going to want to try and track those and measure those over the next several years.

01:56:11 Speaker 21: And if we start to see changes in those technical levels of service, that's going to be the trigger point for municipalities to be like, okay, well,

01:56:18 Speaker 21: if we're moving away from our target levels of service that we set, we have to have a good reason for why that's the case.

01:56:25 Speaker 21: Is it because we're not allocating enough funding to it?

01:56:28 Speaker 21: Maybe the costs have gone up way higher than we actually planned for.

01:56:32 Speaker 21: Maybe there's a significant renewal need that's come up that wasn't identified.

01:56:36 Speaker 21: So you're going to want to be tracking that level of service and track and tracking those those service levels over the period.

01:56:43 Speaker 21: The elements of the technical level of service of growth, upgrade, renewal, and financial sustainability relate back to the four levels on the previous slide on your customer level of service,

01:56:54 Speaker 21: so we think about just using the first one.

01:56:56 Speaker 21: Capacity and use was on the customer side.

01:56:59 Speaker 21: That relates to a technical level of services of growth.

01:57:01 Speaker 21: So, if we've identified that on the customer side, our recreation centre is at capacity,

01:57:07 Speaker 21: the technical level of service would be a growth-related expansion need in order to alleviate that that that that that level of service that we talked about.

01:57:17 Speaker 21: So, you'll be looking at well, let's expand our recreation centre.

01:57:20 Speaker 21: So now we have more capacity within our system.

01:57:23 Speaker 21: And those expansion activities then relate back to a cost.

01:57:26 Speaker 21: There is going to be a cost associated with doing that type of work, and we have to identify what those costs are, and then what the long-term implications of that are.

01:57:34 Speaker 21: So there's a bit of a trend line here between the way we set our levels of service and the cost that we're going to look at in order to alleviate it.

01:57:46 Speaker 21: So when we think about the proposed level of service and kind of setting the stage for our discussion here.

01:57:52 Speaker 21: So the first part you'll see is our service identification.

01:57:57 Speaker 21: You're going to want to have a good handle on which services we actually provide and the appropriate measures that we're going to be developing around it.

01:58:04 Speaker 21: So we provide parks and recreation services, we provide water services, we provide roads and related services, we maintain our bridges and culverts.

01:58:13 Speaker 21: These are all asset areas and services that we provide.

01:58:17 Speaker 21: You're going to want to identify a set of measures that are going to relate specifically to those services, and they're going to be measures that are asset management related.

01:58:27 Speaker 21: And the level of service measures, when I say they're asset management related, and they have to be related in the context to our proposed level of service framework.

01:58:34 Speaker 21: So we want to be thinking about measures that, one, we can even set a target to.

01:58:39 Speaker 21: There's oftentimes we find that the level of services are there, but it's going to be very difficult to set any proposed level of service target to.

01:58:44 Speaker 21: Proposed level of service target, too.

01:58:47 Speaker 21: So we want to make sure that there's a target that can actually be achieved and it can be set for, and we want to make sure that we can track this on a regular basis.

01:58:55 Speaker 21: It's not going to be super helpful if we set a level of service, and that's a measure that we can only produce once every five or six years, or every ten years,

01:59:04 Speaker 21: or it takes a huge amount of staff effort in order to retrack that information annually.

01:59:09 Speaker 21: Because I think we want to see what the trend line is and how we're going to move forward with it.

01:59:14 Speaker 21: In the setting the target stage here, it's going to be about looking at your discussions with staff.

01:59:22 Speaker 21: It's going to be looking at discussions with council, and then reaching out to the public to get their feedback on where we want to go as a corporation.

01:59:31 Speaker 21: The assessing the impacts and the comparative state, we want to understand what the overall impacts of those levels of service are, and some of this gets done in tandem with the cost analysis.

01:59:43 Speaker 21: Recognizing that as we're setting our levels of service and our targets, it goes back to what the financial capacity is of the municipality in order to achieve that target.

01:59:52 Speaker 21: And part of this is trying to get that relationship to what's reasonable and what can we expect as a city in order as a proper level of service moving forward.

02:00:00 Speaker 21: And if that's the level of service we want to deliver, it should be about trying to find a financial strategy that's going to accommodate the delivery of that particular service.

02:00:10 Speaker 21: This is a pretty robust process, and and it's not going to be perfect on day one.

02:00:14 Speaker 21: It's going to take some time in order to get what those true levels, those services are, and part of that's going to be about informed data as well.

02:00:23 Speaker 21: And the data part, in my view, is pretty critical because I mean you're going to make better decisions when you have better data.

02:00:28 Speaker 21: So, the earlier that we can that you can set those level service targets, and the proper measures, we can start to get on the track of trying to annually understand how those changes are.

02:00:40 Speaker 21: occurring, where your trend line is, and then your financial impacts of it, and then you can start to tweak those targets in your next iterations and make better decisions with it.

02:00:54 Speaker 21: So let's think about setting the target and kind of looking at it in alignment with the life cycle management strategies itself.

02:01:01 Speaker 21: So if we use a simple example of our current roads, we have an average pavement condition index of seventy-five, and the seventy-five is over one hundred,

02:01:10 Speaker 21: and seventy-five in the roads context is kind of a good road.

02:01:14 Speaker 21: And the target is about maintaining our PCIs, our pavement condition indices, to be at least above a seventy overall.

02:01:25 Speaker 21: Now, one of the things that I think is important, and we stress to, even though the current performance is seventy-five, and our target is maintaining a minimum of seventy,

02:01:34 Speaker 21: which intuitively means we're kind of just doing the same as what we currently are.

02:01:36 Speaker 21: Is doing the same as what we're currently at.

02:01:38 Speaker 21: That doesn't necessarily mean that we can reduce costs or we can kind of take the foot off the gas in the way we're investing our capital infrastructure,

02:01:47 Speaker 21: because it could be that we need to spend more even just to maintain that good level of services that we have, just because of the deterioration of some of our assets.

02:01:54 Speaker 21: So it's really important that we understand what those implications are going forward.

02:02:00 Speaker 21: But it's about understanding what you currently do as a city to maintain your roads at a 75.

02:02:04 Speaker 21: Your roads at a seventy-five.

02:02:06 Speaker 21: So, what are your current programmememes in place?

02:02:08 Speaker 21: Do you have resurfacing programmememes on your roads?

02:02:10 Speaker 21: Do you have a pothole repair programmememe?

02:02:13 Speaker 21: Do you have an inspection programmememe on your roadways?

02:02:15 Speaker 21: And what are the costs associated with it?

02:02:18 Speaker 21: And then we're going to look at what the life cycle activities that you're going to be doing in order to achieve that.

02:02:23 Speaker 21: Do we need to increase our road resurfacing programmememe?

02:02:27 Speaker 21: Do we need to increase our maintenance programmememes?

02:02:29 Speaker 21: And what are the frequency of those events?

02:02:31 Speaker 21: And how do we change our current practice?

02:02:32 Speaker 21: And all the practices, and all those different elements might add up to a different cost that we currently don't capture and are not considering,

02:02:40 Speaker 21: and that will kind of feed into our proposed level of service discussion.

02:02:50 Speaker 21: So, in terms of the timeline here, in terms of some of the steps to determine our proposed level of service, so I think the first thing is it's about preparing the level of service template.

02:02:59 Speaker 21: Once we've defined what services we need to do, the concepts.

02:03:03 Speaker 21: We've identified the line of sight.

02:03:05 Speaker 21: We set up our level of service template, and then we kind of go to the department heads to have those discussions on where we feel we need to go.

02:03:15 Speaker 21: I mean, sometimes we find that the asset management programmememe, because there's numbers in it, rests with the finance department.

02:03:20 Speaker 21: But reality is, the finance department only knows the numbers side of it.

02:03:23 Speaker 21: We have to go to the service areas to understand how the infrastructure is actually managed.

02:03:27 Speaker 21: So we put a lot of emphasis in our process to talk to each of the individual departments, talk to the service area representatives, the subject matter experts on how they actually manage their municipal infrastructure,

02:03:38 Speaker 21: and then that provides really good feedback in terms of, you know, how we're actually going to structure our level of services and the programmememe going forward.

02:03:47 Speaker 21: Once we have, you know, municipal staff on board in terms of where they feel the service levels need to go, and sometimes this is interchangeable between communities,

02:03:56 Speaker 21: we would then go to council and understand what council's position is on those level of services as well, and getting council's feedback on this is where the direction is,

02:04:06 Speaker 21: and we think about the cost side of the strategy as well.

02:04:10 Speaker 21: Public input is pretty critical into that, and again, you'd probably want to seek public input over that process as well, and whether that's done through kind of a public survey or a public open house,

02:04:23 Speaker 21: or done through the budget process, public input is part of the overall plan here.

02:04:29 Speaker 21: And that'll kind of help kind of understand where we're going to be going again moving forward here.

02:04:36 Speaker 21: And then the fourth step is about the cost analysis and trying to understand really what the tax rate impact or the utility rate impacts are going to be in order to undertake those levels of

02:04:45 Speaker 21: service.

02:04:46 Speaker 21: And for an asset management plan, in our view, in order to be really effective, once we set the levels of service and we have our financing strategy,

02:04:55 Speaker 21: is what is our overall taxation impact in order to carry this out, and once we have that taxation impact,

02:05:01 Speaker 21: I think you get a better sense of the affordability of the programmememe and if we need to make any changes, or if we need to fulfil that level of service.

02:05:10 Speaker 21: It's here's the City of Owen Sound's portion of it, and then if we kind of seek other government funding opportunities, should they exist, to help bridge the gap.

02:05:20 Speaker 21: Obviously, the latter of the two is not to secure a source of funds,

02:05:24 Speaker 21: so we wanted to make sure that at least the city is doing their part in trying to achieve the level of services that we've got.

02:05:35 Speaker 21: So I got two slides, and then I'll maybe pause for any questions.

02:05:38 Speaker 21: If not, then I can continue on.

02:05:41 Speaker 21: So this is the current level of service tracker, and it's pretty high level.

02:05:46 Speaker 21: But I think the goal here, what the municipality is going to try and do, is trying to understand along the left the service areas that we have, and then the level of service measures,

02:05:57 Speaker 21: and a couple points on the level of service measures.

02:06:00 Speaker 21: One, the province wasn't all too specific about what they call the non-core assets in terms of the level of service.

02:06:05 Speaker 21: So municipalities haven't gone ahead and you know created fifteen twenty level of service measures for each service area.

02:06:12 Speaker 21: It's about making sure that the ones that we're picking are relevant and they can actually be used to inform decision making.

02:06:18 Speaker 21: So we're looking at just three to five level of service measures for each service area.

02:06:23 Speaker 21: The province was very specific on levels of service for your core infrastructure, so roads, water, sewer, bridges, culverts, and stormwater.

02:06:31 Speaker 21: They gave us the levels of services that we need to measure.

02:06:34 Speaker 21: Most municipalities haven't deviated from those from the core.

02:06:37 Speaker 21: They haven't added any, particularly a whole slew of new ones.

02:06:41 Speaker 21: But they did make sure that they're tracking those specific ones.

02:06:44 Speaker 21: On the non-cores, again, just a couple measures for each of them, to one ensure compliance, but two making sure that they can be rooted back to an investment decision.

02:06:53 Speaker 21: So once we've identified our levels of service, our current level of service or current level of services is kind of tracked as well.

02:07:01 Speaker 21: In order to really facilitate any future discussions on targets, we need to understand what the current level of service is,

02:07:08 Speaker 21: and that's going to be looked at the last couple of years of performance as well as your current one and where we currently sit.

02:07:13 Speaker 21: And recognizing that if our assets are in fair condition or in good condition,

02:07:19 Speaker 21: we must have made a series of decisions along the way here that have got our assets in the condition that they're in,

02:07:25 Speaker 21: and we want to make sure that what we're trying to do going forward is obviously replicating that,

02:07:29 Speaker 21: but taking into consideration some of the future issues that we might get in terms of asset renewal needs, kind of different inflation pressures,

02:07:38 Speaker 21: so things that we can do on the ground in order to help manage that.

02:07:42 Speaker 21: We want to know our life cycle activity that's tied to it.

02:07:45 Speaker 21: So within each of those service areas, different life cycle activities might be present.

02:07:50 Speaker 21: One of them might be more maintenance activity heavy.

02:07:53 Speaker 21: They could be more replacement need, or they could be driven by renewal needs that you're going to be looking at.

02:08:00 Speaker 21: We have the life cycle cost as kind of the second last column, which is going to be important.

02:08:05 Speaker 21: We want to have a really good handle on where you've been spending your money on municipal infrastructure, and the both operating budget as well as your tax-supported budget and capital budget,

02:08:16 Speaker 21: of where those dollars are going, and how we've been managing that infrastructure using those dollars, and that's going to set us a point here on our levels of service.

02:08:25 Speaker 21: If we need to make any changes to that funding pattern going ahead, and particularly when we think about your maintenance expenditures,

02:08:31 Speaker 21: if we have to increase that budget allocation that we currently have by ten or twenty percent, we know what that starting point is.

02:08:38 Speaker 21: So it's really about a bit of a deep dive into the way we're currently using our budget and the way we're managing our infrastructure.

02:08:52 Speaker 21: So then, just kind of thinking a little bit about the consultation with staff.

02:08:54 Speaker 21: You know, we've got the level of service tracker and the consultation with staff is kind of one of the key elements here,

02:09:02 Speaker 21: and we want to have those meetings to kind of understand the way the infrastructure is managed.

02:09:09 Speaker 21: And there's going to be kind of four questions that you're going to want to ask staff, and then that'll make its way to council.

02:09:15 Speaker 21: So, I kind of talked a little bit about this, but you know whether the proposed level of service is appropriate.

02:09:21 Speaker 21: We need to make sure that whatever target that we're setting, it's going to be an appropriate level of service measure that you can use going forward.

02:09:28 Speaker 21: You want to understand if the budget that you've already set out, whether it's your five or ten-year capital plan, already includes the cost embedded to meet a level of service.

02:09:37 Speaker 21: Sometimes municipalities already have a ten-year plan in place, and that plan is your funding strategy.

02:09:43 Speaker 21: And it's about looking back and saying, "Well, what level of service can we get to using our budget that we've already identified?"

02:09:51 Speaker 21: Those that are a little bit more mature on their budget cycle, that might be an appropriate approach.

02:09:55 Speaker 21: Other municipalities, we've kind of had to reinvent the wheel a little bit, where we don't necessarily look at the ten-year plan;

02:10:00 Speaker 21: we look at what the actual true needs are and the level of service that kind of go with it.

02:10:07 Speaker 21: And we have to look at the feasibility of undertaking the works needed.

02:10:11 Speaker 21: So, you know, recognizing that we've identified a level of service is actually feasible for us to undertake that level of capital expenditure, and is it feasible from an affordability standpoint?

02:10:21 Speaker 21: So, you're going to want to, you know, kind of start to ask those questions of, you know, we can't just set a level of service that's just not achievable.

02:10:27 Speaker 21: The province isn't really looking at that.

02:10:30 Speaker 21: They do require the financial strategy to be something that can be achieved, and then if we start to deviate from our financial strategy, why are we doing that?

02:10:38 Speaker 21: So again, trying to keep those two things hand in hand.

02:10:46 Speaker 21: Okay, there we go, John.

02:10:48 Speaker 16: Through the Mayor, just you just described two kind of different positions from municipalities engaging in this process.

02:10:57 Speaker 16: On the one hand, starting from the just what is the core need.

02:11:00 Speaker 16: On the other hand, if the tracking process and budgeting has been considering this already, how do we work within the framework that we already have?

02:11:08 Speaker 16: Where is Owen Sound on this spectrum?

02:11:15 Speaker 21: Probably have to let staff answer that question in terms of where they're at.

02:11:19 Speaker 21: I mean, my sense is that from what I've heard is more that we're trying to understand the levels of service first and then building a plan to that.

02:11:26 Speaker 21: But I'm not sure if Kate or Brady have any comment on that.

02:11:37 Speaker 14: Yes, Councillor Farmer, through your Worship, I would say we're kind of in between.

02:11:41 Speaker 14: We're not necessarily just kind of picking capital projects and funding out of nowhere, and nor are we kind of leading in a certain direction.

02:11:50 Speaker 14: But as you'll recall, through our capital detail sheets, we do incorporate some aspects of asset management into that as well, and relating it back to other strategic documents.

02:11:59 Speaker 14: So we are balancing that, but it's definitely not a coordinated measure where we're really capturing where we want to go in the future with it;

02:12:07 Speaker 14: it is still very kind of where we are right now.

02:12:10 Speaker 14: If that helps.

02:12:15 Speaker 02: Before I came on Council in 2010, I was on Operations, and at that point, we got a study that the roads that were in poor condition needed work right now.

02:12:25 Speaker 02: The amount we're spending is going to take us one hundred years to catch up on those, and hopefully the Fair and the others don't fall apart between then.

02:12:32 Speaker 02: So 75 is...

02:12:35 Speaker 02: I'm kind of happy to see that, but it's not perfect.

02:12:38 Speaker 02: Only.

02:12:39 Speaker 02: Thank you, Your Worship.

02:12:41 Speaker 08: My question is, in setting proposed levels of service: my question is for new development versus existing, and for instance, sidewalks.

02:12:55 Speaker 08: We hear all the time from a certain constituent who is so upset on existing neighbourhoods.

02:13:00 Speaker 08: Upset on existing neighbourhoods that don't have sidewalks because that was a decision made in the past.

02:13:05 Speaker 08: So, if we set a proposed level of service that we want at least one sidewalk on one side of the road going forward, let's say in all new development,

02:13:14 Speaker 08: does that set a level of service that we then are expected to go back and put one sidewalk on the sides of roads that are not existing currently?

02:13:26 Speaker 08: Through the Mayor, that's a good question.

02:13:29 Speaker 08: It depends on how you structure the level of service.

02:13:31 Speaker 21: You could have it so that you, the goal is to in any new neighbourhoods you would only put it on one side of the road.

02:13:37 Speaker 21: But that doesn't mean you won't get questions about altering that level of service to go back into your existing neighbourhoods and kind of address those deficiencies.

02:13:47 Speaker 21: Part of that though is to understand what the cost implications of doing that would be.

02:13:51 Speaker 21: So the level of service in the ten-year period could be about addressing your, you know, new road or new areas are going to have your one sidewalk, and then if we're able to do that,

02:14:01 Speaker 21: then it would be looking beyond the next ten-year period, or changing your level of service at your five-year AMP update to address some of those other ones.

02:14:08 Speaker 21: But it's about understanding the cost of doing that, and can you actually afford to do that?

02:14:12 Speaker 21: And if that's the willingness of Council in order to go that direction, Pam.

02:14:16 Speaker 04: Thank you, Your Worship, and hopefully it's okay if staff have questions.

02:14:23 Speaker 04: I'm just wondering about the engagement process.

02:14:25 Speaker 04: So, if we set or our target level of service, and to use the sidewalk example, if I'm a resident and no one said how much it's going to cost,

02:14:38 Speaker 04: maybe I want sidewalks on both sides of the street.

02:14:41 Speaker 04: But once we factor in cost, maybe I have a more realistic expectation.

02:14:46 Speaker 04: Whether it's playgrounds or sidewalks, I just wonder about leaving the cost to the last step, or whether it should be factored in earlier.

02:14:54 Speaker 04: Be factored in earlier, and it can be considered as part of that public feedback, so they're aware of the implications of the decision around level of service.

02:15:08 Speaker 04: Yeah, I know that that's absolutely correct.

02:15:10 Speaker 21: And so on the cost side, I don't...

02:15:12 Speaker 21: I don't say we think it's the last step.

02:15:14 Speaker 21: I kind of show it in a PowerPoint presentation.

02:15:17 Speaker 21: There's logically you go through the order of operations, but it is kind of straddles throughout the process.

02:15:22 Speaker 21: I would suggest if you're going to be going to the public and asking real questions about what they want, and not necessarily we have to have everything costed out,

02:15:30 Speaker 21: but if there's certain levels of service that we know are going to be the questions that come from the public, and that you know there's always three or four that always come up,

02:15:39 Speaker 21: you may want to have some good answers about what those costs are and the impacts, because you're right, that'll help inform the needs versus the wants, right?

02:15:46 Speaker 21: And I think that'll help further engage that process.

02:15:52 Speaker 02: I went to Pam quickly, thinking she had an answer for your question.

02:15:55 Speaker 02: Did you have other questions?

02:15:56 Speaker 02: Because I moved faster then.

02:16:02 Speaker 22: I also was wondering how development charges play into all of this, like growth funding, growth.

02:16:08 Speaker 22: You know, if we're putting levels of service.

02:16:11 Speaker 22: I know there's changes coming with legislation on how development charges work.

02:16:16 Speaker 22: Like, do you have any input on that?

02:16:20 Speaker 22: Yes.

02:16:21 Speaker 21: So, through the Mayor, so we consider the expansion activities in the asset management programmememe.

02:16:27 Speaker 21: Our view of the expansion activities is, we once the new need is met, or you kind of place the new infrastructure piece of infrastructure, if the asset was funded from DCs,

02:16:39 Speaker 21: we'll take into consideration the second round capital investment need of it.

02:16:44 Speaker 21: So long-term repair, replacement of it, or the maintenance costs into the financing strategy.

02:16:48 Speaker 21: So there is a consideration for those growth assets and how the municipality has to plan for those, as well as all the existing infrastructure that's in place.

02:16:56 Speaker 21: Now, to the extent that how Bill 17 is going to impact your financing strategy, that I mean somewhat remains to be seen of what actually comes through the regulations.

02:17:06 Speaker 21: But I guess it's probably safe to assume that if they take away your DC funding sources and roll it back, the difference has to get made up by some other source,

02:17:16 Speaker 21: and the only real other source is your taxes or your utility rates, and then you now start to have competing interests on your dollars.

02:17:23 Speaker 21: Of do we use our tax dollar now to fund more benefit to existing shares on our programmememe from our DCs, or do we now use it to fund the existing infrastructure deficiencies they already had?

02:17:35 Speaker 21: And that comes down to an affordability question, and it would impact or could impact your asset management programmememe over the longer term.

02:17:42 Speaker 21: So we would certainly advocate to the province that Bill 17 could have a big implication on your asset management programmememe and your municipal revenue sources.

02:17:50 Speaker 02: So Andrew, if we just focus on cost, aren't we perhaps ignoring volume of use?

02:17:58 Speaker 02: I can have an open meeting, and I can have ten people coming in saying they want X, whatever it is.

02:18:10 Speaker 02: In a town of 22,000, beyond those ten people, it maybe doesn't get used that much.

02:18:16 Speaker 02: So beyond cost, I can run a second sidewalk into a neighbourhood that's never going to get used.

02:18:23 Speaker 02: How do we measure that?

02:18:25 Speaker 02: How do we measure the demand for the service more than just the cost?

02:18:34 Speaker 02: Oh, sorry.

02:18:37 Speaker 21: So if we're thinking about in terms of the input from the public in the consultation process and how that could influence the decision, I mean at the end of the day,

02:18:43 Speaker 21: I think the levels of service will be up to Council's discretion.

02:18:46 Speaker 21: And part of, at least from what we've seen, we've had some struggles with the public consultation process and getting meaningful feedback from other communities, where we do get very low response rates.

02:18:56 Speaker 21: So how does you know a response rate of 50 or 60 people influence your decision for the entire municipality?

02:19:02 Speaker 21: But I think we're going to want to hear through you know through those surveys through your budget process, and if people continue to be engaged,

02:19:09 Speaker 21: it might bring to light some areas where we think there could be some engagement from the public, and areas that you might want to address as Council.

02:19:17 Speaker 21: But it will be through your decision that, you know, we want to increase our level of service to put more sidewalks on, and here's the cost associated with doing it.

02:19:28 Speaker 21: But that's an ongoing issue, I think, in the public sector about getting the right feedback and how we take that into consideration.

02:19:36 Speaker 21: Thanks.

02:19:37 Speaker 21: Going to John and then Carol.

02:19:39 Speaker 16: Through the Mayor, I'm curious about how this relates to some of the other processes that we're doing in terms of Official Plan updates, zoning bylaw updates.

02:19:48 Speaker 16: As I think about this, the community level of service, I think about quality of life.

02:19:53 Speaker 16: How do we have a quality of life for folks that lets them engage regardless of age, ability, or income?

02:19:59 Speaker 16: But also, stuff is expensive, and when I think about how we fund these things, taxation is our biggest way of funding,

02:20:08 Speaker 16: but also the density of our development does a lot to shape what's available for taxation revenue.

02:20:17 Speaker 16: To what extent do we, as a corporation or Council, get to kind of bring these conversations together to say, if we're talking about this level of service,

02:20:26 Speaker 16: we also need to be making decisions that increase density or increase the available tax revenue without necessarily just increasing the tax rate.

02:20:37 Speaker 16: If there are ways that we can do that.

02:20:38 Speaker 16: So how do these processes intersect?

02:20:41 Speaker 16: Have you seen that work well in other places, or am I just putting yarn up on a bulletin board in a garage to try to connect things?

02:20:53 Speaker 21: So they definitely all connect, and it is a little tricky when you're trying to get them all to kind of feed into each other, and sometimes they're done not necessarily in isolation.

02:21:06 Speaker 21: But you'll have one process done.

02:21:07 Speaker 21: The timing doesn't always work out.

02:21:09 Speaker 21: I mean, from a financial perspective, I mean, typically you would start to see this roll into more of a long-range financial plan because the asset management is kind of one input into that process.

02:21:18 Speaker 21: And then once you've got the asset management component in, then you now have to start to think about your other elements there.

02:21:25 Speaker 21: Well, as we get new housing units and we get more infrastructure, there's also more operating costs that get tied to all that, right?

02:21:32 Speaker 21: And then it's about understanding how our operating costs are going to change when we have new roadways or we get new recreation centres, and the tax dollars then feed that too,

02:21:41 Speaker 21: as well as the infrastructure.

02:21:42 Speaker 21: So, we would typically see it from at least from a financial perspective.

02:21:47 Speaker 21: The long-range financial plan exercise is being the one that kind of starts to marry all those elements together.

02:21:53 Speaker 21: Recognizing you have other processes like zoning bylaw amendments, but that all feeds into how you manage your municipality, right?

02:22:01 Speaker 21: So, I mean that's that's kind of my comment at least on the financial side.

02:22:10 Speaker 12: Through you, Mayor, just to springboard a little bit more on the Mayor's comment about balancing in our capital equipment budget process, we have detail sheets that prioritize and help us establish,

02:22:23 Speaker 12: and it's based on a ranking scale.

02:22:25 Speaker 12: So, based on the proposed levels of service and the engagement, is there a template or tool that actually develops a priority rating scale for service levels?

02:22:43 Speaker 12: So, through the Mayor, so that's a good point.

02:22:45 Speaker 21: I mean, we think about the level of service as being, you know, your target and the importance of meeting that.

02:22:51 Speaker 21: Now, you use your capital prioritization and your budgeting to allocate the dollars in terms of how do you need the dollars in terms of how you're going to get to it,

02:23:01 Speaker 21: but I think that you'd still start with the level of service.

02:23:04 Speaker 21: Where if your level of service is about maintaining it or making adjustments to, or decreasing your level of service, that would influence how you're going to do your capital prioritization,

02:23:15 Speaker 21: or should at least because you'll then you're going to have well, we need to, we have so much dollars and how does it get allocated?

02:23:21 Speaker 21: But it goes back to the level of service that we set, and then within that category, you'd figure out how you're going to spend your money.

02:23:28 Speaker 21: So I'm not sure if you necessarily have a rating on the level of service.

02:23:33 Speaker 21: That's still going to be up to your discretion on how you want to set your targets, and then you go through the capital budget.

02:23:41 Speaker 21: Okay.

02:23:43 Speaker 23: I might just sort of my interpretation of that question as well.

02:23:47 Speaker 23: I think the level of service becomes one of those things that goes into how we evaluate a capital project, not the other way around.

02:23:56 Speaker 23: So once we set our level of service and we know what it is, now when we present you a capital project, we can share with you what service level it is achieving,

02:24:06 Speaker 23: compared to this level that you've set, and then that becomes part of the basis on which we evaluate a capital project.

02:24:14 Speaker 23: If that makes sense.

02:24:18 Speaker 23: Other questions?

02:24:22 Speaker 23: Other comments?

02:24:23 Speaker 23: Where do we go from here?

02:24:26 Speaker 21: So we have so we have we have a couple slides on the engagement process, and then we actually go through Owen Sound's levels of service from the previous plan,

02:24:34 Speaker 21: and we can kind of see get your feedback on kind of where you want to go from there.

02:24:41 Speaker 21: So on the engagement process itself, you know, I think there's a couple things in terms of the strategies that you'll want to look at,

02:24:48 Speaker 21: kind of maybe look at different forms of public input here in terms of meetings, open houses, surveys, or through the budget process,

02:24:58 Speaker 21: try to get as much engagement or roundup on the level of service or your asset management programmememe in general.

02:25:05 Speaker 21: You know, I think the few things that we can kind of give you some advice is if we're going to be looking at the engagement process,

02:25:16 Speaker 21: they have to be pretty focused in terms of getting any public feedback on it.

02:25:21 Speaker 21: We usually only see a couple questions, and some of them being very pointed in terms of what we feel about tax levy increases,

02:25:28 Speaker 21: just to get a bit of a sense of kind of where we need to go in order to fund the programmememe.

02:25:32 Speaker 21: And you know, I think there's going to be recognition.

02:25:35 Speaker 21: There's a variety of different people and different audiences within it.

02:25:38 Speaker 21: So, as much as we can, they have to be somewhat generic, but they have to be focused into the point and that relate to asset management.

02:25:45 Speaker 21: And I think if we get into surveys that are 15, 20, 30 questions long, I don't think you're going to get any response.

02:25:52 Speaker 21: So we have to kind of keep it short and to the point, and try to get as much meaningful input from that as possible.

02:25:59 Speaker 21: There is the general kind of managing the community expectations and challenges here, and I think, you know, as we heard,

02:26:07 Speaker 21: I think the community will always expect the highest level of service and the best of the best.

02:26:12 Speaker 21: But the expectations have to be tempered with the cost, and the associated level of service is really the output of that.

02:26:19 Speaker 21: So I mean, the reality is that we're nobody wants to.

02:26:23 Speaker 21: When we think about the funding strategy to it, the best may not always be the most palatable,

02:26:27 Speaker 21: and I don't think anybody's going to want to be at the bottom end of the spectrum in terms of having the worst service levels.

02:26:32 Speaker 21: But there's somewhere in the middle that we're going to be trying to achieve, and that balancing act, and trying to get to that point is, you know, really where you want to go.

02:26:41 Speaker 21: And I think the municipality does a lot of this type of work.

02:26:45 Speaker 21: You have I've heard just even today a lot of good things in terms of prioritization models, and we have a ten-year plan, and we're doing these workshops, so we're already moving in the right direction.

02:26:56 Speaker 21: It's just kind of building upon that and kind of going ahead from this point on.

02:27:04 Speaker 21: So when we think about public surveys, it's kind of been at least one of the easy wins here in terms of getting feedback, and we've seen some success in it.

02:27:14 Speaker 21: They're pretty easy to administer.

02:27:16 Speaker 21: We usually put them online.

02:27:18 Speaker 21: They can be again focused on a very specific area or an asset or a type, and they can be designed to be short and, as I mentioned, kind of to the point.

02:27:28 Speaker 21: We've got in—you know, you have a large emailer; you might get better outreach with it, so you'll get, you know, at least a bit, a little bit better sample size.

02:27:37 Speaker 21: Smaller emailers, I find that sometimes you only get a handful of people that kind of come with it.

02:27:42 Speaker 21: I would say we're not going to be trying to get really anything super detailed from the public from yours, but again, if you structure it as kind of yes-or-no's or some very pointed questions,

02:27:51 Speaker 21: we might get some good outputs.

02:28:02 Speaker 21: Oh, sorry.

02:28:03 Speaker 21: Yep.

02:28:05 Speaker 21: Through the Mayor, this might be a question for Michelle.

02:28:09 Speaker 16: I'm curious: as we talk about engagement, we have a community engagement process and policies that lay out the difference between consulting to inform and consulting for that kind of highest level of input.

02:28:22 Speaker 16: Where do acknowledging that if this is new to some, this process is new to some of us, that this language is technical?

02:28:30 Speaker 16: How does public engagement here bring people up to speed versus seeking detailed input for processes that might not be part of people's everyday?

02:28:40 Speaker 16: Through your Mayor to Councillor Farmer: So, similar to any other engagement, we would follow the engagement policy, and at the start of the project,

02:29:01 Speaker 24: assess and develop an engagement plan with the subject matter expert to see where it falls within those levels of engagement to be done, and then build a plan based on that.

02:29:24 Speaker 24: Okay.

02:29:26 Speaker 21: So, what's on the slide here is a summary of your current levels of service as it was in your 2022 plan,

02:29:35 Speaker 21: and then some of the kind of characteristics around that service area and the assets within it.

02:29:43 Speaker 21: So for your road network itself, overall the assets were in good condition.

02:29:49 Speaker 21: There's still about 13 per cent of the road network that was kind of in poor, very poor condition.

02:29:54 Speaker 21: Again, this might have changed over the last couple years, but that was what was reported on in 2022, with a funding deficit annually of about $400,000.

02:30:05 Speaker 21: What's important from a level of service standpoint is, in my view, your first one there, which is your PCI for all your roadways, which was at 72.5.

02:30:14 Speaker 21: So that's going to be one of the ones so the province requires us to look at the level of service, and your PCI rating is one of the measures that has to be reported on,

02:30:23 Speaker 21: and we have to set a target for.

02:30:25 Speaker 21: So I think what you know would be good to understand in terms of your going-forward basis is trying to understand how you think that number should change, or if it has to change,

02:30:36 Speaker 21: in order to meet where you want to go as a corporation.

02:30:40 Speaker 21: So 72.5 again kind of represents a good rating in your roads.

02:30:45 Speaker 21: Increasing that would certainly have funding implications in terms of us advancing our renewal or rehabilitation programmememes on our roads, or potentially increasing maintenance activities.

02:30:57 Speaker 21: And then, if you wanted to instead look at reduced levels of service, you'd have to look at how that could impact or influence your budget on that particular sector.

02:31:09 Speaker 21: I don't know if there's any immediate or initial comments from Council in terms of where we feel those levels of service need to go on the roads,

02:31:19 Speaker 21: and if you've gotten feedback from the public or if you've had kind of conversations over the last number of years about your roadway network.

02:31:26 Speaker 21: I think part of today is just about kind of hearing what those look like.

02:31:30 Speaker 21: Yeah.

02:31:38 Speaker 21: Thank you, through your Chair.

02:31:39 Speaker 08: I think the difficulty, from my standpoint, is understanding what the Pavement Condition Index or the ride comfort rating actually means in reality.

02:31:51 Speaker 08: Like, I don't know what that means.

02:31:55 Speaker 08: Does that mean we tolerate minor potholes, or like, what does this mean in definition?

02:32:08 Speaker 21: So, through the Chair, the pavement condition is the quality and the condition of the pavement of the roadways, and obviously the kind of deterioration of that below a certain measure would, you know,

02:32:21 Speaker 21: represent just the quality of the overall roadway itself.

02:32:23 Speaker 21: I mean, we can get back to staff in terms of what the categories and what's meant within it—not the engineer here myself either.

02:32:31 Speaker 21: So obviously, there's different components in terms of what categorizes within those different condition ratings.

02:32:36 Speaker 21: But knowing that information, both having you guys make certain decisions, what qualifies in the different categories, what the meaning of them is,

02:32:44 Speaker 21: and that will help kind of set the stage for what you need moving forward.

02:32:47 Speaker 21: But sorry, go ahead.

02:32:55 Speaker 25: And I guess I'd like to hear from staff: to some extent, or to what extent, do you just incorporate real-world conditions into items such as PCI?

02:33:08 Speaker 25: So, for instance, our colleague Councillor Kukreja, no disrespect to her, but I would sleep at night if her PCI on her street, which is a dead end,

02:33:18 Speaker 25: and maximum speed might be eighteen kilometres an hour on it, is an eleven.

02:33:24 Speaker 25: However, if it's Tenth Street or Second Avenue East, or Eighth Street, none of us are sleeping at night because the phone won't stop ringing if that PCI is eleven.

02:33:34 Speaker 25: So, how do you apply that type of perspective?

02:33:41 Speaker 25: Not perspective.

02:33:43 Speaker 25: It's just real-world conditions on top of PCI because it's not just a simple number.

02:33:51 Speaker 25: So I can answer part of that, and maybe staff can step in.

02:33:53 Speaker 21: So there are also different ways you can structure the level of service, and we've seen some municipalities look at the PCIs on different types of roads.

02:34:01 Speaker 21: So whether it's an arterial or collector or local road, they'll have different PCI ratings, and service levels associated with them.

02:34:07 Speaker 21: So to kind of, you know, your main roads in your municipality, you're going to want to perhaps have them at a different level of PCIs than some of your other ones,

02:34:15 Speaker 21: and then some they've done it at a more simplistic level.

02:34:19 Speaker 21: As here's your PCI on all your roadways, and we want to make sure that that average is the average overall.

02:34:25 Speaker 21: When we think about the PCI from a calculation perspective, it is weighted on value in terms of, you know, just replacement value of the road and the PCI associated with it.

02:34:37 Speaker 21: So there is some measure in terms of your more valuable roads, or in terms of some of your arterials, they'll get weighted a little differently in terms of the overall input.

02:34:46 Speaker 21: But you can certainly structure your targets around classification of the roads, and that's a fair approach that we've seen in other communities to have that exact point too.

02:35:04 Speaker 25: Well, we would certainly, I think, want to do that just to ensure that you know,

02:35:09 Speaker 25: our respect to Councillor Dodd that his road condition is perhaps not always maintained to the same level as Tenth Street.

02:35:27 Speaker 25: Go ahead.

02:35:29 Speaker 25: I wasn't sure if you wanted to give the mic to Councillor Don first.

02:35:35 Speaker 12: What would be helpful for me is having within these powerpoints whether we meet, don't meet, or exceed the regulation standard,

02:35:48 Speaker 12: because earlier in your presentation you talked about the fair category and how important it is to pay attention to fair, and yet as I read this, I read poor or very poor,

02:35:59 Speaker 12: but a certain percentage.

02:36:01 Speaker 12: We know there are regulations, and we're, you know, for example, the percentage of road network where minimum maintenance standards are met.

02:36:12 Speaker 12: We need to know: Are we meeting that standard?

02:36:15 Speaker 12: Are we not meeting that standard?

02:36:16 Speaker 12: Like, am I misinterpreting the slide?

02:36:19 Speaker 12: But I think that we need a column that says meeting, exceeding, or not meeting the regulation and the bylaw.

02:36:30 Speaker 12: What we're supposed to do for anything, not just roads, but for anything on a go-forward basis, because our decisions are going to be made on not just evidence,

02:36:40 Speaker 12: and not just on functional satisfaction of our residents on how bumpy or not bumpy their roads are.

02:36:45 Speaker 12: Not bumpy.

02:36:45 Speaker 12: Their roads are, but on the certainly the data and standards.

02:36:54 Speaker 12: So through the Mayor.

02:36:56 Speaker 12: So I guess there's two parts.

02:36:57 Speaker 21: So this table has the top ones in green, are the ones that are currently in your plan,

02:37:04 Speaker 21: and then the additional levels of service measures to consider are additional ones that we've seen in some other communities in terms of measures that you can add to your list,

02:37:14 Speaker 21: and when we get into like the percentage of road network with minimum maintenance standards complete, some municipalities effectively put that in to say that we're 100% compliant and we're going to continue to maintain that.

02:37:25 Speaker 21: Now, when we get into your question on the targets around if we're meeting the regulation, there's really nothing set on the PCIs in terms of your proposal levels of service.

02:37:36 Speaker 21: That's going to be to discretion of how you want to manage your network.

02:37:40 Speaker 21: What would be what you're going to be able to get leverage to now is because every municipality is completing their plans for July 1st.

02:37:48 Speaker 21: You may be interested in seeing how other municipalities set their targets or what their current performance is, and that may help you determine do you want to increase or decrease.

02:37:59 Speaker 21: But again, it's still you know you want to make your decision specific to Owen Sound,

02:38:02 Speaker 21: but it is kind of some additional data that will now start to become more available as municipalities complete their plans, and that might be helpful for your decision making.

02:38:14 Speaker 21: Go ahead.

02:38:15 Speaker 12: Through you, Mayor, I think that would be excellent, and I look to staff as well to start to provide us with that comparator information.

02:38:22 Speaker 12: We know in other aspects of our council decisions, we're often asked to be compared to, and I think the more information we can gain from others as well,

02:38:33 Speaker 12: the better job we can do on making those decisions.

02:38:36 Speaker 12: Thank you.

02:38:40 Speaker 12: Baker Brown Steel, go ahead.

02:38:43 Speaker 25: I'm just going to ask you a question because your firm is economics in nature.

02:38:47 Speaker 25: To what extent do you calculate the withdrawal or the extraction of the carbon tax out of the economy in terms of how it's impactful to these numbers?

02:38:58 Speaker 25: Because you strongly advocate the fact that three hundred ninety thousand annual deficit is easily made up of carbon tax as it moves through the whole supply chain, and if it's gone in its entirety now,

02:39:18 Speaker 25: that annual deficit could be a zero.

02:39:21 Speaker 25: What calculations have and considerations have perhaps you made for that, if any?

02:39:29 Speaker 25: We have not made that calculation just yet, but it is an important element.

02:39:34 Speaker 21: It's interesting to see how it moves through either makes any changes on your municipal revenue sources, or if it has to, you know,

02:39:41 Speaker 21: make a change in terms of the way you plan and manage your infrastructure.

02:39:44 Speaker 21: But that's all kind of still very new in terms of how that trickle-down effect might impact municipal decisions.

02:39:53 Speaker 02: Scott's going to throw you under the bus than I will.

02:39:58 Speaker 02: We've got a provincial government that's talking about doing things with developing development charges.

02:40:04 Speaker 02: We would have had a development charge study that said we should be charging twenty thousand.

02:40:09 Speaker 02: I don't know, something close to that.

02:40:12 Speaker 02: And we're charging something like nine thousand, like about half.

02:40:17 Speaker 02: Clearly, there's other municipalities that are charging thirty and forty thousand dollars per building lot.

02:40:23 Speaker 02: So, in a sense, we're shooting ourselves in the foot.

02:40:26 Speaker 02: I'm somewhat concerned the government's going to cut everybody in half, and we're going to end up with five, and they're still going to end up with twenty-five or something.

02:40:34 Speaker 02: Do you guys have a feel of where the government's going to go on that?

02:40:37 Speaker 02: I'm kind of throwing you under the bus, and don't feel obliged to answer if the safe answer is not a clue.

02:40:44 Speaker 02: Go ahead.

02:40:46 Speaker 02: I can partly answer that.

02:40:48 Speaker 21: We don't know where they're going to go, but what's in Bill 17 in terms of their proposed regulations does indicate that there's going to be changes in the way the calculations are done.

02:40:59 Speaker 21: So one of the examples is a review of the benefit to existing methodology, which isn't them saying they're going to reduce the rates,

02:41:05 Speaker 21: but if they change the methodology and how we apply the non-growth share would ultimately impact the amount that you would be able to collect as a municipality.

02:41:14 Speaker 21: And they're also, you know, obviously introducing further legislated exemptions.

02:41:18 Speaker 21: So long-term care homes are now going to be exempt from the payment of DC.

02:41:21 Speaker 21: So again, it cuts into your municipal revenue source of what you're going to collect.

02:41:26 Speaker 21: So there's things like that that are in there to the extent how the regulation, to the extent how the regulations are going to shake out in terms of the benefits to existing methodology,

02:41:35 Speaker 21: what's considered local service.

02:41:36 Speaker 21: There's talks about standardizing those definitions.

02:41:39 Speaker 21: So what the developer in places versus what goes in through the development charge calculation.

02:41:44 Speaker 21: Those are going to be under review.

02:41:46 Speaker 21: So there are things like that that could again influence the calculation and what gets DC funded versus not DC funded or developer funded versus not.

02:41:55 Speaker 21: That could all impact how you would fund your municipal infrastructure.

02:41:59 Speaker 21: Good.

02:41:59 Speaker 21: Thanks.

02:41:59 Speaker 21: Okay.

02:42:00 Speaker 21: Back back to the topic in front of us.

02:42:02 Speaker 21: Any other questions?

02:42:04 Speaker 21: Seeing none.

02:42:05 Speaker 21: Go ahead.

02:42:12 Speaker 21: We can go to the bridge and culvert network one.

02:42:16 Speaker 21: So on the bridges and culverts, again, just kind of taking a bit of a snapshot of your current position.

02:42:21 Speaker 21: Overall, they were in very good condition.

02:42:24 Speaker 21: A very small portion is kind of in the poor to very poor, and the percentage of bridge and culvert network in good to excellent condition was at ninety-three percent.

02:42:35 Speaker 21: The province requires us to measure the levels of service in a slightly different manner for your bridges.

02:42:42 Speaker 21: They look at it from a bridge condition index standpoint, so it's a BCI.

02:42:47 Speaker 21: So we just have to be cognizant of that.

02:42:48 Speaker 21: You'll probably just have to make some minor modifications to the way it's being reported on, and then the second one there, the number of structures with a posted.

02:42:55 Speaker 21: Structures with the posted road restrictions.

02:42:57 Speaker 21: Again, that's also part of the regulation in terms of the way you need to report on it.

02:43:02 Speaker 21: But overall, I mean, the conditions of the bridge and culvert network is kind of seems to be in a very good standpoint here.

02:43:11 Speaker 21: Those are going to be a decision again you'll have to make in terms of your proposed level of service of where you want to go in terms of the BCI's overall.

02:43:20 Speaker 21: I mean, just as a qualitative comment, from what we see in a lot of other municipalities, is you have your OSM reports that get done every two years,

02:43:27 Speaker 21: and a lot of municipalities just really look to follow what the engineered recommendations are on terms of the roadways.

02:43:33 Speaker 21: Sorry, on terms of your bridge and culvert network.

02:43:34 Speaker 21: So, again, not sure in terms of how that gets integrated into your overall process, but that might be one way to help inform your investment decisions going forward.

02:43:48 Speaker 21: The stormwater network.

02:43:50 Speaker 21: So the overall condition of your storms are in good condition.

02:43:54 Speaker 21: Eighty percent are in good or excellent condition going forward.

02:43:58 Speaker 21: So there's a couple additional levels of service measures here that I think need to be considered here, and it could help inform your maintenance programmememe going forward.

02:44:07 Speaker 21: And then there's also the ones that are highlighted in blue.

02:44:10 Speaker 21: The regulation requires those two specific measures to be looked at.

02:44:15 Speaker 21: The percentage of properties resilient to a 100-year storm, and then the percentage of municipal stormwater management system resilient to a five-year storm.

02:44:21 Speaker 21: Into a five-year storm.

02:44:23 Speaker 21: Those are two measures that currently don't make the way into the plan, but they'll have to be considered upon in your next iteration.

02:44:33 Speaker 21: Again, from a general perspective, a lot of municipalities have some trouble with that last; those two regulatory ones.

02:44:39 Speaker 21: They're not entirely easy to figure out.

02:44:43 Speaker 21: At least from small, even medium-sized municipalities, may not have all the data on it.

02:44:49 Speaker 21: But mappings and other information that you do have can help inform that.

02:44:54 Speaker 21: The three, the other three that we've put in here in terms of percentage of catch basins cleaned annually, stormwater inspection programmememes, and then the number of CCTV's stormwater inspection programmememes annually,

02:45:07 Speaker 21: those are ones that we've seen in some other municipalities.

02:45:10 Speaker 21: Particularly if you're looking to change or alter the way you manage your infrastructure, so if you want to increase your inspection programmememes or you want to increase the number of catch basins cleaned annually,

02:45:20 Speaker 21: somewhere on a two-year programmememe or a three-year programmememe.

02:45:22 Speaker 21: If you want to make changes to that, through the level of service might be a good way to do that,

02:45:27 Speaker 21: where you can set a target and then you can look at the additional costs in order to do that programmememe, over the couple year period.

02:45:34 Speaker 21: So again, something through the level of service that if you want to initiate a new programmememe, this might be a good way to do that because you can track the performance of it.

02:45:46 Speaker 21: Question to staff on this one.

02:45:48 Speaker 26: I think in the last winter, did we go through two domes of sand or a dome and a half in applying it to the streets?

02:45:57 Speaker 26: And it doesn't evaporate; a lot of it does run into the catch basins.

02:46:02 Speaker 26: So this one line here of percent of total catch basins cleaned annually.

02:46:07 Speaker 26: What has staff evaluated recently in terms of applying more sand and reduced salt, and then that resultant effort that's needed to clean those catch basins.

02:46:18 Speaker 26: What do we do now, relevant to that line there that says percent of total catch basins cleaned annually?

02:46:27 Speaker 11: Through your Worship, to Deputy Mayor Greig.

02:46:30 Speaker 11: For starters, we religiously clean our catch basins in the spring, sometimes more than once a year.

02:46:38 Speaker 11: Secondly, the majority of the sand is reclaimed based on the mountain of sand that I saw adjacent to the sand dome on site.

02:46:49 Speaker 11: That being said, we're currently looking at other opportunities that we or other alternatives that we can come up with.

02:46:57 Speaker 11: It's all part of the winter maintenance service review.

02:47:00 Speaker 11: There's a little.

02:47:01 Speaker 11: There's been a little bit of sort of slow progress on that at this point in time due to other factors, but that is all part of that.

02:47:11 Speaker 11: Interesting consequence.

02:47:12 Speaker 11: I had never thought about till this moment.

02:47:14 Speaker 02: But being a tree city will have an effect on how often you clean out leaves and things out of catch basins at the end of the year in the next spring.

02:47:22 Speaker 02: You don't think about those types of things.

02:47:30 Speaker 21: Yeah, and the only other point that I guess I just want to make mention on this particular slide is you know we look at the overall condition as kind of being one of the outputs,

02:47:39 Speaker 21: and we talk about the level of service.

02:47:42 Speaker 21: The annual deficit on the stormwater side, in terms of what the funding available versus the need, is pretty substantial.

02:47:50 Speaker 21: And despite some of the infrastructure being in good condition, I think from a level of service standpoint, we have to look at the longevity of some of those assets, where they typically have longer lives.

02:47:59 Speaker 21: So the investment need would be there, because you'll be planning to replace those over the longer term.

02:48:05 Speaker 21: So again, something to consider from a financial strategy perspective, as well as your level of service point, where the condition might be good today, but as we start to look out over a longer period,

02:48:16 Speaker 21: we want to be planning for the longer term replacement of that infrastructure, and that again would feed into your financial strategy.

02:48:26 Speaker 21: So we'll get into the water and the wastewater network, where in these particular instances, we've you know the water network is overall in fair condition.

02:48:36 Speaker 21: There's a series of measures that are again in the green box at the top, in terms of what was included in your previous plan, then I've added in some additional measures for consideration.

02:48:49 Speaker 21: The ones again highlighted in blue are the ones that the province does require, and some of that relates to the number of properties connected to the municipal system, properties where fire flow is available.

02:49:01 Speaker 21: So there's some technical measures that we have to do.

02:49:04 Speaker 21: Some always aren't always intuitive.

02:49:05 Speaker 21: Always aren't always intuitively the best from a performance setting perspective, but we do have to nonetheless kind of recognize what those are, and I think just in this particular instance, particularly on water and wastewater,

02:49:19 Speaker 21: on the next slide, you know, there's the direction of looking at it from the rate study, which is a lot more involved in terms of the asset management programmememe, looking at your contributions,

02:49:29 Speaker 21: but also taking into consideration your capital programmememe changes and operating costs.

02:49:34 Speaker 21: So all the other different elements that we kind of spoke about, how does everything feed from an asset management to the end result?

02:49:41 Speaker 21: The rate study is one of those elements that kind of takes that all into consideration, including the affordability side of it.

02:49:46 Speaker 21: So you'll look at the levels of service here, but you'll also then use those levels of service if we want to make significant changes in our condition of our assets.

02:49:56 Speaker 21: It's going to be about replacing them more frequently, and that has an increased pressure on the rate study.

02:50:01 Speaker 21: When I was here a few months ago, you know we're looking at still, you know, increasing your rates year over year, and that's really about managing the infrastructure that you've got.

02:50:11 Speaker 21: And if we want to make more significant changes to that, it's about further increasing those contributions to reserve.

02:50:20 Speaker 21: On the wastewater side, the assets themselves are in overall good condition.

02:50:27 Speaker 21: Again, similar to on the water and the annual deficit in terms of the need; here is still pretty significant.

02:50:34 Speaker 21: There are the measures in the green box that are kind of what's outlined in your existing plan, and then we have new measures that you'll have to identify as part of the regulatory ones.

02:50:47 Speaker 21: Some of it looks at just again the number of municipal connections to your wastewater system.

02:50:53 Speaker 21: Some of it will look at the bypasses in terms of your sewage treatment plans, sanitary conditions, and kind of any inspection protocol.

02:51:00 Speaker 21: Kind of any inspection protocols that you have; all those are kind of required, and some are required,

02:51:06 Speaker 21: and some of the ones that you have here are just the add-on ones that you've done as a municipality.

02:51:12 Speaker 21: Again, from what we see in other municipalities, most don't deviate too far from what's required under the regulation.

02:51:19 Speaker 21: Those are the minimum ones that you're going to want to set, and then if you want to add additional ones too, you can.

02:51:26 Speaker 21: But most kind of stick to what's required under the regulation.

02:51:28 Speaker 21: Through you, Mayor.

02:51:34 Speaker 27: So when I look at the water and then I look at the wastewater network, and we talked earlier today about prioritizing.

02:51:42 Speaker 27: To me, when I look at those two, so far, I mean we've seen a bunch, but it seems to me there is a priority implied within the scoring that we're already facing,

02:51:55 Speaker 27: and that's around the water network.

02:51:57 Speaker 27: So that concerns me, and also I, as we go through these conversations, you know, how do we wait—not just the financial, but the intensity of our focus—around those particular areas that are scoring,

02:52:18 Speaker 27: obviously in the yellow as opposed to the green.

02:52:21 Speaker 27: So that is a question.

02:52:24 Speaker 27: You know, what do we tackle first, and then what waiting does that get over other levels of service?

02:52:31 Speaker 27: And I go back to that waiting.

02:52:34 Speaker 27: I think it's critical because it's a mandated service that we provide.

02:52:44 Speaker 21: So good points, and I think there's also waiting also within tax-supported and rate-supported services too, which is important, right?

02:52:52 Speaker 21: So your rate-supported assets that we're talking about here are obviously two different funding buckets than your tax-supported one.

02:52:59 Speaker 21: So you'll have to wait within your water and your wastewater programmememe,

02:53:03 Speaker 21: and then your tax support would kind of have a different set of criteria in terms of which projects you're going to be taking into consideration.

02:53:09 Speaker 21: But certainly on the water and the wastewater, there's pretty heavy mandates on how you're going to undertake the system and manage it, which your municipality obviously does quite well.

02:53:18 Speaker 21: Everything is managed safely and accordingly.

02:53:20 Speaker 21: But your capital investment decisions should take into consideration some of those elements.

02:53:32 Speaker 21: Through the Mayor, just I'm curious.

02:53:33 Speaker 16: Looking at these different slides, overall good condition for this one, but an annual deficit of almost eight million dollars.

02:53:40 Speaker 16: There are other slides that show overall fair condition, but smaller annual deficits.

02:53:47 Speaker 16: Are there any kind of sneaky risks in thinking that we're doing all right, but also we have building and...

02:53:51 Speaker 16: But also, we have building annual annual deficits that way.

02:53:59 Speaker 16: Yeah.

02:54:00 Speaker 16: So through the Mayor.

02:54:00 Speaker 16: So it's a good observation.

02:54:02 Speaker 21: So some of the distinction, though, we have to consider.

02:54:06 Speaker 21: They might be in good condition.

02:54:07 Speaker 21: That's a snapshot of today, and the annual deficit is taken into consideration.

02:54:11 Speaker 21: Some of the longer-term needs outside of the snapshot of today.

02:54:15 Speaker 21: So we could be in a good condition from a you know, the assets where they stand,

02:54:20 Speaker 21: but our funding deficit in terms of managing that infrastructure over the longer term—if we don't increase our spending—we could find ourselves with a deterioration curve on those assets.

02:54:30 Speaker 21: So it's looking at it more planning for the future as well.

02:54:33 Speaker 21: Where sometimes you might not see that distinction in other asset categories because the useful lives are shorter.

02:54:39 Speaker 21: Where water and wastewater mains have longer useful lives, you have longer time to plan for it, but they're also more expensive.

02:54:43 Speaker 21: So again, so there's the condition standpoint of today, and then the deficits over the longer period of time.

02:54:53 Speaker 21: Thank you, through your Chair.

02:54:54 Speaker 08: That's almost virtually the exact same thing I was going to ask.

02:54:57 Speaker 08: Just the three boxes at the bottom: the annual investment required.

02:55:01 Speaker 08: So just so I'm clear, that would be to maintain the service level that we are currently providing, and then because we have a deficit of eight million,

02:55:14 Speaker 08: we're going to be going in the wrong direction.

02:55:18 Speaker 08: Like, if we do this again in five years, then we wouldn't be at a seventy percent; we might be at a sixty-five percent.

02:55:24 Speaker 08: Is that what this means?

02:55:27 Speaker 21: So through the Mayor, that there's probably more that has to go into because you'd have to actually truly look at your deterioration rate of those assets.

02:55:35 Speaker 21: This is looking at what the investment requirement is to replace those assets based on their useful life, and then the current investment that's there right now.

02:55:45 Speaker 21: You would have to look at... you know, if we don't make that level of investment, how are those existing assets going to deteriorate,

02:55:52 Speaker 21: and if some of them are going to deteriorate faster if we don't make those pressure points investment.

02:55:56 Speaker 21: So I mean, it's a reasonable assumption to assume if we're not investing to what we should, our service levels, our conditions would decline.

02:56:03 Speaker 21: But there would have to be some form of technical analysis to confirm that.

02:56:10 Speaker 20: Not an answer, but a question also through you, Mayor.

02:56:14 Speaker 20: Average funding available only takes into consideration the water rate or the tax levy.

02:56:20 Speaker 20: It doesn't take into consideration any sizable grants the city might achieve through the province, etc. So through the Mayor and to the City Manager, that's correct.

02:56:31 Speaker 20: It would typically just assume your own source revenues to your tax-supported or your rate-supported components to it.

02:56:42 Speaker 20: A couple things.

02:56:44 Speaker 25: I guess if we had enough users came online right now, and we just had an influx of seven point nine million dollars, and we went here, you go to our Director of Public Works,

02:56:56 Speaker 25: spend it within the wastewater network.

02:56:59 Speaker 25: You can't do it.

02:57:00 Speaker 25: Yeah, like these things operate in tandem and in parallel with water, with stormwater, with roads.

02:57:08 Speaker 25: Like you can't just separate and say, okay, we're going to reinvest this extra imaginary eight million that we're finding every year and scale up our wastewater.

02:57:18 Speaker 25: Like I'm just wondering how do you relate these items together?

02:57:22 Speaker 25: Like same with if you go back two sides to stormwater, I can't remember the last time in the city where we excavated a roadway for a length of distance just to respond to catch basins.

02:57:41 Speaker 25: The catch basins are kind of seemingly done because you are responding to water and wastewater at end of life or roadway at end of life,

02:57:52 Speaker 25: and why pave over it and then dig it back up in twelve years?

02:57:56 Speaker 25: I'm wondering, like, how do you relate all these items together, these considerations?