Owen Sound Council Meeting - Special Meeting Transcript — January 16, 2026

00:00:12 Speaker 01: Good morning.

00:00:13 Speaker 01: This is January sixteenth, twenty twenty-six.

00:00:15 Speaker 01: It is an Owen Sound City Council special meeting.

00:00:19 Speaker 01: We're calling it to order.

00:00:32 Speaker 01: I note that Councillor Dodd is not here, and Councillor Farmer is participating, at least for a while, by Zoom.

00:00:41 Speaker 01: Rogers, Casey.

00:00:51 Speaker 01: Roger's cable is not broadcasting, so see what the consequences of that are.

00:01:05 Speaker 02: At number two, we're going to move into the closed session.

00:01:12 Speaker 02: I think, Councillor Capkey, you have the motions.

00:01:26 Speaker 02: I do, Your Worship, but I wondered if I could just kind of generally ask a question about the budget before.

00:16:05 Speaker 02: No, I'm moving into closed.

00:16:24 Speaker 01: Moved by myself, seconded by Councillor Kukreja, that City Council now move into closed session to consider one matter regarding advice that is subject to solicitor-client privilege, including communications necessary for that purpose,

00:16:45 Speaker 01: respecting the 2026 Mayor's proposed budget.

00:16:55 Speaker 01: And all in favor, and that is carried.

00:16:57 Speaker 01: So we're in closed.

00:17:06 Speaker 01: It'll take us a minute to clear the room and move over.

00:17:18 Speaker 01: Okay, it is nine seventeen nine eighteen a.m. and City Council is returning to the open session.

00:17:42 Speaker 01: During the closed session, City Council discussed one matter regarding advice that is subject to solicitor-client privilege, including communications necessary for that purpose, respecting the 2026 Mayor's proposed budget; no direction was provided.

00:18:02 Speaker 02: At number four in our agenda, are there any declarations of interest?

00:18:07 Speaker 02: I am seeing none.

00:18:18 Speaker 02: At number five, motion to move council into committee of the whole.

00:18:36 Speaker 03: Moved by myself, seconded by Councillor Kukreja, the City Council now moves into Committee of the Whole to consider correspondence and presentations respecting the two thousand and twenty-six draft Mayor's budget.

00:18:49 Speaker 03: All in favor?

00:18:53 Speaker 03: That carries, including Councillor Farmer.

00:18:54 Speaker 03: We're now in Committee of the Whole.

00:19:10 Speaker 01: We note at six a that there is correspondence received from the Honourable Minister Michael S. Kurzner, Solicitor General, and the Honourable Robert Flack, Hon. Robert Flack, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing,

00:19:26 Speaker 01: with regard to Police Services Board budget, and we've discussed that.

00:19:32 Speaker 01: At seven, we're into presentations.

00:19:39 Speaker 01: Just before we get there, oh, we need a motion to receive that letter, Deputy Mayor Greig.

00:19:45 Speaker 01: So moved.

00:19:46 Speaker 01: All in favor?

00:19:48 Speaker 01: That's carried, including Councillor Farmer.

00:19:51 Speaker 01: Now we're at presentations.

00:20:01 Speaker 01: So before the presentation... so before the Director starts, I'm going to have some comments.

00:20:07 Speaker 01: But Councillor Kepki had a question.

00:20:12 Speaker 01: Thank you, Worship.

00:20:21 Speaker 01: As I look through the Mayor's budget, at the bottom line of each division, it says "division levy requirement."

00:20:37 Speaker 01: However, when you look at the Art Gallery bottom line, it says in big bold print, "tax burden."

00:20:46 Speaker 01: I just find...

00:20:57 Speaker 01: I know the format's a little different on this, and I just find this a little negative compared to "division levy requirement."

00:21:13 Speaker 01: If you can explain through your Worship?

00:21:23 Speaker 01: No, nothing intended.

00:21:36 Speaker 01: They both essentially mean the same thing: division levy requirement is the amount that it holds in the tax burden or the tax burden.

00:21:58 Speaker 01: I will note the Art Gallery's template was created in a different format and appended to the budget, so inadvertently we use different language there, but they essentially mean the same thing.

00:22:46 Speaker 01: It wasn't intended to come across in a negative way.

00:22:55 Speaker 03: So, in future, we can expect that it all be uniform.

00:22:59 Speaker 03: Okay.

00:23:04 Speaker 03: So, just before I hand it over to Kate, I've got some comments.

00:23:18 Speaker 03: Under a change of provincial legislation, we're dealing with strong Mayor powers budget process for the first time.

00:23:32 Speaker 03: The Mayor's draft budget was released to council and to the public in December 22, 2025.

00:23:41 Speaker 03: Please note, this budget is only a draft.

00:23:50 Speaker 03: We are here today to consider the Council's amendments to this draft budget.

00:24:04 Speaker 03: Though it's a different process, it is in the hands of all Council who ultimately will decide whether this draft is acceptable or if you want to amend it.

00:24:19 Speaker 03: Any changes will require a majority-of-majority vote of Council, and so Council as a whole will ultimately determine the final levy and budget allocations.

00:24:27 Speaker 03: Director of Corporate Services...

00:24:33 Speaker 03: I met with each Councillor to collect your thoughts on what you want the Mayor's budget to look like.

00:24:49 Speaker 03: This budget is based on what Council told us.

00:25:00 Speaker 03: We met with the Police Chief and Chair of the Police Board, as well as the Head Librarian and Chair of the Library Board.

00:25:17 Speaker 03: We received and reviewed their estimates.

00:25:23 Speaker 03: We have reviewed past budgets, provincial legislation that we're required to follow, obtained a legal opinion.

00:25:37 Speaker 03: We had a budget discussion table set up; the public open house to hear from citizens and considered comments received.

00:25:56 Speaker 03: As Council, and along with City staff, we strive to provide the best balance of services that the community can afford, in accordance with provincial legislation.

00:26:15 Speaker 03: We strive to provide those services as efficiently as possible, with continuous improvement, collaborating with others, and by being accountable to the taxpayers that we on Council represent and are responsible to,

00:26:36 Speaker 03: we provide those services in a financial sustainable manner to help the community live safe, healthy, and thriving lives now and in the future.

00:26:54 Speaker 03: With that in mind, and consideration of the financial insecurity and inflation that our citizens are facing, and the increased pressures facing the City providing those services,

00:27:07 Speaker 03: we have presented to you a balanced levy with service stability.

00:27:19 Speaker 03: The draft budget proposed is composed of three main components: a municipal operating increase, which includes a one percent capital increase, public library increase, and police services increase.

00:27:47 Speaker 03: Despite increases in pressure points such as wages, utilities, insurance, and legislation emergency service requirements, the Mayor's proposed budget maintains essential service levels and avoids sharp cost escalations.

00:27:59 Speaker 03: So I now turn it over to the Director of Corporate Services...

00:28:04 Speaker 03: Marian?

00:28:06 Speaker 03: No, sorry, Your Worship.

00:28:18 Speaker 03: I had a second question, and I've already spoken to the Director about this, and wondered if she could provide the tally sheet with the variance percentages on,

00:28:34 Speaker 03: and I believe she has prepared that for us.

00:28:39 Speaker 03: Thanks.

00:28:39 Speaker 03: All right.

00:28:46 Speaker 03: I'm just going to walk through sort of the format for today's presentation.

00:29:00 Speaker 03: As the Mayor has just given his opening remarks and talked a little bit about the Mayor's budget process, I do have a couple slides on that as well.

00:29:20 Speaker 03: Then we'll get into a summary of where our levy increases overall, encompassing all divisions.

00:29:30 Speaker 03: I'll talk a bit about the different budget drivers.

00:29:48 Speaker 03: The main budget, obviously, being our sort of base budget: if we were to continue providing the services that we do now, what that would cost, capturing COLA increases, market inflation,

00:30:11 Speaker 03: and just those committed contract increases that we see built in through indices in our agreements.

00:30:28 Speaker 03: I'm going to tie in Service Review Committee and how the decisions made through that committee are reflected in the budget resolution by resolution.

00:30:55 Speaker 03: So there's a few tabs based on that; and then after our discussion with each Councillor one-on-one, capital was a topic that came up consistently with every member of Council.

00:31:19 Speaker 03: So I have a few slides dedicated towards the capital levy and how changes in how we fund capital will impact the levy going forward.

00:31:42 Speaker 03: Once we get through that, I will share again what the impact, based on what we presented today, is to our total levy and the average household.

00:31:59 Speaker 03: And then I'll pass the podium over to our Police Services Board to present their budget, as well as the Library Board.

00:32:12 Speaker 03: I don't see Tim here yet, but he'll be here this afternoon.

00:32:22 Speaker 03: And at the end of the day, we'll get into any proposed amendments and other discussion.

00:32:41 Speaker 03: So I understand there's two amendments that have been attached to the agenda that were provided beforehand; but there's no reason why you cannot bring any amendment forward during this meeting,

00:32:54 Speaker 03: and we can certainly do that.

00:33:09 Speaker 03: So I just ask if you have them... hang on to them, and we'll make sure we have time for that at the end of the meeting.

00:33:38 Speaker 03: We'll also make time then to answer any questions you had with respect to the more detailed Mayor's budget that was posted to the City's website.

00:33:51 Speaker 03: So, under the Municipal Act is where we find the language around strong Mayor powers.

00:34:09 Speaker 03: Under Section Two Hundred and Eighty Four, the Mayor is legally required to prepare and table the municipal budget.

00:34:22 Speaker 03: Unlike other authorities under strong mayor powers, this duty cannot be delegated.

00:34:42 Speaker 03: To follow the timeline that we follow, Council will recall we brought a detailed report that was informed by John Mascaren to Council as far as and it didn't just cover the budget;

00:35:00 Speaker 03: it covered all of the implications that the Strong Mayor Powers brought forward.

00:35:21 Speaker 03: However, a big section of that was really focused on the budget and how it would affect our budget process.

00:35:42 Speaker 03: Staff worked at preparing a staff-prepared budget we would call that draft budget through the summer, and the City Manager reviewed all of the different departmental budgets in different meetings through October.

00:35:56 Speaker 03: The Mayor held once we had that sort of preliminary staff-prepared budget as a foundation.

00:36:11 Speaker 03: The Mayor held one-on-one meetings with each member of Council through October, and the Police Board and Library Board in November.

00:36:30 Speaker 03: And we sort of had that foundational increase and some of the main drivers in an information page that was provided to Council at that time,

00:36:50 Speaker 03: and saw Council at that time and sought really input from Council as far as what they would like to see reflected in the budget.

00:37:05 Speaker 03: It was focused on operating only.

00:37:11 Speaker 03: We were not looking at specific capital projects.

00:37:23 Speaker 03: Those are still under the Capital Planning Process that will take place in July.

00:37:37 Speaker 03: And the way that we've put that forward is, although the Mayor has the total capital levy included in the Mayor's Budget,

00:37:53 Speaker 03: the actual allocation of that levy to different projects is a planning exercise that is still under the purview of all of Council.

00:38:10 Speaker 03: The Mayor issued his direction via a letter that was posted to the website and shared with Council and both Boards on December 2nd,

00:38:26 Speaker 03: and then the tabled budget was made available via the City website as well as emailed to each of you on December 22nd.

00:38:42 Speaker 03: So that started sort of the clock, and we have these legislated timelines, although we have made previous motions to amend them in order to align to the timing of these meetings.

00:39:05 Speaker 03: So the first, the budget was tabled December 22nd; Council has roughly a month to review that budget and bring forward any amendments.

00:39:20 Speaker 03: Today is the deadline to bring forward any amendments, and we're having the meeting today as well.

00:39:31 Speaker 03: If there are no amendments, the budget will be deemed adopted today.

00:39:44 Speaker 03: If amendments go through, the Mayor will have up until January 26th to decide if he's going to accept or veto those amendments.

00:40:02 Speaker 03: Assuming that he accepts the amendments that do come through today, that is the day that the Budget would be adopted, unless he otherwise shortens that period, which is an option.

00:40:19 Speaker 03: I'm not sure that there would be any reason to, but that is something he could do.

00:40:38 Speaker 03: If he overrides an amendment, then another clock ticks through to February 9th, which also aligns with a Council meeting date.

00:40:52 Speaker 03: That Council at that date can override his veto, but it requires two-thirds Council support at that point.

00:41:05 Speaker 03: And if that process goes, the budget is deemed adopted.

00:41:13 Speaker 03: The last date that the Budget can be deemed adopted per this schedule and timeline is on February 9th.

00:41:26 Speaker 03: I've just captured in this slide some of the main themes that were heard through those one-on-one Council meetings.

00:41:38 Speaker 03: There was a lot of discussion, as I mentioned, around the total capital levy increase.

00:41:52 Speaker 03: Whether when we sat at that meeting, we were sitting at a two percent increase dedicated to Capital.

00:42:01 Speaker 03: So there was support for that amount.

00:42:13 Speaker 03: There was support to keep it at one, and there was support to reduce it as well.

00:42:34 Speaker 03: The tax threshold presented at that time was around 8.5%, and the Mayor discussed Council members' comfort level with that amount.

00:42:44 Speaker 03: And again, there were varied responses across the board.

00:42:48 Speaker 03: We talked about staffing levels.

00:42:54 Speaker 03: We talked about levels of service, specifically around roads maintenance, winter control, and grass cutting.

00:43:19 Speaker 03: There were questions around dispatch services and the profitability of providing those services, as well as the total Police Board levy increase, and I'll let the Police Board present today to answer any questions around that.

00:43:50 Speaker 03: And then lots of comments around implementing the Service Review recommendations, how those would affect budget, and how we're going to ultimately realize the savings through those exercises.

00:44:06 Speaker 03: The Mayoral Directive issued December 2nd established the parameters for the 2026 Operating Budget.

00:44:24 Speaker 03: So after those meetings, and having an opportunity to hear from everyone, the Mayor issued a directive to bring forward a budget with a total budget increase no higher than 5.5%, and within that,

00:44:47 Speaker 03: we keep the capital levy increase maintained at a dedicated 1%.

00:45:05 Speaker 03: He issued similar language to the Police Service Board and the ONS Board and the Owen Sound North Grey Union Public Library, although didn't provide any specific direction as to what to include in those budgets;

00:45:27 Speaker 03: only the one percent applied to the City's Capital Levy.

00:45:50 Speaker 03: So staff took that directive and brought it back to our own budget, strategically either deferred some decisions through Service Review, which we'll talk about later today, left the levy at 1%, and ultimately,

00:46:06 Speaker 03: our Budget increase is exactly currently at five point five percent.

00:46:33 Speaker 03: Once you add operating and capital together, the Mayor's direction was a reflection of the feedback that he got from Council on your tax increase tolerance, desire to see the results from the Service Review implemented,

00:46:53 Speaker 03: and just adhering to asset management strategies and core service delivery.

00:47:07 Speaker 03: I want to make it clear that the direction provided the framework staff used in preparing the budget and how we worked within that.

00:47:24 Speaker 03: However, it did not eliminate the capital pressures; it did clarify Council's tolerance for a permanent increase in 2026 as a starting point.

00:47:39 Speaker 03: And there is a slot later in the day to talk about the Library Budget.

00:47:50 Speaker 03: So when we met with the Library Board, the budget they were bringing forward was over ten percent,

00:48:04 Speaker 03: and I believe the presentation today reflects the same information that was presented to the Mayor at that meeting.

00:48:32 Speaker 03: And following that, the Mayor's directive, the Library has submitted a levy increase of five point five percent.

00:48:47 Speaker 02: We met with the Owen Sound Police Board also in November, and at that time, the budget increase presented was seven point eight percent.

00:49:05 Speaker 03: Following the Mayor's Directive, the Police Board provided a Budget ask of seven point two, and I believe that is what is being presented today.

00:49:34 Speaker 03: And then I've just shown here how that breaks down between the four main divisions that fall under police: the Police Board, Policing (which are the uniformed officers), Civilians (the name of the other category),

00:49:52 Speaker 03: Case Management, Security, and Prisoner Transport.

00:50:06 Speaker 03: We did have a letter from the Police Board supporting the budget they've presented, and that was on last Monday's agenda, I believe.

00:50:24 Speaker 03: I would note that the Police Board levy does not include the operating costs of the police station facility; those are going up by 16%,

00:50:43 Speaker 03: and they also don't include the police capital we spend on that facility.

00:51:02 Speaker 03: And currently, in our five-year funded Capital Plan, there is over $4.1 million allocated to that facility over the next five years.

00:51:32 Speaker 04: So, in the next slides, I'm going to be talking about not everything else—sort of the general levy (operating and capital) as it relates to all other City departments, not including Police and Library.

00:51:55 Speaker 05: But I just want to make sure it's captured: when I talk about things like the Municipal Levy increase and the total combined levy increase, I am capturing those;

00:52:13 Speaker 06: I'm including the Mayor's tabled directive at 5.5%, which does not reflect the Police Board estimates at the current seven point two.

00:52:22 Speaker 03: Library is at five point five.

00:52:35 Speaker 03: So as you'll recall, staff prepared a preliminary draft budget that had around eight point five percent (8.5%).

00:52:47 Speaker 03: It included the full implementation of all Service Review recommendations and a dedicated 2% increase to the Capital Levy.

00:52:58 Speaker 03: The tabled Budget and the Budget we will be discussing today has a general budget increase of 5.5%.

00:53:11 Speaker 03: Four point five of that relates to operating, and 1% is our capital levy increase.

00:53:25 Speaker 03: That capital levy increase is for all City services.

00:53:43 Speaker 03: So our Municipal Levy increase, once we factor in the assessment base growth that we have carried on from last year, will be 5.2%, and assuming the County rate at 4.8%, education is not changing;

00:53:55 Speaker 03: Police and Library are at 5.5%.

00:54:00 Speaker 03: We can expect a total levy or tax bill increase of 4.72%.

00:54:09 Speaker 03: The next slide breaks down what the different components are to that total budget increase of 5.5%.

00:54:26 Speaker 03: And this one is a little bit confusing because we're almost talking about two different things: our base budget (if you were to look at how much our Budget is increasing from last year,

00:54:41 Speaker 03: when you talk about just operating costs) it's going up by 3.4%.

00:54:48 Speaker 03: That accounts for basically three parts of that total five point five percent.

00:55:15 Speaker 03: And where you can see a little bit more dramatic increase is if the Library—the Library is going up five point five percent—but it only accounts for zero point one six of our total five point

00:55:31 Speaker 03: five percent increase,

00:55:33 Speaker 03: which I hope makes sense.

00:55:45 Speaker 03: The Capital Levy increase we maintain at 1%, and then I've also broken out those other operating impacts that are different than just our status quo: Service Review implementation is about 0.5%;

00:56:11 Speaker 03: Implementation of Council decisions made throughout 2025 is at 0.3%; and growth/change in the Ontario Partnership Fund (OPMF), which we call that, actually brings that number down a bit.

00:56:33 Speaker 03: Adjustments and corrections really just reflects that we always have things that we need to correct—either it was wrong, or there are changes in usage, or things that don't reflect...

00:56:42 Speaker 03: way that we're changing service levels.

00:56:45 Speaker 03: It doesn't reflect an increasing cost.

00:56:50 Speaker 03: It's just making the budget more accurate.

00:57:02 Speaker 03: But really, they don't have much of an impact at zero sixteen as well.

00:57:12 Speaker 03: So our base budget is going up three four overall compared to last year.

00:57:22 Speaker 03: That amounts to about one one million dollars.

00:57:37 Speaker 03: It's slightly higher than CPI, and I've included the November CPI of two point eight percent here because December won't be available until next week.

00:57:55 Speaker 03: It reflects the costs associated with providing ongoing level of service that is closely aligned to current service levels.

00:58:22 Speaker 03: The main driver, as with all of our budgets, staff and staff-related costs are the greatest piece of the pie when you look at our expenses,

00:58:36 Speaker 03: and that represents eighty-two percent of the total base budget increase.

00:58:49 Speaker 03: Since eighty-two percent of the total base budget increase, the insurance increase is currently at fifty thousand, and that reflects a smoothing strategy that we put into place last year.

00:59:23 Speaker 03: So I'll remind council: when we went back to market for our insurance provider, there was significant savings in our premium.

01:15:52 Speaker 07: We did not realize the full amount of those savings, and instead we transferred some money to reserves.

01:16:08 Speaker 07: Now, as the premiums are climbing back up, we're able to soften that climb by drawing that reserve down.

01:16:20 Speaker 03: And our hope is that over time we see a more stable insurance premium rise.

01:16:38 Speaker 03: It will, over the long run, always go up as things do, but our goal is not to see these volatile up and downs that we do every time we go to market,

01:17:01 Speaker 03: and that's proving to be effective because this year our actual insurance increase was over one hundred thousand dollars.

01:17:17 Speaker 03: It was actually fifteen percent, and so we were able to soften that and use the reserve to offset that.

01:17:36 Speaker 03: So we should anticipate seeing each year a fifty thousand dollar increase, and then theoretically, we're at the end of the four-year term.

01:17:48 Speaker 03: We go back to market.

01:17:55 Speaker 03: We'll likely realize those savings, but just like always, the increases in the subsequent years are significant.

01:18:13 Speaker 03: We saw a tax adjustment cost decrease, so that actually added back to our budget of eighty thousand dollars, and that relates to mature community improvement plan agreements,

01:18:29 Speaker 03: where we have sort of tax equalization programs for either brownfield remediation or vacant land, those sorts of things.

01:18:51 Speaker 03: We had a few programs as they matured; we're now finally realizing the full tax benefit of some growth that happened years ago.

01:19:07 Speaker 03: We've got software-as-a-service across the city; our service agreements are going up based on indices around fifty thousand.

01:19:20 Speaker 03: The increase to waste management, including phasing in the costs associated with source-separated organics, is reflected around eighty-seven thousand dollars.

01:19:35 Speaker 03: That was another smoothing strategy that council employed.

01:19:45 Speaker 03: When we moved to producer-pay recycling, we no longer had to pay for that.

01:20:01 Speaker 03: But rather than realize those full savings in the year, we set them aside, and that became the money that we used to transition to source-separated organics.

01:20:15 Speaker 03: And similarly, to move up to the full value of that contract, we're offsetting those increases each year by drawing down a recycling reserve.

01:20:31 Speaker 03: That reserve will be drawn to zero, but at the end of that period, we should be fully funding the source-separated organics in a stable, sustainable way.

01:20:48 Speaker 03: And then going forward, we'll just be subject to annual contract increases that you would expect based on inflation.

01:21:01 Speaker 08: Our transit service contract is going up by thirty-five thousand dollars, and we've captured the increase to the Grey-Sawbill Conservation Authority levy.

01:21:13 Speaker 03: That is now; the increase portion is being funded through the tax levy, and that's $12,000 this year.

01:21:31 Speaker 03: So that sort of explains that 3.4 percent and what's driving it.

01:21:39 Speaker 03: The next section is the service review implementation.

01:21:50 Speaker 09: So the impact to the budget as a result of recommendations that came through the service review ad hoc committee.

01:22:04 Speaker 09: The total increase here is around one hundred fifty thousand dollars.

01:22:13 Speaker 09: That's slightly under half a percent.

01:22:23 Speaker 09: Some of the main drivers are: one thing that didn't come through Zero Review actually,

01:22:43 Speaker 09: this came up through the one-on-ones with council but is reflected in the budget was a recommendation that we reduce citywide training and professional development, and so that has been done.

01:23:01 Speaker 09: Fifteen percent every division saw an increase, and that resulted in total savings to the budget as a whole of thirty thousand.

01:23:21 Speaker 03: That wouldn't capture the savings that we realized from water and wastewater; that will be felt on those rates when we look at them in the spring.

01:23:35 Speaker 03: We included the staff mobile device policy.

01:23:48 Speaker 03: We have sort of phased implementation related to bylaw enforcement, added the unit budget software annual maintenance cost for that piece of software,

01:24:04 Speaker 03: and then public works labor alignment has a cost of forty thousand dollars this year, and I'll talk about them when we get to each of the recommendations.

01:24:29 Speaker 03: This is not an exhaustive list of all of the directions that I'm going forward with in this budget; this is just the list of the directions that have a direct impact on this budget.

01:24:47 Speaker 03: So the first recommendation was that we utilize MAT proceeds.

01:25:08 Speaker 03: We utilize MAT proceeds to reduce and offset tourism, Tom, and events levy requirements, as per the MAT revenue allocation policy that was approved.

01:25:21 Speaker 03: So currently, all MAT revenues are reflected in this budget.

01:25:34 Speaker 03: We are estimating total MAT revenues of four hundred thousand dollars for this year, and that's based on a full year now of knowing what those revenues are coming in.

01:25:53 Speaker 03: So I would say that's a much closer estimate than what we've had in historical years.

01:26:04 Speaker 03: Half of that is transferred to the tourism fund, which is administered by the Chamber of Commerce.

01:26:24 Speaker 03: Per the policy, fifty-three-five hundred of what's left is set aside into a reserve, a MAT reserve, and that is for future capital that supports tourism events, community...

01:26:40 Speaker 03: There are currently $137,500 applied to the operating budget.

01:26:47 Speaker 03: You'll see those lines in tourism, events, art gallery.

01:26:51 Speaker 03: That's where they're applied.

01:26:57 Speaker 03: If you were to move it somewhere else, you absolutely could, but it wouldn't change the bottom line.

01:27:09 Speaker 03: It would just change which division it's applied to.

01:27:19 Speaker 03: The next one is that we move forward with the capital lease program.

01:27:27 Speaker 03: So we are moving forward, and we're leasing our passenger vehicles through that as they come up for replacement.

01:27:44 Speaker 03: Actual savings will be realized in future years' budgets after upfront costs like adding vehicle charging stations and outfitting leased vehicles are completed.

01:27:58 Speaker 03: So there's actually no savings as a result, but it's cost neutral in the 2026 budget.

01:28:11 Speaker 03: Annual lease payments would be fully offset by a reduction in transfers to the fleet replacement reserve.

01:28:25 Speaker 03: So you'll see, although we have new lease expenses, we're reducing those by reducing the amount that we're setting aside for future vehicle replacements.

01:28:45 Speaker 03: And then I expect we'll see the real savings next year once we've installed those charging stations and completed the outfitting of the vehicles that we are getting currently.

01:28:58 Speaker 03: The next recommendation respecting short-term rentals is that we continue the STR licensing program.

01:29:14 Speaker 03: And so, those revenues currently appear under Building Inspection and Control, as that is where the staff costs are held for administering the program.

01:29:31 Speaker 03: Our annual STR license fees are estimated to be $12,500, and a small portion of mat revenues is also generated from those bookings as well.

01:29:43 Speaker 03: Another direction was that we continue to offer civil marriage services and some changes to those fees.

01:29:59 Speaker 03: Budgeted civil marriages are estimated to generate gross revenues of over $30,000 and net revenues of just over $20,000, and that's reflected under the Clerk's budget.

01:30:20 Speaker 03: There was a recommendation that we move forward with a mobile device policy that involves providing cell phones to more staff, and this will allow for staff to interact and receive communications from the city,

01:30:35 Speaker 03: as well as to utilize some of our software out in the field.

01:30:46 Speaker 03: So it gives us an opportunity for the potential for digital timesheets and recording notes to files and things like that,

01:31:00 Speaker 03: rather than having to come back once you're in the field and enter those things manually.

01:31:13 Speaker 03: The cost of that in this year's budget is around $12,000.

01:31:25 Speaker 03: So this was the one that I referred to earlier, related to the Public Works and Parks alignment that we look at,

01:31:38 Speaker 03: including the realignment of five seasonal positions in the Mayor's 2026 budget for consideration by the mayor.

01:31:54 Speaker 03: The report brought forward five seasonals; however, this budget reflects the realignment of four, and the cost of that is $120,000.

01:32:10 Speaker 03: But really, what we're doing is: the budget anticipates eliminating four seasonal positions in Public Works, four seasonal positions in Parks,

01:32:26 Speaker 03: and creating four full-time positions that would basically do the work of those seasonal positions but for a full year.

01:32:42 Speaker 03: There is an increase because the rate is slightly higher than it was for some of the part-time positions as well.

01:32:59 Speaker 03: The part-time positions didn't actually cover 52 weeks combined, so there's a few extra weeks involved when you move them to full-time as well.

01:33:25 Speaker 03: That cost is offset by a reduction in costs from eliminating an additional four summer seasonal staff in the Parks division and utilizing our full-time labor force to do that work; there's savings there of $80,000.

01:33:43 Speaker 03: So when you combine those two things together, the net cost of this strategy is around $40,000.

01:33:59 Speaker 03: That said, there are other savings that result from less employee turnover and a higher skill set requirement for the full-time roles over the part-time seasonal staff requirements,

01:34:19 Speaker 03: and we'll realize those savings through efficiencies and what we're able to get done in the year, as opposed to actual dollar saving.

01:34:29 Speaker 03: Councillor Capkis, a question.

01:34:32 Speaker 03: Thank you, Your Worship.

01:34:41 Speaker 03: Through you to the Director: when you're talking about positions, are you also including the benefits in those dollars?

01:34:49 Speaker 03: Through you, Your Worship.

01:34:55 Speaker 03: Yes, benefit costs are included there as well.

01:35:01 Speaker 03: The next Service review recommendation came through staff report CM 25-02-2.

01:35:10 Speaker 03: That was an update on Engineering and Public Works department structure.

01:35:19 Speaker 03: At that time, City Council directed staff to include new staffing positions in the option it called MIDST.

01:35:35 Speaker 03: It doesn't really mean much today, save and except for the Black Flow Prevention Coordinator position in the Mayor's 2026 budget.

01:35:49 Speaker 03: And I will note this is one where after we received the mayor's directive, the budget was amended slightly.

01:36:05 Speaker 03: The staffing changes currently are cost neutral; so that didn't involve adding any new staff—we're moving ahead with it.

01:36:26 Speaker 03: The additional Engineering Supervisor position is anticipated to be implemented in the 2027 budget, so there's no cost associated with this service review recommendation currently reflected in this budget.

01:36:43 Speaker 03: The next one relates to the Bylaw Services report.

01:36:51 Speaker 03: I believe this is one of the most recent reports that the Service Review Committee considered and recommended.

01:37:08 Speaker 03: It recommended adding a bylaw enforcement officer as well as a part-time bylaw enforcement officer in the Mayor's 2026 budget for consideration.

01:37:26 Speaker 03: So the 2026 budget does include the removal of one full-time enforcement officer and the addition of a supervisor, as well as the part-time officer.

01:37:45 Speaker 03: However, we haven't anticipated replacing the full-time officer until 2027.

01:38:07 Speaker 03: So, the only cost increase that's being reflected in this budget relates to the addition of the part-time officer, as well as the wage difference between the full-time and the supervisor.

01:38:26 Speaker 03: And in the 2027 budget, we can expect to see the full-time officer added back, and the cost associated with that change.

01:38:38 Speaker 03: Deputy Mayor Greig, thank you.

01:38:45 Speaker 03: There was some question about what type of flexibility might be gained by this change.

01:38:54 Speaker 03: Can you speak to it?

01:39:01 Speaker 03: Or perhaps the Clerk speak to any changes in the flexibility of those roles or of the department?

01:39:16 Speaker 03: Because as it is right now, it's 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. type enforcement hours, and there were flexibility enhancements discussed.

01:39:41 Speaker 03: Through your Worship, the intention was to have the supervisor sort of look at things as a whole, but certainly looking at changing some of those hours to make them a bit more flexible,

01:40:13 Speaker 03: and seeing when the higher call volumes are and when we should have people working.

01:40:18 Speaker 03: Good.

01:40:19 Speaker 03: Okay.

01:40:19 Speaker 03: Hold on.

01:40:20 Speaker 10: I think Councillor Middlebro...

01:40:23 Speaker 10: Thank you through your Worship.

01:40:43 Speaker 10: I'm just trying to remember when we looked at this during Service Review; I thought that we had looked at adding the supervisor, keeping the two full-time officers, and then adding the part-time officer.

01:40:55 Speaker 10: So where's the?

01:40:59 Speaker 10: Did we just lose a bylaw officer that we're not replacing?

01:41:02 Speaker 10: Is placing what's happening through your Worship?

01:41:11 Speaker 10: The 2026 staffing model will still have two full-time and one part-time added.

01:41:23 Speaker 11: However, what was formerly a full-time enforcement officer is now a supervisor.

01:41:34 Speaker 11: So there's a vacancy in the enforcement officer, and we intend to fill that vacancy closer to 2027.

01:41:50 Speaker 07: And so you'll see that additional cost in our 2027 budget as we backfill that role that has become vacant, but we are still at the same total staff.

01:42:04 Speaker 07: Actually, we're slightly increased because of the addition of the part-time officer for two thousand and twenty-six.

01:42:08 Speaker 11: Go ahead.

01:42:13 Speaker 11: The next section captures the implementation of two thousand and twenty-five directions, and this is common in any year.

01:42:26 Speaker 11: We set the budget in two thousand and twenty-four for two thousand and twenty-five,

01:42:41 Speaker 11: and often there are things that council considers outside of the budget process and whether it's service level changes or changes to staffing, and those things haven't yet been caught in the budget.

01:43:02 Speaker 11: So, despite the fact that they happened during two thousand and twenty-five, this is our first opportunity to capture them in the budget.

01:43:16 Speaker 11: We sometimes call these things prior year changes; is how I've been termed in other years, and those have a total impact of around one hundred thousand dollars.

01:43:32 Speaker 11: Some of those changes include adding the cost for downtown washroom maintenance, annual cost to maintain and have the software agreements associated with cameras in the downtown.

01:43:41 Speaker 11: We added a transit cleaning contract.

01:43:48 Speaker 11: The decisions that were made through operations around ineligible source recycling ultimately realized savings to this budget of twenty thousand dollars.

01:44:00 Speaker 11: I will note that our savings by doing that was a lot more than twenty thousand dollars.

01:44:15 Speaker 11: However, if we were going to continue with the city collection of these recyclables, we would have realized a cost increase closer to two hundred thousand.

01:44:27 Speaker 11: So, had it been in the budget before, we would have realized those whole savings.

01:44:35 Speaker 11: But we had never reflected that in the budget.

01:44:43 Speaker 11: So this brought the total budget for ineligible from sixty down to forty, because we do have this transition period.

01:44:55 Speaker 11: And then in the twenty twenty seven budget, we should be able to further realize the rest of those savings—the additional forty thousand—when it comes out next year.

01:45:08 Speaker 11: We have staffing adjustments that caused a change of fifteen thousand dollars.

01:45:19 Speaker 11: We removed building services estimate that we were providing to Georgian Bluffs, so we had a hundred thousand dollars in the budget for revenue last year that had to come out,

01:45:35 Speaker 11: and then we added for building services that we anticipate to be providing to Meaford, and the estimate for that is fifty thousand.

01:45:59 Speaker 11: We added the maintenance costs associated with the tennis court at the high school—around eleven five hundred—and we moved to a contract provider for snow removal at Owen Sound Police Station as opposed to utilizing our

01:46:10 Speaker 11: own parks and works staff to clear that lot,

01:46:16 Speaker 11: and the cost of that is twenty-five thousand dollars.

01:46:22 Speaker 11: Growth captures the operating budget impact that is driven by growth in population.

01:46:32 Speaker 11: It's not to be confused with the tax levy impact, which is driven by assessment growth.

01:46:42 Speaker 11: Total growth-related impact is an increase to building and development application fees, and we are estimating that to be around two hundred thousand this year.

01:47:00 Speaker 11: Our annual building permit fees are estimated to reach six hundred thousand in 2026, and likely they will exceed that.

01:47:15 Speaker 11: Our goal is to have an estimate in the budget that is the annual sustainable amount, and in the event that we have a surplus, it's set aside into the building reserve.

01:47:35 Speaker 11: It's an obligatory reserve legislated through that act, and we use that in years that we may not achieve that estimate of six hundred thousand dollars.

01:47:48 Speaker 11: And the annual planning application fees are estimated to be one hundred seventy-five thousand in total.

01:47:59 Speaker 11: These are great indicators because when we see the sort of development progress, our first indication is a planning application fee.

01:48:13 Speaker 11: So something is getting started, and they're looking at a site plan.

01:48:21 Speaker 11: Then we get to the building permit phase, and they're paying for a building permit.

01:48:35 Speaker 11: We have this year and next year a historically high number of building permit revenues coming into the city—two or three years because some of these larger developments take a while to build.

01:48:55 Speaker 11: They take a while for impact assessment—but two or three years from when we get that building permit fee is when we should expect to see the increase to our assessment base,

01:49:14 Speaker 11: and that's where we see the impact to our tax levy and the sort of easing off of that burden on the existing taxpayer.

01:49:27 Speaker 11: So, high revenues now is a great indication that we're going to be seeing some significant growth in assessment another year or two from now.

01:49:34 Speaker 11: The Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund (OMPF).

01:49:40 Speaker 11: This is our only—I'm going to say—discretionary grant.

01:49:54 Speaker 11: OMPF does not dictate what you spend this grant on, and we do not have to provide them with any reporting as to how these funds were spent and allocated.

01:50:19 Speaker 11: Other than we do have to continue to file our legislated things like the FIR and things like that to make sure we remain compliant.

01:50:38 Speaker 11: The OMPF is broken down into four main categories, and it primarily supports small northern and rural municipalities across the province, with a goal of sort of balancing total tax burdens.

01:50:48 Speaker 11: We're eligible for grants under the Assessment Equalization Program.

01:50:59 Speaker 11: The total confirmed OMPF grant is about two point three million dollars, and that's an increase of one hundred fifty thousand over last year.

01:51:13 Speaker 11: So that's easing off our total tax levy of around five percent.

01:51:17 Speaker 11: We don't allocate that to any specific department.

01:51:23 Speaker 11: It just shows up as general revenues, just like tax revenue and other tax-related adjustments.

01:51:43 Speaker 11: The capital levy is currently committed to maintaining the dedicated 1% over last year's levy, and that amounts to three hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars.

01:52:00 Speaker 11: I might—there's a few slides here that talk about capital because this was so much of a focus of our one-on-one meeting.

01:52:18 Speaker 11: So, do you want to take a break here before we get into those,

01:52:36 Speaker 11: or do you want me to keep going until I'm finished these slides and maybe we break between my presentation and the Owen Sound Police Board?

01:52:53 Speaker 08: I think it's up to you because you're doing the talking.

01:52:56 Speaker 08: But Council, any?

01:52:58 Speaker 08: It's up to you.

01:53:05 Speaker 08: It's your voice that you've got to maintain as mine falls apart.

01:53:17 Speaker 11: Okay, you didn't have your voice on, but Ms. Allen is suggesting this is a good time.

01:53:24 Speaker 11: Fifteen minutes?

01:53:27 Speaker 11: Ten minutes?

01:53:30 Speaker 08: Fifteen?

01:53:31 Speaker 08: Fifteen.

01:53:35 Speaker 08: So it's approximately 10:00 a.m. right now.

01:53:41 Speaker 08: So if we can come back at 10:15, perfect.

01:53:44 Speaker 08: Thanks.

01:53:48 Speaker 11: Okay, looking at my watch, we're a couple minutes after ten fifteen.

01:54:02 Speaker 11: So we'll call the meeting back to order and pass it back over to Ms. Allen.

01:54:07 Speaker 11: Thank you, Your Worship.

01:54:12 Speaker 11: Jumping back where we left off, we're going to talk about the capital levy.

01:54:22 Speaker 11: As noted, the dedicated increase to capital is around $365,000, and that represents 1% over last year's total tax levy.

01:54:29 Speaker 11: And that's consistent with our capital budget policy.

01:54:35 Speaker 11: We aim to add an additional 1% to capital each year.

01:54:39 Speaker 11: Oh, it's on this slide.

01:54:56 Speaker 11: Our capital budget policy: every year, 1% of the prior year's total levy will be allocated to capital charges, such that year over year, the aggregate total allocation to capital, capital reserve funds,

01:55:11 Speaker 11: and debt charges grows by a dedicated one percent.

01:55:19 Speaker 11: So the first concept I'm going to talk about is what is aggregate capital spending.

01:55:31 Speaker 11: Capital investment is more than just the amount we raise—that is, the capital levy that gets transferred over to our capital plan.

01:55:39 Speaker 11: It reflects the city's total annual commitment to asset renewal.

01:55:48 Speaker 11: Our aggregate capital spending includes the capital levy, all capital reserve transfers and any debt and interest payments.

01:55:58 Speaker 11: Each year, council increases the total aggregate investment by a dedicated one percent to support stable long-term asset management.

01:56:10 Speaker 11: When we talk about capital, we're really talking about how much the city invests in its assets overall, whether it's through the levy reserves or debt payments.

01:56:24 Speaker 11: The one percent increase is about sustaining that total investment over time.

01:56:33 Speaker 11: So ultimately, what happens here is: if we are increasing the amount that we're setting aside through a capital reserve—whether that's to replace fleet,

01:56:53 Speaker 11: whether that's to put money towards a facility such as the Rec Center or the Bayshore—both have contributions towards their future capital in their operating budgets.

01:57:07 Speaker 11: That's considered part of that annual capital amount.

01:57:16 Speaker 11: And if one of those reserve transfers goes up, it comes out of that dedicated one percent.

01:57:34 Speaker 11: Similarly, with interest and debt: if we issue a new debenture, it's not going to increase our total levy by any more than that dedicated one percent;

01:57:50 Speaker 11: because we would use—we would reduce the capital levy—and modify these other amounts in order to maintain that combined amount.

01:58:05 Speaker 11: On the other side, when a piece of debt matures, we don't realize savings.

01:58:15 Speaker 08: It goes back into that aggregate capital spend—to that aggregate capital spend—and basically the capital levy is the balancing mechanism.

01:58:29 Speaker 08: That's the one that either increases or decreases to offset changes to those other two line items to keep the total change at one percent.

01:58:42 Speaker 08: Why it matters?

01:58:50 Speaker 11: By doing this, we have a predictable growing capital investment, and it protects the city from volatility and long-term risk.

01:58:56 Speaker 11: So—long-term risk.

01:59:06 Speaker 01: Some of the benefits that we are actually realizing are stable, multi-year capital planning.

01:59:15 Speaker 11: It avoids spikes or sudden tax pressure or relief in years where capital spending is either more or less than the historical norm.

01:59:36 Speaker 11: We're able to absorb change orders and cost increases—that significant ones—to our projects without having to go back to the taxpayer and get more money in next year's tax levy because of this smoothing ability and

01:59:49 Speaker 11: this long-term planning horizon.

01:59:51 Speaker 10: It supports disciplined asset management.

01:59:56 Speaker 10: It balances funding tools, and it improves affordability over time.

02:00:02 Speaker 10: Consistent capital investment today reduces financial and service risk tomorrow.

02:00:06 Speaker 10: And this is paid off.

02:00:20 Speaker 10: I think when we look at budgets—especially budgets from other municipalities that have significant variation—the reason for that is most usually related to a capital project.

02:00:43 Speaker 10: It's either a large capital project that's been looming, and now they have to address it, or just simply not putting enough tax dollars towards capital, and seeing their reserves run dry,

02:01:07 Speaker 10: and now they have to start getting those capital dollars from another source.

02:01:23 Speaker 10: So, in years where our tax rate has been much lower than our comparators and others in our region, that's often related to the capital spend where we're seeing the variance.

02:01:42 Speaker 06: And in fact, this year we do have a higher-than-historical increase—at least for the last four years—our increase is slightly higher, but that's not related to capital.

02:01:54 Speaker 10: Our capital increase each year has been the same at that dedicated one percent.

02:02:03 Speaker 04: Through the Mayor—if I could ask a question, just for background, how long has the city used this policy of a dedicated 1%?

02:02:29 Speaker 04: I want to say that it came into play around the time that asset management was first legislated, and we had to present our first asset management plan,

02:02:39 Speaker 10: and that was the funding strategy that was put forward at that time.

02:02:52 Speaker 10: So, I want to say that we've been moving towards this since two thousand and fourteen.

02:03:09 Speaker 10: I can't say for certain how long we've been adhering to this specific policy; I'd have to look back to when that capital budget policy was approved.

02:03:29 Speaker 10: But certainly, this strategy—the catalyst for it—was asset management and the legislated planning exercise, understanding our needs and how we're going to close that infrastructure gap.

02:03:45 Speaker 10: Councillor Merton, through you, Mayor Kate: A while ago, I had sent you a question about capital, and you encouraged further discussion to be brought forward today.

02:03:55 Speaker 08: So the response you gave me was very informative.

02:04:10 Speaker 08: So I'll just read what I had inquired about, and then I would leave it to you perhaps to fill in the gaps; it'll probably ring a bell.

02:04:21 Speaker 10: I'm sure as we go.

02:04:39 Speaker 10: So I had sent to you early in January: I had reviewed the Strong Mayor's budget, and we were talking about capital and asset management.

02:04:49 Speaker 10: I noted that there was $332 million in unfunded capital being requested,

02:05:09 Speaker 12: and that the Asset Management Plan over the next ten years has an anticipated $380 million gap in asset management funding for our existing assets—never mind those we want to purchase.

02:05:31 Speaker 12: So my question was: what is the financial strategic plan to address the gaps?

02:05:50 Speaker 10: Since even the proposed budget allocation seems to be underfunding in this area.

02:06:03 Speaker 10: So if you wouldn't mind responding to that, because I think the information would be really helpful to know.

02:06:09 Speaker 04: Thank you.

02:06:18 Speaker 04: Through Your Worship, I might read mostly what I wrote to you that day.

02:06:35 Speaker 10: But I think the answer to that question is: the dedicated 1% is our strategy for closing that gap.

02:06:50 Speaker 10: Closing it all at once is not achievable; and so what is the amount that we can sustainably keep increasing each year in order to close that gap over time?

02:07:10 Speaker 10: At a high level, the financial strategic plan is about balancing capital reinvestment, service delivery, and overall tax impact.

02:07:18 Speaker 10: Particularly given Council's other objective—which is not just to narrow the infrastructure gap,

02:07:36 Speaker 10: but also to narrow the gap between Owen Sound's relative tax burden and those of similar-sized municipalities and those within our region—the dedicated one percent increase to aggregate capital spending remains our core long-term strategy to

02:07:51 Speaker 10: address the gap between total capital needs and annual capital funding—it's stable,

02:08:02 Speaker 10: predictable, achievable, and allows us to steadily close the gap over time, rather than reacting to capital surprises.

02:08:11 Speaker 10: That consistency has been a real advantage for us in historic years' budgets.

02:08:22 Speaker 10: Importantly, the budget pressure this year and the resulting tax increase that is slightly higher than recent years is not driven by a spike in capital spending.

02:08:40 Speaker 10: The unfunded capital list that you referred to is not a definitive backlog so much as it is sort of a broad sightline; it includes facility assessment needs, emerging issues, and Council and public priorities.

02:08:55 Speaker 10: It is intended to inform long-term planning rather than drive our funding targets.

02:09:07 Speaker 10: It is also important to recognize that the capital levy is not our only funding source for addressing the infrastructure gap.

02:09:19 Speaker 10: Some pressures are absorbed in our operating budget through preventative maintenance programs.

02:09:33 Speaker 10: So, in short: while there are opportunities in future years—and maybe there will be in years when we have smaller increases or greater growth—to invest more via aggregate capital spending,

02:09:52 Speaker 10: my opinion is that maintaining the dedicated 1% increase is the most effective and responsible strategy for addressing the infrastructure gap without destabilizing future budgets and the burden on the residential taxpayer.

02:10:04 Speaker 10: And as I just said: this approach has allowed us to deal with capital cost escalation, unexpected failures,

02:10:16 Speaker 10: and emerging needs without destabilizing our budgets—or returning to Council for unplanned tax increases—as a result of a job that's gotten more expensive than we originally thought.

02:10:30 Speaker 10: So, what would happen if we paused on the annual increase for just one year?

02:10:47 Speaker 10: And we said: "Okay, this year we're not going to increase it by the one percent," and we'll just leave it stable with what we invested last year.

02:11:04 Speaker 10: Skipping the annual increase does not create one-year savings.

02:11:16 Speaker 10: Instead, it permanently reduces our capital funding base.

02:11:23 Speaker 10: In other words, the current year levy becomes the base for the following year.

02:11:33 Speaker 04: So if you reduce the current year levy, you're reducing that base for all future years as well.

02:11:45 Speaker 04: One year of skipping the increase results in reduced capital investment or more debt—both now and into the future.

02:12:06 Speaker 10: And I think the most important fact is: reducing the increase does not eliminate the need for capital spending.

02:12:25 Speaker 10: Because the five-year capital plan allocates capital levy funding across all the full planning horizon, and it is balanced.

02:12:45 Speaker 10: Removing $365,000 from 2025—$165,000 from 2026—actually reduces the total funding available over the five years by approximately $1.8 million.

02:12:59 Speaker 10: So to keep our capital plan balanced, that $1.8 million would have to be removed from the current funded capital projects.

02:13:12 Speaker 08: It's not a deferral; it would be a reduction to our capital program.

02:13:23 Speaker 08: And one decision in 2026 reflects every year that follows.

02:13:33 Speaker 08: We show it over five years because that's what our planning horizon is in our five-year plan, but it actually would be permanent.

02:13:55 Speaker 08: And then I've tried to include a visual of how that works: because that dedicated one percent is applied over and above the prior year investment;

02:14:14 Speaker 08: it's not the total levy—and so if we don't have that as a base, each year the current year levy becomes the base for the next year.

02:14:42 Speaker 10: And if the current year levy is reduced, then next year's base is reduced, and so forth—you see it missing here through all future years over five—but that would go on for perpetuity.

02:15:02 Speaker 10: Another question that has come up: what if we use one-time funds like a reserve or last year's surplus to fund this year's increase?

02:15:21 Speaker 10: And while one-time funding relieves the pressure this year, it actually increases the pressure in following years.

02:15:51 Speaker 10: If we used a reserve or a similar fund to fund the 2026 increase, the base would still need to be restored next year—and then we'd also have that dedicated 1% next year.

02:16:09 Speaker 13: So it would effectively result in two increases being realized at once in 2027 unless you continued to use an alternative funding source.

02:16:22 Speaker 13: One-time funding sources defer the impact; they do not eliminate it.

02:16:33 Speaker 10: So if we used a reserve or similar to fund the 2026 increase, the base funding still needs to be restored in 2027—the result is two years in one.

02:16:46 Speaker 10: This shifts pressure forward rather than solving it—and it undermines the stable, predictable approach that the annual dedicated 1% provides us.

02:16:59 Speaker 10: This is really the same principle that we apply in the operating budget: We avoid using one-time revenues to fund ongoing costs because it creates that double hit next year,

02:17:12 Speaker 10: and eventually those one-time funding sources run out—whether it's a reserve that you deplete to zero or it's this year's surplus again that we utilize completely.

02:17:25 Speaker 10: If you don't have a surplus next year to draw from, you're going to have to fund it some other way.

02:17:38 Speaker 10: This is somewhat complicated; so I added an additional visual to try to capture that.

02:17:54 Speaker 10: I'm using one-time funding to cover the capital increase in year two—in this case, year one being 2025, year two 2026—and then year three is 2027.

02:18:15 Speaker 10: So we're assuming our total levy in two thousand and twenty-five was $2 million, and it was funded through the tax levy.

02:18:35 Speaker 10: Next year, we're adding $365,000—that represents a one percent increase.

02:18:52 Speaker 04: Let's say we take $2 million from the levy just as we did last year—but we say instead of adding that additional $365,000, we're going to use a reserve to fund that $365,000:

02:19:08 Speaker 04: draw down the reserve, add it to capital—and you've got a fully balanced capital plan.

02:19:20 Speaker 10: But now it's two thousand and twenty-six—then it's two thousand and twenty-seven, and we're adding an additional dedicated one percent.

02:19:32 Speaker 10: So the total capital levy is $2.7 million.

02:19:39 Speaker 10: Last year we only hit the tax levy for $2 million;

02:19:59 Speaker 10: this year the reserve is gone—we don't have it to draw from anymore because we used it last year—so we have to collect the full $2.7 million from the tax levy.

02:20:14 Speaker 10: So in two thousand and twenty-seven, they're realizing that tax impact of both years.

02:20:34 Speaker 10: Alternatively: had they funded through tax all along—they would still have that increase year over year—but it would be more sustainable—and they'd also still have money in reserves that can be used for one-time needs.

02:21:00 Speaker 10: Think of it like using savings to cover a higher mortgage payment for one year.

02:21:15 Speaker 06: In year two, you dip into your savings to cover the increase so your monthly payment doesn't change; but the mortgage payment itself has not gone

02:21:35 Speaker 10: My recommendation would be that we look for what projects are we anticipating to debt finance in the future, and let's avoid debt as opposed to just bringing that back and lessening the tax levy.

02:21:56 Speaker 10: One debt project that we do have on the horizon is the renovations to the fire hall.

02:22:17 Speaker 04: Those were anticipated to be fully debt funded.

02:22:32 Speaker 04: If we have surplus capital funds available to us, I would reduce the amount that we're going to debt finance that project and ultimately reduce our interest costs over time.

02:22:43 Speaker 10: There's still more to this though.

02:22:48 Speaker 10: Why not increase capital by more than 1% right now?

02:22:57 Speaker 10: Capital reinvestment still competes with rising operating costs, service delivery pressures, and the overall taxpayer capacity.

02:23:03 Speaker 10: One-time capital pressures can be addressed using the surplus.

02:23:21 Speaker 10: If there was a specific project that is not currently funded and we wanted to fund it over and above our balance plan,

02:23:40 Speaker 10: that would be the appropriate thing to use our surplus for as opposed to increasing our annual tax levy by more.

02:23:59 Speaker 10: It doesn't mean that the additional investment is unwarranted but it reflects a deliberate action to maintain stability and avoid overcorrecting in a year where we are having a higher pressure budget year.

02:24:26 Speaker 10: So my opinion, and the same thing I shared in that email to Carol, it is my professional opinion that one percent is the right balance for now.

02:24:40 Speaker 06: Capital investment must be balanced against operating pressures.

02:24:47 Speaker 06: It will continue to be our competitive advantage, and it has historically demonstrated its effectiveness.

02:24:59 Speaker 06: It remains appropriate, defensible, and allows us flexibility to do more when conditions allow.

02:25:08 Speaker 06: So we talked about the increased development application revenues that we're seeing right now.

02:25:18 Speaker 06: I fully anticipate we're going to see some significant assessment growth a year or two from now;

02:25:37 Speaker 06: that might be a great time to anticipate utilizing some of that growth room to increase our capital spend rather than realize a reduction in our total tax levy.

02:25:48 Speaker 06: But that's a decision for then, once we know what those figures are and the timing is.

02:25:59 Speaker 06: So taking everything that we've just talked about unless anyone has any questions about those slides seeing none,

02:26:09 Speaker 10: taking everything we just talked about I'm going to circle back to our total levy impact based on what's presented.

02:26:16 Speaker 10: This slide just reminds you that there was a detailed mayor's budget.

02:26:22 Speaker 10: I didn't go through it today.

02:26:28 Speaker 10: It is available through our website and it has been since December 22nd.

02:26:36 Speaker 10: It was also emailed to each member of council.

02:26:44 Speaker 10: That document, available through the website,

02:26:55 Speaker 10: has each divisional budget broken down by main cost as well as reserved transfers and cost allocations to truly understand what the levy requirement or tax burden is for each of the city's divisions so certainly

02:27:33 Speaker 10: when we get to amendments and questions at the end if council had any specific questions about that document the tally sheet or anything else I'd be happy to take them at the end of today's

02:27:43 Speaker 10: presentation.

02:27:52 Speaker 10: Based on what's being presented to you today assuming that our municipal levy remains at 5.5, the county increases 4.8% and education does not change.

02:28:03 Speaker 10: Our combined levy increase is 4.72%.

02:28:09 Speaker 06: The average household assessed at $230 will see a total tax bill of $4,700.

02:28:18 Speaker 06: That's an increase of $14 annually or roughly $18 a month.

02:28:25 Speaker 06: However approximately 73 cents of that total tax bill is for city services.

02:28:37 Speaker 10: The other pieces of the pie are for the province for your education levy and the County of Grey.

02:28:55 Speaker 10: It's interesting for the taxpayer; they write one check and it's made out to the City of Owen Sound but essentially it's three payments.

02:29:09 Speaker 10: One goes automatically transferred to the province.

02:29:18 Speaker 10: We write one check four times a year to the county to give them their share, and we retain 73 cents of that invoice or total bill amount.

02:29:43 Speaker 03: This slide aims to provide you a visual so for every dollar that you pay how it is broken down into different services.

02:30:42 Speaker 10: So you can see seven cents of every dollar is going to the province twenty cents to the county two cents goes to the library twelve cents for fire protection services nineteen cents for police protection

02:30:58 Speaker 10: ten percent of your dollar is going into capital reinvestment.

02:31:11 Speaker 10: That's not just the capital levy that's debt payments as well as reserve transfers and then every other service that you're provided from winter control parks sports fields tourism events waste management transit governance and administration

02:31:33 Speaker 09: the art gallery traffic development support all everything else comes out of that remaining thirty cents.

02:31:45 Speaker 10: I have included for council's interest some other municipal compared or levy increases.

02:31:59 Speaker 10: I try to do this slide when we present the budget each year.

02:32:20 Speaker 10: I will note this was created maybe last week so there may be some changes where they say draft; they may have since finalized a budget,

02:32:39 Speaker 09: so I wouldn't necessarily hold me further hand over to those numbers.

02:32:50 Speaker 09: Those were very much preliminary estimates that they had put forward earlier in their budget process.

02:32:59 Speaker 09: The median increase is 4.36% and the average increase across all of these is 4.7%.

02:33:08 Speaker 09: So City of Owen Sound is right there in the middle around the average.

02:33:16 Speaker 10: I'd note that Saugeen Shores was at 5.5%; however they used reserves to bring that down to fund some capital,

02:33:33 Speaker 10: and Cobourg fully funded all of their capital this year through reserves so they have no levy increase being supported by the tax rate.

02:33:51 Speaker 10: I'll also note that these are total levy increases so these are everyone's estimate of what the total tax bill increase as opposed to what their budget increases are.

02:34:12 Speaker 10: I use that number because it is the one that is most readily reported by each municipality and so that is consistent but it does mean that Grey County and Bruce County aren't really apples-to-apples comparisons

02:34:33 Speaker 10: because those aren't a combined;

02:34:37 Speaker 04: those are just what their levy increases are.

02:34:40 Speaker 04: They're not a blended rate.

02:34:51 Speaker 04: And so that ends my section of the presentation until I'll come back at the end to walk through the amendments that we received plus any other amendments and any other questions.

02:35:09 Speaker 10: But if there's no other questions I will pass the presentation podium over to Chief Ambrose and I'll be back.

02:35:17 Speaker 10: Good thank you.

02:35:23 Speaker 10: So we welcome Chief Ambrose to present, and I think these are basically their estimates the original estimates.

02:35:32 Speaker 10: They're not anything to do with the mayor's budget recommendation.

02:35:39 Speaker 04: Thank you.

02:35:40 Speaker 04: Good morning everyone.

02:35:44 Speaker 04: We're going to split this into two portions.

02:35:57 Speaker 04: Our presentation today: the first portion is going to be a little bit on some of the drivers and pressures related to policing, and then the second part will relate to the numbers and finances.

02:36:14 Speaker 04: So I'm going to turn over to Deputy Chief Bishop to start with the original.

02:36:24 Speaker 04: Thank you Chief.

02:36:26 Speaker 10: Do I have slide control here?

02:36:34 Speaker 10: Okay great thanks everyone for giving us the time this morning.

02:36:51 Speaker 10: We've got a very short time window to try and help everyone understand what is actually a very complex public safety environment right now in province.

02:37:00 Speaker 13: I apologize;

02:37:15 Speaker 13: I may sound like that guy on TV that tells you about the side effects of your prescription meds as I try to get through this really quickly but just to be clear there isn't ten

02:37:42 Speaker 13: minutes or anything on you so if there's any error in this budget time we need to hear from you so you don't need to read it like the commercial.

02:37:54 Speaker 10: Thanks thank you.

02:38:02 Speaker 10: This slide essentially policing is one of the most highly regulated professions that we have right now with the new act,

02:38:22 Speaker 10: we have three different oversight bodies in the province that all have a piece looking at what we do how we do it how it's regulated auditing if you start adding in some of the other

02:38:47 Speaker 03: things like the Information Privacy Commission the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal we're in a very regulated environment.

02:38:57 Speaker 03: Just in the middle of 2024, we had the new Community Safety Policing Act come out.

02:39:06 Speaker 03: That is the act that completely regulates how policing happens in the province.

02:39:28 Speaker 03: The former act had been in place for 35 years prior to that, so that if that gives you any idea of the level of changes that we saw,

02:39:44 Speaker 10: and those changes have been profound for us, and all of the other services in the province.

02:40:02 Speaker 10: I'll also note there was no funding that came from the province to have us get compliant with all of that stuff.

02:40:14 Speaker 10: So it's been a challenge.

02:40:28 Speaker 01: The chief and I just sat down and did actually a couple of really quick pages of things because one of the frustrations for us is all of the things that come almost on a daily

02:40:46 Speaker 02: basis that end up hitting us that we don't have control over,

02:40:51 Speaker 02: which costs us money and costs us time.

02:41:06 Speaker 02: The chief will talk a little bit later about the changes that we've had this year due to collective bargaining and legislative pay equity.

02:41:31 Speaker 10: As I spoke about the new act coming in with mandated training, the environment in Ontario right now with respect to recruiting of police officers is every service is trying very hard,

02:41:50 Speaker 10: and the numbers are going up, which means that the police college that the province supplies in Aylmer, Ontario, is full of recruits.

02:42:02 Speaker 10: There's five hundred plus.

02:42:12 Speaker 02: They've actually added some extra classes in Eastern Ontario to try and keep up with that.

02:42:30 Speaker 06: But the net effect to us is all of that mandated training that now kicks in for our advanced training for the officers that we have,

02:42:46 Speaker 10: where we now have timeframes that they have to have it done by.

02:42:54 Speaker 10: What that does to our budget: we now have to pay for most of those courses happening off-site,

02:43:15 Speaker 10: so we're looking at hotel meals and mileage on top of the course cost that we have to do.

02:43:41 Speaker 10: So we've had a bunch of costs that have come in related to trying to get compliant with the act.

02:43:58 Speaker 10: You'll see some slides later about how we've had significant increases in our calls for service, our calls of severity, and our criminal occurrences.

02:44:07 Speaker 10: Increasing mental health calls.

02:44:17 Speaker 10: I can tell you that from 2024 to 2025, our mental health calls here in Owen Sound went up thirty-six percent.

02:44:29 Speaker 10: That's a huge number.

02:44:34 Speaker 10: They are a major driver; they take a lot of time for our officers to deal with.

02:44:49 Speaker 10: Technology and data demands: we've spoken about that before—digital evidence, everything that keeps coming into us—I can tell you one of our homicides, just as an example,

02:45:09 Speaker 10: we've estimated probably in excess of eight thousand hours of digital and video evidence that not only has to be analyzed and looked at for evidence, but it's got to be stored.

02:45:22 Speaker 10: Our storage costs for that digital evidence keep going up.

02:45:35 Speaker 10: Every time a new cell phone comes out with an extra terabyte or whatever on it, costs us extra money when it is evidentiary and has to be stored and analyzed.

02:45:46 Speaker 10: This was a different one: New legislation for funeral homes.

02:45:57 Speaker 10: We found out by email in the middle of last year that the coroner came out with basically an approved list of funeral homes that are the only ones allowed to transport a body under a

02:46:10 Speaker 10: coroner's warrant.

02:46:19 Speaker 10: So, if somebody dies in their home and the coroner wants to have an autopsy up at the hospital, the body has to be transported from the home kilometer up the road to the hospital.

02:46:44 Speaker 10: Used to be the case where our local funeral homes would come and transport.

02:47:01 Speaker 10: So this new thing, not known to us, means that we no longer have a local funeral home here that is authorized to do those transports.

02:47:30 Speaker 10: So when we deal with a body, we're now waiting for an out-of-town funeral home to come in to do that very short transport, and we have to stay for that.

02:48:02 Speaker 10: So the calculation that we did just from last year with the number of sudden deaths: we added about 120 hours of officer time just due to that delay,

02:48:27 Speaker 10: which is again—it's just an email that came, and we had no input into it—so there are three weeks of officer time lost just for that little one that came up.

02:48:43 Speaker 13: The province has closed some youth detention facilities.

02:48:54 Speaker 13: That has meant that we are transporting youth in some cases as far away as North Bay and Niagara; there is significant cost associated to that.

02:49:08 Speaker 13: We talked about the changing recruiting environment: we are competing for a much smaller applicant pool.

02:49:23 Speaker 13: The amount of time that we have to take and the amount of money that we have to put into advertising, doing all of the career fairs, processing applications,

02:49:41 Speaker 13: and that sort of thing has been a cost driver for us.

02:49:52 Speaker 13: The chief is going to talk a little bit later about recommendation for an armed security presence at the courts.

02:50:03 Speaker 10: We've had different drivers up at the courts, as you're aware, because of the geographical location of the courts.

02:50:13 Speaker 10: We are responsible for court security here in Owen Sound.

02:50:25 Speaker 10: They're adding an extra courtroom and an extra judge, which is great but adds cost to us; we now have to upstaff that to make sure that we have adequate security for it.

02:50:51 Speaker 10: We've seen a number of mandatory benefit changes: The city will be well aware—A couple of years ago, just as an example, Omer's came in and added extended those benefits to part-timers,

02:51:08 Speaker 10: which means the contribution from either the board or the city went up as a result of that.

02:51:27 Speaker 10: Crime displacement due to provincial investment in GTA area suppression: So the province does invest in a lot of different initiatives such as guns and gangs, drug investigations, vehicle theft, that sort of thing.

02:51:39 Speaker 10: Most of that funding ends up down in the GTA area; that's where it happens.

02:51:52 Speaker 10: Extra enforcement happens down there, and we know that criminals will go to the location where they are least likely to be apprehended.

02:52:17 Speaker 10: If a lot of pressure goes on in one area down in the GTA, it displaces crime, and we see that up here.

02:52:32 Speaker 10: Community Safety and Policing Act—that's that new act that came in—a tremendous amount of work we had to come out of that.

02:52:50 Speaker 10: I would say thirty to forty percent just of my role has increased: Just trying to be compliant with that act and the regulations that go along with it.

02:53:09 Speaker 10: Lack of bail reform—we don't have enough time to talk about the bail reform issue—but this is essentially the people that are released on their own recognizance after committing a crime, pending their trial date.

02:53:28 Speaker 10: So they're back out in the community; more than fifty percent of our charged persons are repeat offenders.

02:53:39 Speaker 10: That is driving our crime rate as well.

02:53:43 Speaker 10: We have a lot of unbudgeted abnormal expenses such as our homicides.

02:54:03 Speaker 10: And I'll tell you: just yesterday, the director of Community Services sent us an email to let us know that the province is now licensing what they're calling tailgate events.

02:54:14 Speaker 14: So no—she was passing it along to us—but it was the first we'd heard of it.

02:54:23 Speaker 14: So now sporting events and cultural events are being put out as bring-your-own-alcohol back parking lot events.

02:54:41 Speaker 14: I can tell you that is going to cost us time and resources again; another thing that we had no impact on—we didn't even know about it until we got the email yesterday.

02:54:54 Speaker 14: So, that's some of the frustrations for the chief and me.

02:55:06 Speaker 14: Some of these next slides I'm going to cover off really quickly: We've talked earlier about demographics by the city's release—We're probably looking at a population right now as high as 24,000;

02:55:22 Speaker 14: projected growth seven point seven percent over the next five years.

02:55:34 Speaker 14: Congratulations to the development team—the figures that you put out recently show some of the highest value for construction project permits in over thirty-five years: nine hundred and sixty-six units coming to the area,

02:55:44 Speaker 14: first tenancies beginning later this year.

02:55:49 Speaker 14: The increase in the city population is going to increase policing demands.

02:56:06 Speaker 14: We currently here in Owen Sound have one of the highest calls for service per officer and criminal charges per officer in the province—all per officer in the province already—in order to meet current policing demands

02:56:21 Speaker 14: and future growth we need to increase staffing.

02:56:31 Speaker 14: And the problem that we have with that: we run about a year behind on an officer to get them recruited, trained,

02:56:41 Speaker 14: and up to speed where they can actually go out and do police work here in the city.

02:56:54 Speaker 14: We can't wait until the call volume increases even further to hire those people; we're always going to be running a year behind.

02:57:09 Speaker 14: So we've talked about this before: We know that our daytime population is much higher than what it shows on the sign—that population drives some of the services for us.

02:57:29 Speaker 14: We could see from our numbers that we are comparing ourselves to much larger municipalities based on the service population.

02:57:46 Speaker 14: Some of the things that drive some of our service levels: We have one of the lowest median household incomes in the area here, and things like our education level,

02:58:10 Speaker 14: our level of unemployment—they are all different from the surrounding areas—and part of that drives some of our issues.

02:58:27 Speaker 14: Our volume of dispatched police calls continues to rise every year; we almost rang the bell at nineteen thousand this year, and you can see year over year we keep going up.

02:58:44 Speaker 15: I already talked about the sudden death thing: Twenty-seventeen—it took us two hours and nineteen minutes—now it takes us four hours and thirty-six minutes,

02:59:10 Speaker 15: and a lot of that is waiting for a funeral home to come in; We cannot leave when it's a coroner case until we've been able to do that transfer.

02:59:26 Speaker 14: So police calls involving mental illness consume resources: You can see there what I talked about just the volume of mental health and attempted suicide calls last year.

02:59:52 Speaker 14: We saw a sixteen percent increase from 2024 into 2025 or three into twenty-four, and then just last year that number jumped to thirty-six percent—thirty-six percent—that number you see below one thousand eight hundred forty:

03:00:18 Speaker 14: We have somebody that goes through every call we do; if there is a mental health connection to it, it may not be branded as a mental health call.

03:00:40 Speaker 04: But if they go through and flag it as mental health related, so basically close to ten percent of our call volume right now has a mental health connection to it.

03:00:55 Speaker 04: Yes, thank you, through the Mayor.

03:01:08 Speaker 04: Just, I'm interested in that number because often, for people who are street-involved or whose lives are destabilized for a variety of reasons—cognitive ability, mental illness can be part of that.

03:01:39 Speaker 04: For people who fall into homelessness and precarity, if you weren't reaching for substances to cope before you were homeless, it's only a matter of time.

03:01:58 Speaker 04: And I'm just curious how inclusive that categorizing is because especially for the frequent flyers that are, as you've said, driving a number of charges and calls:

03:02:15 Speaker 14: If you know someone to have mental illness or addiction issues, and so you're flagging that in the system, and they're the frequent flyer,

03:02:27 Speaker 14: I'm just curious around how inclusive that labeling is because I think that might inflate the connection.

03:02:34 Speaker 06: Yeah?

03:02:38 Speaker 06: Can you give me more information about that as I puzzle through?

03:02:47 Speaker 14: We do keep fairly involved stats on that only because we have grant money that comes in related to our mental health crisis response team.

03:03:00 Speaker 14: So we do report back to the province on a much greater breakdown.

03:03:10 Speaker 14: I don't have that here with me today, but happy to share that with you afterwards or have that discussion to see what that looks like.

03:03:20 Speaker 14: Thank you, through the Mayor.

03:03:25 Speaker 14: Yeah?

03:03:26 Speaker 14: Just...

03:03:38 Speaker 14: I guess I'm wondering if that number could seem artificially higher if you know Bob lives with a destabilizing mental illness and you arrest him often for a variety of things that are a result.

03:04:08 Speaker 06: If that number could be inflated because of that, but that might be a conversation for another time.

03:04:15 Speaker 06: Thank you.

03:04:20 Speaker 06: And we've just shown...

03:04:28 Speaker 06: Just on our apprehensions app right now: We have roughly about 19 hours a month spent waiting with mental health patients.

03:04:44 Speaker 14: That actual number, in many cases, can be double that because that's a single officer.

03:04:58 Speaker 14: If there's a violence issue or instability issue up at the hospital, we'll have two officers there for safety.

03:05:05 Speaker 14: I like this slide: This is the weighted clearance rate.

03:05:08 Speaker 14: This is basically your ability to solve crime.

03:05:16 Speaker 01: We are tied for second place here in the province.

03:05:32 Speaker 13: So you have a very effective police service; even though there is high crime, our ability to solve it, lay charges, or otherwise resolve cases is very high—second in the province.

03:06:01 Speaker 13: The yellow and red on this side: those are your Ontario and Canada rates, which were higher than both the provincial and Canadian averages.

03:06:12 Speaker 13: We're a very effective police service.

03:06:25 Speaker 13: This is the third consecutive year where volume of reported crime in Owen Sound has gone up; it's more than twice the volume of crime that was reported in Onondaga ten years ago.

03:06:52 Speaker 13: We have more than twice the number of persons charged than we did ten years ago.

03:07:04 Speaker 10: You can see from those stats: When we talked about bail reform, 50% of the persons that we charge are repeat offenders.

03:07:18 Speaker 10: Just when we talk about some of the repeat offense issues in 2024, just 10 individuals here in Onondaga accounted for 578 calls for service.

03:07:31 Speaker 10: So we do have—as the Councillor said—some frequent flyers here, but they also contributed to driving some of our call volume as well.

03:07:44 Speaker 10: This is the second year for Owen Sound to record the highest total crime rate compared to other similar-sized municipal police agencies.

03:08:05 Speaker 10: So this chart is showing you all of the municipalities less than 120,000 population: We're not where we want to be in first place, but we are; and this is now the second year for it.

03:08:18 Speaker 10: You can see that all those other municipalities have lower total crime rates—ours is higher.

03:08:32 Speaker 10: This is the third consecutive year for increased crime rate per 100,000 persons in Owen Sound.

03:08:49 Speaker 10: It continues to go up: Crime rate is more than double what it was ten years ago.

03:09:07 Speaker 10: I'm not sure why we put this on a chart because it is more of a flat line; this reflects our staffing levels over since 2022 and you can see that they really have not changed.

03:09:32 Speaker 10: It reflects our authorized strength, which for most years was 40 or 41, and I think the Chief would point out to you: For quite a number of years,

03:09:51 Speaker 13: we were running below that—we were at 37, 38 for some years—and only in the last year did we add a couple more.

03:10:14 Speaker 14: But in light of when you look at all those other charts where everything is doubled here, we're still at the same staff levels that we had 13 years ago.

04:00:10 Speaker 14: Owen Sound police officers carry one of the highest criminal workloads compared to police officers at other similar-sized municipal agencies.

04:00:38 Speaker 01: So we're in number two place right now as far as the number of criminal charges every officer has to process in the span of a year.

04:01:19 Speaker 01: We are a very busy police service, not only in call volume but in our criminal charges.

04:01:44 Speaker 01: And again with that one: You'll see Ontario and Canada rates where we're more than double both of them right now—third consecutive year increased criminal workload per officer.

04:02:20 Speaker 01: It keeps going up as you can see; the trend is back and trending upwards yet again after dropping a little bit during COVID.

04:02:35 Speaker 01: So, Chief, I'm going to turn all of this over to you at this point.

04:02:41 Speaker 16: So just Dave: quick question.

04:02:54 Speaker 16: I think John's going to have a question first—go ahead?

04:03:01 Speaker 16: Thank you through the Mayor.

04:03:13 Speaker 16: So I'm just looking at that chart around authorized contingent...

04:03:27 Speaker 16: You said that number is what you're authorized for; the actual number of people there varies.

04:03:39 Speaker 16: Did the staffing number actually go up to 44 for 2025?

04:03:54 Speaker 16: I know there have been a lot of new recruits, and I'm curious because three people isn't a big number when you describe those challenges,

04:04:20 Speaker 16: but it does represent a seven percent increase—which if we're talking about percentage increases, many departments and organizations would love to see.

04:04:34 Speaker 16: So I'm just curious how that authorized level reflects actual staffing from 2024 to 2025?

04:04:53 Speaker 16: Our staffing varies depending on whether somebody retires or leaves; when we talked earlier about the one-year window it takes to bring somebody onboard,

04:05:14 Speaker 16: that's why we do have some fluctuations because someone may announce tomorrow they're going to another police service—it will take us a long time to get that person replaced.

04:05:34 Speaker 16: So we are close to our number right now, but that's the reason why we're not always where we should be.

04:05:52 Speaker 16: Just before you leave there, Dave: crime rate is based on convictions or charges; call rates depend on which chart you're referring to.

04:06:14 Speaker 16: Reported crime is part of our calls for service when it comes in and reports a criminal event, and our clearance rate reflects how many of those we're actually able to clear—either by charge or otherwise.

04:06:38 Speaker 16: And "clear otherwise" can be different reasons: It could mean we've determined the report was fictitious, things like that.

04:06:54 Speaker 16: Sorry; just comment on that as well.

04:07:09 Speaker 16: The crime rate is different than the Crime Severity Index—which is something we often refer to here—as well, which is weighted and sometimes skews because of the size of the community.

04:07:38 Speaker 16: Crime rate is strictly crime rate: That's the number of crimes that happen in a community based on reference to 100,000 people.

04:07:54 Speaker 16: So where we're highest—that is crime rate.

04:08:14 Speaker 16: That is not skewed or inaccurate because of a weighting system like a Crime Severity Index.

04:08:37 Speaker 16: Another comment regarding Councillor Farmer's question about staffing levels: That doesn't include our authorized complement; that also doesn't include where we receive grant funding for the core grant through the province.

04:09:09 Speaker 16: that augmented our staffing, not paid for through the city levy, but paid for through the budget, and then so we've been able to upstaff.

04:09:28 Speaker 16: So it was; it didn't go directly from forty-one; it's forty-one to forty-four.

04:09:39 Speaker 08: Those were then absorbed and then brought into the budget last year.

04:09:47 Speaker 16: So we had been down to thirty-seven.

04:09:59 Speaker 16: We have now; we're now almost up to the forty-four, but there are still four people that were... those still aren't working independently.

04:10:08 Speaker 16: Go ahead, Melanie.

04:10:10 Speaker 02: Thank you.

04:10:11 Speaker 16: Three.

04:10:18 Speaker 16: I just had a question on the slide with the civilian roles at the bottom.

04:10:27 Speaker 16: There it says fourteen leader positions, OSEC transitioned.

04:10:34 Speaker 16: Can you explain that?

04:10:39 Speaker 16: I don't know what OSEC is and what those roles are.

04:10:44 Speaker 16: Sorry.

04:10:49 Speaker 16: So the team leader positions; the OSEC—that's emergency communications.

04:11:07 Speaker 16: That's the dispatch area where we identified a need for somebody to be in charge during the twenty-four-hour periods when their supervisors aren't there.

04:11:29 Speaker 16: So that's a transition from a regular position to a team lead, and three of those positions still aren't filled.

04:11:39 Speaker 16: Deputy Mayor Greig, thanks.

04:11:52 Speaker 16: And just so I can be particularly clear: in 2025 it states added two core officers' positions previously funded by grant; that's a grant.

04:12:10 Speaker 16: Then am I interpreting this correctly?

04:12:19 Speaker 16: That grant ended in twenty-four.

04:12:40 Speaker 16: Those positions that were already with the organization because they were funded with the grant, they became funded within the base budget already, and that was in pre-preparing the 2025 budget.

04:13:03 Speaker 16: Just so I can be very clear on that.

04:13:07 Speaker 16: Yes; that's correct.

04:13:16 Speaker 16: They were funded and they were brought into last year's budget.

04:13:32 Speaker 16: They had been funded for three years through a grant, and then last year they were brought into the budget as part of the funding for the police service.

04:13:58 Speaker 16: And that was the introduction of the first proactive units that were available within the city.

04:14:12 Speaker 16: Prior to that it was strictly officers on the road responding to calls for service.

04:14:24 Speaker 16: There was no proactive; there was no downtown.

04:14:37 Speaker 16: If there was an issue or a problem, there was nobody assigned to that.

04:14:48 Speaker 16: So that's how that grant funding came about and that's how it was maintained.

04:14:53 Speaker 16: Councillor Koepke.

04:14:55 Speaker 16: Thank you.

04:14:56 Speaker 16: Your Worship.

04:15:04 Speaker 16: Through you to the Chief: is there potential for that funding to come back again for officers?

04:15:12 Speaker 16: In response to that; it's possible.

04:15:18 Speaker 16: The province, the Province of Ontario, is asking for budget submissions right now.

04:15:29 Speaker 16: There isn't a lot on the budget submission template we've completed and we're just getting going to fill that out.

04:15:44 Speaker 16: There isn't a lot on public safety.

04:15:52 Speaker 16: There's a lot in other areas, but yes there's always the possibility they could offer that.

04:16:17 Speaker 16: The difference is: the province will fund grant positions to augment policing being provided by a community, but the responsibility to make adequate and effective arrests without grants.

04:16:37 Speaker 16: Councillor Farmer; through the Mayor on the subject of grants so that grant ended.

04:16:50 Speaker 16: Those positions were held over as permanent.

04:16:57 Speaker 16: Moving from the budget out of the grant revenue stream;

04:17:33 Speaker 16: are there other grants currently being received that are forecasted to end which will also result in new positions being added to the service when the grant that brought them on to augment runs out?

04:18:02 Speaker 09: So we are currently receiving a core funding grant but it hasn't augmented our staff and it's been extended for a year.

04:18:14 Speaker 16: But because of a delay in receiving it, really...

04:18:19 Speaker 16: And receiving it; it really wasn't to pay staffing wages.

04:18:28 Speaker 09: It was: we got a new police vehicle.

04:18:33 Speaker 16: We received some computer equipment.

04:18:35 Speaker 16: Received some other equipment.

04:18:45 Speaker 16: So knowing that we weren't going to find out about the grant until well into the grant cycle and how do you go and hire somebody?

04:18:58 Speaker 16: How do you make staff assignments for those locations?

04:19:09 Speaker 16: And we didn't have enough staff assigned to that location so it was asked for other items.

04:19:26 Speaker 16: So really wasn't a whole lot of staffing dollars in those grants.

04:19:42 Speaker 16: The other one expiring is bail compliance and warrant apprehension; and that's one of those positions we're talking about.

04:19:52 Speaker 16: Councilor Kukreja, to you, Chair.

04:20:13 Speaker 16: Just a quick question to the Chief: the three homicides that we had in the past few years—do they contribute to placing Owen Sound on a higher crime rate as compared to other cities?

04:20:30 Speaker 16: So if we go back, would they be included in the 2023 rates, not in the current rates of 2025 or is it 2024?

04:20:46 Speaker 09: Anyhow, they would be in the 2023 rate, but they wouldn't be included in the 2024 rate.

04:21:01 Speaker 09: So as you can see, the spike there in 2023 is almost as high; we were led that year.

04:21:15 Speaker 16: That would have been attributable to homicides or the shaded out portion.

04:21:26 Speaker 16: The other increase is attributable to just plain increases in crime.

04:21:37 Speaker 16: Deputy Mayor Greig, I think?

04:21:50 Speaker 08: Just one question: when you're contemplating platoon enhancements, one per platoon, what are the fleet requirements to service those additional roles?

04:22:14 Speaker 08: So the fleet requirements for this year for capital—we actually don't need a vehicle and we don't need one to augment or staff that because we've been very successful in provincial grant funding.

04:22:31 Speaker 08: Looking to my left, no hands going up; go ahead.

04:22:48 Speaker 08: So this slide just represents some of—you know—some of the other services that we've been able to capture data about regarding police increases, and they range anywhere from over twenty percent down to four, five,

04:23:03 Speaker 08: four percent, three percent.

04:23:18 Speaker 16: The table is right; it's much smaller than I can read there, but it shows operating request increases over the last—from 2015, pardon me—to 2026.

04:23:36 Speaker 16: All right, moving forward, the breakdown by department: the police board budget increases by just under five thousand dollars.

04:23:46 Speaker 16: It's a seventeen percent increase, but the amount is actually quite small—five thousand dollars.

04:24:01 Speaker 16: There's no additional increase in staff, but there is an increase in hours to manage the legislative compliance requirements of the CSBA.

04:24:19 Speaker 16: So there's a lot more posting of documents, posting of information, posting of records, and submission of information to the Inspector General and our Police Service Board website.

04:24:32 Speaker 16: Moving to the Uniform Branch, the increase is about two point five-two percent.

04:24:42 Speaker 16: This, as was mentioned, involves four officers—one per platoon—to assist in meeting demands for service.

04:24:57 Speaker 16: We haven't had a staffing increase; the demands for service have doubled.

04:25:04 Speaker 16: We haven't had a staffing increase to meet those demands.

04:25:23 Speaker 16: Some of the information provided by Deputy Bishop regarding population increases and services where it takes ten to twelve months before somebody is up to speed and actually working—you can't wait until people arrive or are

04:25:39 Speaker 16: in place because that certainly increases demands on existing staff.

04:25:53 Speaker 16: One of the big drivers was the contract ratified; both the Regular Officers' Association and Senior Officers' Association contracts were/will be ratified, so we know what those increases are now they can be put into place.

04:26:10 Speaker 16: Last year, we used an estimate that was somewhat low.

04:26:18 Speaker 16: Some factors influencing that included job equity and pay equity legislation and market comparators.

04:26:40 Speaker 16: We've lost a lot of experience on the front line through retirement, which adds to workload for officers because an officer coming onto the job isn't working as effectively as somebody who is brand new.

04:27:03 Speaker 16: So if you can see there, fifty percent of our frontline officers on the road have less than two years' experience;

04:27:12 Speaker 13: about fifty percent of our sergeants also have less than two years in their role as supervisors.

04:27:27 Speaker 13: We've had a number of retirements contributing to that—we have a very junior workforce right now.

04:27:41 Speaker 04: Since August 2025, part-time officers have been assisting with calls for service and haven't been downtown assisting with visibility and proactive police work because they've been tied up in courts.

04:28:05 Speaker 04: This isn't something we can continue; it's a stopgap measure to make this work.

04:28:21 Speaker 04: The addition of a Deputy Chief position to meet CSBA needs added approximately three percent to that budget,

04:28:34 Speaker 04: but our minimum staffing level hasn't changed since 2016 despite doubling calls for service and criminal charges per hour.

04:28:47 Speaker 04: Really, the basic message here today is: there's no ability to continue doing more with the same or less than we have right now.

04:28:58 Speaker 04: Our overtime has increased; our workload has increased.

04:29:08 Speaker 04: What we don't want to see is mental health or physical health affected.

04:29:20 Speaker 04: We currently have one member off on long-term absence, which in policing is unheard of.

04:29:31 Speaker 04: There are agencies within the province—small and mid-sized services—that have an increase exceeding twenty percent of their workforce not coming to work.

04:29:40 Speaker 16: I don't want anything like that starting here.

04:29:47 Speaker 16: We've anticipated retirements included in the budget; we've already accounted for salary gapping and hiring timelines.

04:30:06 Speaker 16: We're limited on when we can hire, especially uniform officers, because of police college intakes—only four per year—and we have to get them trained before their first day at the college.

04:30:26 Speaker 16: So if you say, "Well, can you wait until September to hire these people?", you'll actually be almost next September before seeing an increase and relief for those doing the job.

04:30:42 Speaker 16: Hold on, Deputy Mayor Greig?

04:31:00 Speaker 16: Just a question before moving beyond uniformed officers: I don't see it, but hours are reported within your board minutes regarding sick leave, STD, WSIB—I don't see the overtime gross dollar amount calculated in the budget.

04:31:16 Speaker 16: Are there implications with onboarding new uniformed officers decreasing or increasing annual overtime estimates?

04:31:26 Speaker 16: Overtime is difficult to calculate because it's demand-based; we have flat staffing across platoons and supply minimums.

04:31:46 Speaker 16: This will increase our base minimum by one, but obviously not having sufficient staff has an effect—I can tell you in the summertime this year some overtime was needed just to cover that minimum staffing level,

04:32:02 Speaker 16: even into fall.

04:32:06 Speaker 16: If people get sick, we're covering with overtime.

04:32:13 Speaker 16: The minimum staffing level will assist, but might not offset all of it.

04:32:17 Speaker 16: Councilor Farmer?

04:32:21 Speaker 16: Thank you through the Mayor.

04:32:34 Speaker 16: I'm curious about the detailed budget we got specifically describing uniform operations and looking at commentary around gapping and contingencies—it looks like there's been a change in strategy from the service regarding forecasting WSIB earnings recovery

04:32:57 Speaker 16: and contingency lines.

04:33:04 Speaker 16: It seems similar to gapping for human beings, but together those differences are one hundred fifty thousand dollars—a change in approach where last year (and the year before that), so 2024-25,

04:33:27 Speaker 16: you were forecasting one hundred thousand dollars in WSIB earnings recovery in 2023; it was actually fifty-nine thousand, and in fact there were one hundred thousand recovered wages.

04:33:42 Speaker 16: And for contingency, it looks like half of what was budgeted in 2025 to 2026—what percentage is that?

04:34:04 Speaker 16: And so I'm curious what's driving that change in approach, because those numbers look big to me.

04:34:13 Speaker 16: But I'm conscious I might just not understand.

04:34:18 Speaker 04: Okay, so I'm going to be cautious.

04:34:28 Speaker 04: I'm not going to do a line by line of the budget, but I will explain some of the reasons behind that.

04:34:43 Speaker 16: So, as a result of some changes to our collective agreements, some of the ongoing costs related to extended absences have changed.

04:34:55 Speaker 16: And you're only going to recover WSIB recoveries when people are off on WSIB.

04:35:04 Speaker 16: If nobody's off on WSIB, we're not recovering anything.

04:35:14 Speaker 16: If they're not getting any compensation from the police service, we're not going to.

04:35:22 Speaker 16: It's not going to cost us anything.

04:35:32 Speaker 16: So we don't anticipate and we don't budget to have staff missing for WSIB or long-term disability.

04:35:40 Speaker 16: It's not a budgeting tool.

04:35:45 Speaker 16: It's just strictly a realistic cost driver of our budget.

04:35:58 Speaker 16: And whether there's money coming in or coming out, it's nowhere you can hide or find money.

04:36:09 Speaker 16: It's just an in and out.

04:36:19 Speaker 16: If it's coming in, if it's coming back, it went out somewhere else.

04:36:27 Speaker 09: Yeah, through the mirror.

04:36:31 Speaker 09: Yeah, I appreciate that.

04:36:43 Speaker 09: Just to say like the nuance here: it's not up to us to approve line by line.

04:37:06 Speaker 09: I just want to understand because all the ingredients shape the thing that we have to vote on at the end.

04:37:31 Speaker 09: And just to be really clear, then the past year's process of including those forecasts for WSIB earnings is being changed because of collective bargaining or because it just reflected money in and out,

04:37:45 Speaker 09: so that's being recorded differently in this process.

04:37:50 Speaker 09: I'm unclear on that.

04:37:53 Speaker 16: So the response is: it's a bit of both.

04:37:59 Speaker 16: There's nobody off on WSAB [WSIB].

04:38:09 Speaker 16: We're not getting any money back, and if we're not paying out somewhere else, we're not getting any money back.

04:38:21 Speaker 16: It's a little bit of both.

04:38:26 Speaker 16: Sorry, I think we covered that one already.

04:38:37 Speaker 16: So we have been short-staffed since August when we had to make some adjustments and cover the courts.

04:38:52 Speaker 16: We've already dropped core and BCWA from four officers; so that originally it was funded for two officers in Core and two officers in BCWA.

04:39:05 Speaker 16: We dropped that from four officers to three officers combined.

04:39:24 Speaker 16: Despite a proven need for four officers, our BCWA—our bail compliance and warrant apprehension grants, our warrant apprehension team—are out making arrests daily and they're cleaning up warrants.

04:39:46 Speaker 16: I don't have the numbers with me right now, but they're well in excess of two hundred arrests over the course of the year.

04:40:00 Speaker 16: There's no option in policing to backfill with temporary staff in a sworn policing role.

04:40:09 Speaker 16: You either have staff or you don't.

04:40:17 Speaker 06: And if you don't have the staff, then you have overtime.

04:40:24 Speaker 06: And the last thing you want to get into is mandatory overtime.

04:40:37 Speaker 06: And right now, with sick times, we're making phone calls and calling people in for overtime on their days off, which isn't healthy for our workforce.

04:40:52 Speaker 06: The call volume and our response to it can't be flexed around staffing levels.

04:40:58 Speaker 06: Obviously, if somebody calls, we respond.

04:41:01 Speaker 06: You saw the increase in the calls for service.

04:41:12 Speaker 06: We almost hit 19,000 this year.

04:41:18 Speaker 06: We don't control those calls for service.

04:41:37 Speaker 06: We're not another area of the city where you can say, "Well, the grass is going to be an inch longer on a soccer field and everybody's going to have to deal with that."

04:41:53 Speaker 06: We don't have that option.

04:41:56 Speaker 17: We don't have that luxury.

04:42:03 Speaker 17: We respond, and we have to be available.

04:42:09 Speaker 16: We have to respond to that call.

04:42:18 Speaker 02: Obviously, we're essential service: 24 hours a day, seven days a week—minimum staffing levels.

04:42:31 Speaker 02: We have to cover illness, vacation, injuries, training, paternity leave, and maternity leave.

04:42:44 Speaker 02: Paternity and maternity leaves.

04:42:52 Speaker 08: As we get younger, we're having more and more leaves, and it's great for our members.

04:43:07 Speaker 08: But it also takes somebody out of the workforce for a year or longer.

04:43:30 Speaker 08: So all those are managed internally because we don't have a pool of extra resources or bodies to look after that.

04:43:38 Speaker 08: Yep.

04:43:48 Speaker 03: The second bullet there—I just found a little bit confusing in reading it: "Already dropped core and BCWA from four officers combined to three."

04:44:00 Speaker 08: Now, did you release an individual from a position, or did somebody slide horizontally into another position?

04:44:11 Speaker 16: And that's strictly referring to funding pathways, because how it reads is you dismissed a position.

04:44:20 Speaker 16: But I don't think maybe that's what I'm interpreting correctly.

04:44:25 Speaker 16: No, you're interpreting that correctly.

04:44:35 Speaker 16: So we would have hired when we had the grant funding; we would have staffed those positions when they were absorbed into the city budget.

04:44:54 Speaker 16: We went from four down to three, and then we didn't hire when somebody else would have left.

04:45:10 Speaker 16: All right, moving on to civilians: the percentage increase is large—52.19%.

04:45:24 Speaker 16: Obviously, the biggest driver here was collective agreements that were negotiated in 2025, running from 2024 through 2026.

04:45:43 Speaker 16: So we know where our staffing rates are now; they relate mostly to salary and benefit increases and loss of revenue.

04:46:02 Speaker 16: They do some fire contracts with Bruce County, but generally there was no pay equity or job equity that had been completed since 2016.

04:46:25 Speaker 01: So we went to market analysis—we hired an outside consultant—and they provided us with updated information on where those pay levels should be,

04:46:53 Speaker 01: and we've implemented those through the collective bargaining process with the Senior Officers' Association and the Junior Officers' Association; it will come up in the next contract.

04:47:15 Speaker 02: It resulted in significant salary increases reflective of the market assessment: anywhere from 12% to 25% increase over that time period.

04:47:38 Speaker 03: We previously lost employees after training from several different roles in all our civilian functions for better pay,

04:47:52 Speaker 03: reduced workload and not working nights—and I can tell you the city's hired a number of them because they get paid better.

04:48:06 Speaker 03: So sorry, Melanie—go ahead.

04:48:16 Speaker 04: Thank you; through your chair: so for uniformed officers there was a table that showed staffing levels over time, and it was consistent at 41.

04:48:30 Speaker 04: Do you have the same sort of thing for civilians?

04:48:47 Speaker 04: I don't have the same thing, but I can tell you that civilian staffing level (full-time members) hasn't changed other than an increase of four dispatchers back in 2024.

04:49:04 Speaker 04: Other than that, there's been no permanent civilian positions added, other than an HR manager who was brought forward—and people were advised of...

04:49:15 Speaker 03: So, just to clarify, any increases or any changes in staffing levels on the civilian side are part-time members.

04:49:32 Speaker 03: Deputy Mayor Greig, I just have—I've got some notes, and I'm looking for reference points.

04:49:42 Speaker 04: One of which is 2017 when we undertook an OPP costing.

04:49:56 Speaker 03: It was noted there were four special constables and 13 part-timers, 20 civilians and 13 part-time [constables].

04:50:06 Speaker 03: Could you just provide numbers to align with that?

04:50:09 Speaker 04: Then—is that still the case?

04:50:11 Speaker 04: You kind of...

04:50:16 Speaker 04: That's still the case.

04:50:27 Speaker 04: You kind of just mentioned it is the case, but the dollar amounts certainly aren't close to the same.

04:50:43 Speaker 04: So I'm wondering if you could confirm those numbers; they were old points of reference for me.

04:51:02 Speaker 04: I don't have the breakdown from 2017, and I wasn't here in 2017, so I can't say it's exactly the same.

04:51:15 Speaker 04: But it would be very close.

04:51:24 Speaker 04: The full-time positions, as I mentioned, the only additions to full time that I believe we've had are four dispatch positions, one HR manager, and a part-time analyst.

04:51:36 Speaker 04: Yeah, that's right; so apart from part-time, everybody else has been full-time.

04:51:41 Speaker 03: It's just been replacements and those additions.

04:51:48 Speaker 03: So the part-time workforce is non-guaranteed hours and used when they're needed.

04:51:52 Speaker 03: Yeah.

04:51:53 Speaker 03: Okay.

04:51:53 Speaker 03: Go ahead.

04:51:56 Speaker 03: So this doesn't include any new full-time hires.

04:52:07 Speaker 03: It includes the addition of the four mid-level supervisors that, as I mentioned previously, were brought in in 2024 due to decreased experience levels,

04:52:31 Speaker 03: and that's a risk management method we're using in order to have somebody responsible for overseeing everybody else working despite the loss of almost $100,000.

04:52:51 Speaker 03: Business ventures generated savings of $2,231,000 compared to not providing any external services.

04:52:59 Speaker 03: The numbers more accurately reflect actual costs than previous years.

04:53:11 Speaker 03: You'll see some increases in certain business lines; those are exceptions we realized were more the norm rather than the exception, and that came down to training costs.

04:53:24 Speaker 03: We've had staff turnover, and we continued to have staff turnover.

04:53:45 Speaker 03: We thought we would get into a position where we wouldn't need to continue onboarding new staff, but it seems people keep coming and going.

04:54:02 Speaker 03: I thought there was one coming...

04:54:05 Speaker 03: Go ahead.

04:54:07 Speaker 03: Thank you through your chair.

04:54:19 Speaker 18: So on that earlier slide regarding OSHaRE—the four roles converted from part-time to full-time—are those the four people you're talking about?

04:54:32 Speaker 18: The four civilian roles?

04:54:35 Speaker 18: That's correct.

04:54:37 Speaker 18: Okay, that's correct.

04:54:58 Speaker 18: So I think we just need to do a deeper dive into the civilian side because, as you stated with uniformed officers, it is the role of police to provide all things mandated in the Act.

04:55:15 Speaker 18: But on the civilian side...

04:55:18 Speaker 18: Inside?

04:55:28 Speaker 18: No, inside doesn't make sense; perhaps "I don't feel" was intended or referring to internal operations—I don't feel like this is part of the mandate of the police force.

04:55:45 Speaker 04: So if there's room to work on the budget, is that where we need to look?

04:55:58 Speaker 04: So far as the communication center: if we weren't doing the contracts we are doing, how many staff would you need?

04:56:14 Speaker 04: Just because staffing being one of the biggest cost drivers—you know, recruitment, hiring, training, outfitting people with supplies and desks, materials; wages, benefits, pensions—it's a difficult job.

04:56:26 Speaker 04: It's stressful.

04:56:31 Speaker 04: You're going to have turnover because it's shift work, and then those costs will keep on going.

04:56:38 Speaker 03: So is there...

04:56:46 Speaker 03: I feel like the civilian side of this, and the communication center, and taking on all these contracts is a choice.

04:56:57 Speaker 03: It's a choice that isn't mandated;

04:57:11 Speaker 03: is there time maybe to rethink the choice and simplify things to make room in the budget for the other side—the uniformed—and I think that's where everybody would be on board with increasing funding:

04:57:32 Speaker 03: 2.52% increase for uniformed officers.

04:57:40 Speaker 03: I think nobody's blinking an eye at that.

04:57:54 Speaker 03: If you came to me and asked for four percent, I'd say sure; that's where we need to be putting our money.

04:58:06 Speaker 03: So those are my comments.

04:58:11 Speaker 03: Thank you, thank you.

04:58:25 Speaker 09: So I'll go back and say this: every position that is full-time within the police service, other than those four new positions,

04:58:51 Speaker 09: would be required and necessary whether or not we did any work for anybody else across the board—whether that's dispatch, IT, CPEC, records, whatever it may be; any work.

04:59:22 Speaker 09: And I don't look at it in isolation because one thing leads to another: communications work leads to NG911, which leads to IT support, leading to all these other things.

04:59:45 Speaker 09: So I look at it as a business venture—you're either in business or you're out of business.

05:00:01 Speaker 09: I don't look at it strictly by dispatch, so to speak.

05:00:12 Speaker 09: When you look at it, all those positions are required.

05:00:34 Speaker 09: We still have to perform communications for ourselves; we still have to complete records checks; and we need somebody sitting at the front desk 24 hours a day doing court briefs,

05:00:49 Speaker 09: Crown briefs—all those clerical functions we have.

05:00:57 Speaker 09: We still have to have somebody back in the cell block watching our prisoners.

05:01:07 Speaker 04: We still have all these resources: someone doing forensics, admin support...

05:01:14 Speaker 04: All these things that fall under the civilian role—we still need them.

05:01:23 Speaker 04: This is a way of doing it.

05:01:36 Speaker 04: If you look at the total cost of the civilian lines, you're looking at $1,072,505.

05:01:58 Speaker 04: If you take that and divide by somebody making forty dollars an hour—it may be high or low—I'm just saying someone working full time making forty dollars an hour is equivalent to the city paying for

05:02:31 Speaker 04: ten full-time employees running a police service 24 hours a day,

05:02:43 Speaker 04: 365 days a year; I think it's pretty good.

05:02:55 Speaker 04: It includes everybody who works there supporting people not in uniform.

05:03:03 Speaker 04: But it takes more than ten people to run that operation.

05:03:18 Speaker 04: Just a follow-up: somewhere earlier we were talking about NG911 and how either it wasn't captured in this budget or some of those funds aren't affecting this year's budget.

05:03:45 Speaker 04: I know at Corporate Services, during the year-end audit, the auditor said there was a great big pile of money sitting there for NG911 contracts to be realized over time,

05:04:06 Speaker 04: and you're working on policy regarding how to bring that into the budget—so is there any reflection in this year's budget?

05:04:19 Speaker 04: What could we expect in future budgets?

05:04:28 Speaker 04: Would it just involve bringing down the tax levy needed to support it?

05:04:42 Speaker 04: Through Mayor [Boddy], that is already included in last year's budget, this year's budget, and for four years moving forward.

05:05:08 Speaker 04: It was actually spread out over six years because of implementation time, with some associated costs: roughly $485,000 brought in as revenue from that fund this year.

05:05:25 Speaker 08: That fund discussion and drawdown have all been calculated, reviewed, and submitted to the city.

05:05:43 Speaker 08: I don't know if they were also submitted to auditors, but it's all provided and looked after.

05:05:52 Speaker 08: Can I go to Ms. Allan?

05:06:03 Speaker 08: I'll add one point for clarification: It's reflected in your budget as a net number.

05:06:16 Speaker 08: Jeff met with me about breaking it out so you'd see full revenues and expenses—but just for clarity, here it still reflects the net number.

05:06:25 Speaker 08: Yeah.

05:06:33 Speaker 08: So there is a difference of $485,000—revenue brought from that pool of funds.

05:06:42 Speaker 08: The $485,000 is the net amount; thousand dollars?

05:06:50 Speaker 08: No—the $485,000 is the net figure after expenses.

05:07:08 Speaker 08: There may be more than that brought in each year with associated expenses, but after those are deducted, it leaves about $480–$490k annually from now until that period ends—though it varies year to year.

05:07:30 Speaker 08: Through you, Mayor: Just want to clarify based on what's presented here—the civilian section cost is $1,072,505; by using the business model where civilians respond to other communications and contracts, we're generating $2,231,944.

05:07:44 Speaker 08: Do I go further?

05:07:46 Speaker 08: That's correct.

05:07:50 Speaker 08: Sorry, we're going to get into numbers.

05:07:55 Speaker 08: I'm going to have to check something.

05:07:56 Speaker 08: Okay, sorry.

05:08:20 Speaker 08: So the two million two hundred thirty-one thousand nine hundred and forty-four dollars was—if there was no revenue in twenty-twenty-five—the no-revenue number for twenty-twenty-six is actually calculated by our financial director Jeff Hawk as two million

05:08:39 Speaker 08: nine hundred ninety-six thousand one hundred ninety-two dollars,

05:08:51 Speaker 08: and that we couldn't calculate until we had all the numbers for costs and wage settlements and everything else.

05:09:00 Speaker 08: So that's why there was a delay in some of that.

05:09:11 Speaker 02: But that's what the difference is: if we weren't doing anything at all—and you know, five hundred thousand of that right off the top—is NG 911 through you, Mayor.

05:09:29 Speaker 02: So by having—if I understand correctly—just as we do here in the City,

05:09:55 Speaker 04: we maximize our human resources when they are on function to make sure that we all have assigned duties and extra duties so that when they're here, we're filling their time.

05:10:34 Speaker 04: You're saying you have to staff it by doing the business case?

05:10:45 Speaker 04: You are maximizing the time when they're already on staff and generating revenue as a result.

05:10:57 Speaker 04: My question would be: what would be the impact—as was suggested earlier—if the choice was not to have that?

05:11:11 Speaker 04: What would be the potential impact on the budget request from policing, because you would have lost that million-dollar approximate—you know—revenue by not having dispatch?

05:11:32 Speaker 08: The budget would increase from the current estimate of just over nine million eight hundred thousand to twelve million one hundred fifty-four thousand—that's just to cover the work that the OSPS does for themselves—and that's getting

05:11:48 Speaker 08: out of all business.

05:12:02 Speaker 08: And as an example, we have people monitoring the cell block twenty hours a day whether people are in there or not.

05:12:15 Speaker 08: That cost would be distributed to the taxpayer.

05:12:30 Speaker 08: We have twenty hours a day at three hundred sixty-five days a year; five days a year is covered off because they do work while they're there doing that.

05:12:51 Speaker 08: Because it doesn't—it's not a full-time job to watch somebody on a computer screen or on video to see that they're fine and well in their cell.

05:13:14 Speaker 08: They can do other things at the same time, so they're completing other duties that we then create; we then generate revenue and it pays for the cost of having them there.

05:13:29 Speaker 08: So the City doesn't realize any cost to having cell monitors.

05:13:36 Speaker 08: As an example, Deputy Mayor Greig—Deputy Mayor Greig—just a little more clarification:

05:13:47 Speaker 08: I can't remember if it was Corporate Services where we—I thought we saw four—or when you reported earlier in the year at the first of two meetings,

05:14:04 Speaker 08: I thought there was $4.5 million—not so much—in a reserve for NG 911, but basically sitting there as unearned revenue which we've drawn from;

05:14:26 Speaker 08: and I thought over the period of five years—for example—we're going to draw nine hundred thousand each year, and it would show up in the other revenue stream.

05:14:39 Speaker 08: You mentioned four hundred twenty-eight.

05:14:47 Speaker 08: So is it drawing from what I think I'm recalling a $4.5 million dollar?

05:15:06 Speaker 08: It was stated as a reserve but it's not a reserve; it's an unearned revenue account that sits there as a liability until you provide the service, and it would be drawn down over five years.

05:15:22 Speaker 08: Or is that four hundred twenty-eight that you mentioned Councilor Middlebro' annualized revenues coming in from municipalities?

05:15:36 Speaker 08: And the second question: okay, so that unearned revenue was sitting in a fund with the City; and that is approximately $484K down to $450K—whichever year you're looking at.

05:15:56 Speaker 15: That is the portion annually to come out of that pool of money—that's the net portion.

05:16:08 Speaker 15: There are expenses that come out of that.

05:16:12 Speaker 15: It's not simply just all profit.

05:16:21 Speaker 15: There are expenses related to earning; expenses related to earning that money also come out annually.

05:16:33 Speaker 04: So it's—you don't take the whole pot and divide it up and say that's all revenue.

05:16:43 Speaker 04: It's: once those costs come out, then that's realization of what the revenue is.

05:16:48 Speaker 04: So bullet two states:

05:17:04 Speaker 04: despite a loss of almost $100K in revenue—the loss in revenue is actually five hundred eighty-five thousand—if we had four hundred eighty-five thousand that we're allocating from a previous year reserve or an unearned revenue account

05:17:20 Speaker 04: and we're sliding that over,

05:17:23 Speaker 04: our loss of revenue is not one hundred thousand.

05:17:33 Speaker 04: Our loss of revenue is one hundred thousand plus what we have in reserve or unearned revenue, and now we are realizing it.

05:17:51 Speaker 04: No—I'm not sure how I can explain it—but no, there's no loss of revenue there; that's bringing in revenue.

05:18:02 Speaker 04: We're realizing that revenue in the year that it's actually being done.

05:18:10 Speaker 04: It's sitting there: there's a pool of money that's been prepaid.

05:18:21 Speaker 04: The work we do annually brings that revenue in but there's no loss of any revenue from that—it's actually realizing the revenue.

05:18:39 Speaker 06: It's been sitting there in the abyss waiting for—for the time for it to start—and now we're realizing that; we're drawing out the expenses,

05:18:56 Speaker 06: we're drawing out the revenue and that's where that revenue is coming in.

05:19:06 Speaker 06: The hundred thousand relates strictly to some fire contracts with Bruce County.

05:19:21 Speaker 06: Mr. Farmer—through the Mayor—I'm just wondering if the miscommunication there is: as the Chief just said—if that number being referenced is—is it like just dispatch, and the other numbers were related to NG 911?

05:19:39 Speaker 06: My understanding is NG 911 and the OSCCC are different; one's kind of within the other.

05:19:50 Speaker 08: Am I picking up on that miscommunication appropriately?

05:20:05 Speaker 08: We're all one entity—I mean—for purposes internally and for purposes of going out and getting, you know—marketing a brand—that's what it is—but it's all Ontario Police Service and the Board.

05:20:21 Speaker 08: It's not—it's one entity—and the money really—if it hadn't been prepaid, it would be an issue;

05:20:40 Speaker 08: it would be revenue that goes out and the expenses would be there—and the realization of four hundred eighty thousand dollars this year.

05:20:51 Speaker 08: That it's prepaid or not—really is negligent?

05:20:54 Speaker 08: No—that's what we're doing this year: costs and revenue.

05:21:01 Speaker 08: Kate—I'm going to go to Marion now.

05:21:07 Speaker 08: I'll think...

05:21:22 Speaker 08: I think I'll just add again that clarification that they're showing NG 911 hosted as a net number so there's actually about half a million dollars worth of expenses that don't appear in these expense lines;

05:21:40 Speaker 08: instead, they're showing them in the revenue line.

05:22:01 Speaker 08: When we actually import this budget into the system, we'll break that out—and so in future financial reports you'll see total revenue and total expenditures—but there's an additional full-time officer or full-time IT person in there:

05:22:30 Speaker 08: there are contract costs you're paying to NetGen and Commutel; there are some training costs—so there's a bunch of expenses that haven't been broken out in the version you're seeing here,

05:22:52 Speaker 01: and ultimately they will be shown in line with what auditors are looking for: total revenue brought in and expenses as two separate things.

05:23:03 Speaker 01: So—are those approximately half million dollars?

05:23:05 Speaker 01: Approximately half-million-dollar expenses paid out to a third party?

05:23:05 Speaker 01: I'll let the Chief say...

05:23:05 Speaker 01: But there are some salaries—and then there's amounts paid as contract services.

05:23:06 Speaker 01: Yeah—so there are costs associated with providing that service; it's not all just simply revenue.

05:23:06 Speaker 01: If it was revenue, nobody would just do it.

05:23:06 Speaker 01: So there is a cost associated with providing that service every year.

05:23:06 Speaker 01: It may be nine hundred thousand dollars that's actually brought in from that account—but the difference between what it costs and what we are going to bring in is the four hundred eighty thousand dollars.

05:23:06 Speaker 01: So half a million dollars is being apportioned to costs of operation by the police force—and then this—I can't use that "P" word—is an additional revenue to the costs that are being covered within the police

05:23:08 Speaker 01: force.

05:23:08 Speaker 01: Thank you; I'll get you to say yes because you're nodding your head—but you better put it into the mic: Yes, this is the net when it's done—this is what's left over.

05:23:08 Speaker 01: Okay, Councilor Caplan...

05:23:08 Speaker 01: Thank you, Your Worship.

05:23:08 Speaker 01: Just to clarify on dispatch: because the Board has discussed providing dispatch services before—and you explained that the minimum number of staffing still needs to be there to provide our own services—so just to clarify,

05:23:09 Speaker 01: there can't be any staffing changes made—but I'll let you further explain.

05:23:09 Speaker 01: So the number of full-time staff employed by Owen Sound Police Service in civilian roles covers what we would need regardless of whether we did any business outside of Owen Sound whatsoever—with the exception of these

05:23:10 Speaker 01: four new mid-manager positions because it's—it's been going on for well—we've been in business over 20 years.

05:23:11 Speaker 01: We recognize that there's an increased liability and a concern there—and we need to address that liability—but other than those four positions,

05:23:12 Speaker 01: everybody else employed full-time within Owen Sound Police Service would be employed whether we did any business whatsoever;

05:23:13 Speaker 01: and we would also employ part-time people—not as many as we do now—but we would also require part-time people to cover for holidays, sick time—all those other things.

05:23:13 Speaker 01: And to further clarify: the people that are in those positions doing dispatch service for other municipalities are filling their time with doing that service—as opposed to just being there—absolutely correct.

05:23:13 Speaker 01: Go ahead; one more question, thank you.

05:23:14 Speaker 01: Through the mayor, so we lost the Bruce County contracts to I believe it was Saint Catharines or someone is doing the same thing that we're doing in offering the service.

05:23:14 Speaker 01: So just to humor me, if we said tomorrow we're going to shut this down, we're not going to do any communications, and we're going to contract with St. Catharines,

05:23:15 Speaker 01: and they will do our dispatch for our service.

05:23:16 Speaker 01: What would the budgetary impact be?

05:23:16 Speaker 01: That's impossible.

05:23:16 Speaker 01: And the reason I say that is we lost the fire contract to St. Catharines Fire Department.

05:23:16 Speaker 01: St. Catharines Fire Department couldn't dispatch a police service, and there's nobody else right now offering the services to dispatch for a police service, and that's...

05:23:17 Speaker 01: This is patchwork police service, and that's why we've been successful in our revenue stream.

05:23:17 Speaker 01: So there isn't an alternative to go out and ask for a cost.

05:23:17 Speaker 01: So we're the only other entity offering this service to other police services.

05:23:18 Speaker 01: Is that what you're saying?

05:23:18 Speaker 01: With the exception of one police service who does a small service, I don't believe there's any others.

05:23:19 Speaker 01: There... there may be.

05:23:19 Speaker 01: There are a number of places, a number of police services who offer services for other fire services, but they're not dispatching from multiple police agencies.

05:23:19 Speaker 01: There's one agency that dispatches for a second police agency, and we have had like...

05:23:20 Speaker 01: They've been approached about providing services and expanding that.

05:23:20 Speaker 01: But I'm not sure where their position is and whether they're going to do that.

05:23:20 Speaker 01: I know that they put into bid on one of them, and I don't know the results of it.

05:23:20 Speaker 01: But we renewed the contract.

05:23:21 Speaker 01: So, just so I'm right in my own brain, we provide this service to other police stations.

05:23:21 Speaker 01: Is that correct?

05:23:22 Speaker 01: Yes, six.

05:23:22 Speaker 01: We provide dispatch for six police agencies, ourselves included.

05:23:27 Speaker 01: Okay.

05:23:27 Speaker 01: Any other questions before I move on to court security and prisoner transport?

05:23:28 Speaker 01: Okay.

05:23:28 Speaker 01: So, the court security expense increases by fourteen point six five percent to the city.

05:23:29 Speaker 01: The increases are quite a bit higher than that.

05:23:29 Speaker 01: They relate to salary increases, supervision, and extended coverage and demands.

05:23:29 Speaker 01: Payment from Grey County increases significantly, but doesn't cover the supervision of the court security officers.

05:23:30 Speaker 01: So...

05:23:31 Speaker 01: Court security funding from the government decreases as a portion of the overall cost.

05:23:32 Speaker 01: So, there's $125 million annually for court security costs across the province.

05:23:32 Speaker 01: Everybody's costs go up across the province, and that $125,000 has less buying power or less grant money coming to each location.

05:23:32 Speaker 01: There's significant challenges and changes in court security in 2025 and 2026.

05:23:33 Speaker 01: I'm sure people are aware, but there was an incident back in August that necessitated change to court security across the province.

05:23:33 Speaker 01: There was an incident up in a fly-in remote location in northern Ontario, where an individual walked into a court security facility...

05:23:34 Speaker 01: It wasn't a regular court facility.

05:23:34 Speaker 01: It was just set up for the day.

05:23:34 Speaker 01: They pulled a knife and were shot by an officer, and that resulted in concerns for the judiciary,

05:23:35 Speaker 01: which then in turn resulted in recommendations coming through from the ministry regarding armed officers at all court locations.

05:23:35 Speaker 01: That changed our deployment model back in August, and we can't continue to pull...

05:23:36 Speaker 01: Our frontline officers with managing the oversupply of calls during the daytime hours, and they're also doing visibility and traffic enforcement and all the other things that they do.

05:23:36 Speaker 01: So this reflects an increase.

05:23:36 Speaker 01: It's not a direct increase.

05:23:37 Speaker 01: There is one body to go up to courts, and it will help with supervision.

05:23:37 Speaker 01: A constable placed up there.

05:23:37 Speaker 01: It also allows for an officer...

05:23:37 Speaker 01: One of those officers on each platoon.

05:23:38 Speaker 01: So when we looked at it, we could put an officer on each platoon, and we need those resources.

05:23:38 Speaker 01: We could have also asked for two officers for courts, but instead of asking for two officers for courts and trying to be fiscally responsible, it was determined that...

05:23:38 Speaker 01: And I made the decision that we would take an officer from each platoon on a day shift on Monday to Friday to go up to work at courts where they could catch up on administrative

05:23:39 Speaker 01: duties,

05:23:39 Speaker 01: report writing, catching up on all their things, catching up on their training, online training if they have it.

05:23:39 Speaker 01: All those duties where they're off the road; we can put them up at the court facility.

05:23:39 Speaker 01: So it offsets the increase to the city by using those individuals.

05:23:40 Speaker 01: It's also part of the reason why the increase is only two point seven two percent because some of that...

05:23:40 Speaker 01: Hiring four people costs more than two point seven two percent,

05:23:41 Speaker 01: but getting some recouping some of the wages through the grant or through both the grant and through the funding from the county to help with court security offsets the increase to the taxpayer.

05:23:42 Speaker 01: So Councillor Kepkine?

05:23:43 Speaker 01: Thank you, Worship.

05:23:45 Speaker 01: The courts operate from the provincial courthouse, and then Provincial Offences Court operates from the County building.

05:23:46 Speaker 01: Are you required to provide an armed officer at both facilities?

05:23:46 Speaker 01: The recommendations stipulate that we have to provide an armed security presence...

05:23:46 Speaker 01: at every court location.

05:23:47 Speaker 01: So yes; when Courts are operating by Grey County over at the county building for POA Court, we have to provide them with an armed security presence as well.

05:23:49 Speaker 01: Through the mayor, the recommendation for armed court security is one of I think many examples of decisions that were made at the provincial level without consultation that are increasing costs for policing across Ontario,

05:23:50 Speaker 01: which especially impacts small and medium-sized municipal police forces like ours.

05:23:50 Speaker 01: I am confused about...

05:23:50 Speaker 01: In in the budget presented there are drivers that are clearly mandated: Ombudsman benefit expansions, collective agreement.

05:23:50 Speaker 01: There is no way around those.

05:23:50 Speaker 01: The idea of a recommendation...

05:23:51 Speaker 01: And the word "recommendation" here; we as a municipality have declined to act on recommendations in the past connected to various public safety issues.

05:23:51 Speaker 01: I don't understand the recommendation being treated as a directive or a "shall," and I'd just appreciate more information there because the example of a provincial response to an incident at a court in a fly-in

05:23:51 Speaker 01: community without metal detectors,

05:23:51 Speaker 01: being operated in a community center school gym...

05:23:51 Speaker 01: I forget the details of that now...

05:23:58 Speaker 01: Being applied equally to a facility like the Grey County courthouse which has metal detectors, which already has an increased level of security and folks trained in use of force.

05:23:58 Speaker 01: There's a slide;

05:23:59 Speaker 01: maybe I could have saved this for a couple slides from now when we see the armed security decision being explained partly because of a number of incidents involving weapons being brought to courthouses and assaults

05:23:59 Speaker 01: on court staff.

05:23:59 Speaker 01: But I don't think that was here or...

05:24:00 Speaker 01: Yeah, is it here as well?

05:24:00 Speaker 01: So I get...

05:24:00 Speaker 01: I'm conscious that I might not have all the information, and I'd appreciate more.

05:24:00 Speaker 01: There's more to like...

05:24:00 Speaker 01: As we're going through but I'll comment that a recommendation coming from the province was far more prescriptive than what I've actually implemented.

05:24:00 Speaker 01: But I'm not in a position where I recommend decisions to the board; ultimately it's the board's decision.

05:24:01 Speaker 01: But personally, I wouldn't recommend anything less than what we were implementing currently.

05:24:03 Speaker 01: What the province asked for was more than this.

05:24:03 Speaker 01: But the fact is there is increased court security risk in all courtrooms.

05:24:03 Speaker 01: We're getting more...

05:24:04 Speaker 01: You know, we're having more and more serious trials.

05:24:04 Speaker 01: We're having more gang infiltration into this area.

05:24:04 Speaker 01: We're getting more serious offenses that are going through the court system; and all of those things are an increase and a concern for the court security side of things.

05:24:05 Speaker 01: And I'll tell you: Having one armed officer...

05:24:05 Speaker 01: We don't go to...

05:24:05 Speaker 01: I'll put it this way: I wouldn't expect an officer out on the road to go to a situation that has potential danger, known that there could be danger like the court security thing by themselves.

05:24:05 Speaker 01: We send two officers; we sent two cruisers.

05:24:06 Speaker 01: This is much the same.

05:24:06 Speaker 01: What happens if the first person at the door is the armed officer and they're killed?

05:24:06 Speaker 01: God forbid that would happen...

05:24:06 Speaker 01: What do you do with the rest of the building?

05:24:06 Speaker 01: So this is the minimum that I feel comfortable recommending to the board that we do to implement the court security measures that the province has recommended.

05:24:07 Speaker 01: And the liability with not implementing those would have to rest with somebody else because it won't be me.

05:24:07 Speaker 01: My only question here is: What does the volume at the courts now, as they ramp back up look like?

05:24:07 Speaker 01: Back to 2019 or pre-COVID for comparison?

05:24:08 Speaker 01: Are we back to like 100 percent?

05:24:08 Speaker 01: Still at 80 percent?

05:24:09 Speaker 01: What does the landscape look like?

05:24:10 Speaker 01: So I can't give you numbers but I can tell you that they've added a court and they've added a judge so we're at 120 percent...

05:24:11 Speaker 01: Well maybe 150 percent.

05:24:11 Speaker 01: The court backlog hasn't gone down; it continues to increase or stay the same,

05:24:11 Speaker 01: and with eighteen months to get through with the Jordan principles there's no foreseeable end to where the court backlog is going to get lower.

05:24:11 Speaker 01: We are constantly implementing changes to try to affect that.

05:24:11 Speaker 01: We're implementing pre-charge consultation here locally with the Crown so that we can eliminate the excess work that we do in completing a crown charge only to see it go to court and four months later

05:24:12 Speaker 01: get withdrawn by the Crown,

05:24:12 Speaker 01: Crown attorney, because it's not in the public interest.

05:24:12 Speaker 01: They don't have the time to prosecute it, or it's not—you know—there's no reasonable prospect of conviction.

05:24:13 Speaker 01: So we're taking that; we're putting that efficiency into place to try and work with the Crown ahead of time.

05:24:13 Speaker 01: There are courts, court backlog.

05:24:13 Speaker 01: They've been doing—they've been implementing court reform for years.

05:24:13 Speaker 01: It's not getting any better.

05:24:14 Speaker 01: But through Zoom attendance next to very little other than a first appearance or an appearance at a court date.

05:24:14 Speaker 01: Other than that, most things are back in person, and the judiciary want to see them in the courtroom.

05:24:14 Speaker 01: So this goes through a bit of the armed security decision.

05:24:14 Speaker 01: As numerous serious cases—homicides, robberies, drug trafficking, sexual assaults—are being heard locally, the drug and firearm charges tied to the GTA are coming up into this area.

05:24:15 Speaker 01: A number of incidents of weapons being brought to courthouses, assaults on court staff.

05:24:15 Speaker 01: But we do experience assaults on our court staff.

05:24:16 Speaker 01: Usually they're within the confines of the secure area, but we do have issues and concerns regarding our members' security and safety.

05:24:17 Speaker 01: So the extrajudicial superior court judge that's been named and the number of trials that are coming here—there are issues being transferred from Bruce County to Owen Sound for convenience or facility and security reasons.

05:24:17 Speaker 01: They don't have a proper facility to handle some of them, so they're getting off where they don't have to deal with court security;

05:24:17 Speaker 01: they don't have to deal with the cost associated with the trial either.

05:24:18 Speaker 01: The backlog, as I mentioned, continues.

05:24:18 Speaker 01: That's it.

05:24:19 Speaker 01: Anything else in the courts?

05:24:20 Speaker 01: Have you submitted a bill to anybody in Bruce County for that?

05:24:20 Speaker 01: The matter hasn't resolved at this point.

05:24:20 Speaker 01: We are tracking all the hours, as I previously mentioned, but the matter hasn't been resolved yet.

05:24:20 Speaker 01: So there is no final number yet.

05:24:23 Speaker 01: Do you intend to?

05:24:23 Speaker 01: I guess maybe the better question: do you intend to submit a bill?

05:24:23 Speaker 01: Whether or not anybody's going to want to pay it—I don't know the answer to that—but I intend to submit an invoice and some letters,

05:24:24 Speaker 01: push things back to both municipalities and the province to explain to them the impact that it has had locally.

05:24:25 Speaker 01: Can you remember to raise that at Grey County?

05:24:26 Speaker 01: Thanks.

05:24:27 Speaker 01: Okay, so just a quick highlight on some of the capital purchases we'll be making.

05:24:28 Speaker 01: The capital provided by the city remains at one hundred fifty thousand dollars; it hasn't changed since 2019 despite the much lower buying power of that money.

05:24:29 Speaker 01: But we have been very successful with grants.

05:24:29 Speaker 01: As I mentioned, we don't need a cruiser this year—it's the first time we haven't had to purchase a cruiser through capital purchases from the city.

05:24:30 Speaker 01: We're looking at purchasing prison or monitor software;

05:24:30 Speaker 01: basically it's a non-contact monitoring system that monitors the vital signs of individuals who are in custody within cells and mitigates the risk of opioid poisonings and medical events.

05:24:30 Speaker 01: So, that is a cost—but if you take it on,

05:24:32 Speaker 01: look at the liability issues of somebody who passes away or has a medical episode in your cells—at least we're doing what we can to try and mitigate those risks.

05:24:32 Speaker 01: We're replacing our Livescan fingerprinting units and our Intoxilizer units.

05:24:33 Speaker 01: There's another thing that came from the province: Intoxilizer went from the Intoxilizer model 8,000 to the Intoxilizer model 9,000.

05:24:34 Speaker 01: Here you go—here's the new cost.

05:24:36 Speaker 01: This is what it costs; we no longer support the 8,000, and you can't use that evidence in court.

05:24:37 Speaker 01: Outfitting costs for increasing our staff turnover and additional employees: use-of-force options, uniforms and related equipment—and we're looking at a police-specific HRIS (Human Resources Information System) for time and attendance and record keeping.

05:24:37 Speaker 01: Those are the highlights of that.

05:24:37 Speaker 01: So the summary of the budget request adds four new officers for platoon coverage and court coverage.

05:24:37 Speaker 01: It's not new people going up to the courts; it's whoever has work to do who can use their downtime when they're assigned to courtroom and court security duties so they can get caught up,

05:24:38 Speaker 01: do some paperwork and other things while they have time when they're not busy doing court security.

05:24:38 Speaker 01: There are significant increases as a result of negotiated contract settlements—it results in a 7.23% increase from last year.

05:24:38 Speaker 01: The Mayor has asked for a 5.5% increase like all the other departments within the city.

05:24:39 Speaker 01: And what does this mean, and how do we meet that?

05:24:39 Speaker 01: So we would need to hire—not just "hire," but recruit—to meet our service demands.

05:24:39 Speaker 01: Not hiring force officers would almost meet financial needs but wouldn't meet policing needs because some of the money is being recouped through court security by putting people up in courts;

05:24:39 Speaker 01: it would probably require more than that.

05:24:39 Speaker 01: It's also negative financially and negative for employee well-being.

05:24:40 Speaker 01: Not hiring an officer to work in the courts would lead us into contravention of Ministry recommendations and increase risk to staff and the public,

05:24:40 Speaker 01: and it wouldn't provide adequate and effective policing as required by legislation because we are required to do so; court security is part of that.

05:24:40 Speaker 01: Continuing to use part-time officers to meet armed security presence jeopardizes approximately three hundred thousand dollars in grant funding for the part-time officer program.

05:24:40 Speaker 01: A portion of the part-time officer program is paid for through a provincial grant.

05:24:41 Speaker 01: If they're not doing the job assigned as part of the grant, I can't claim those wages back.

05:24:41 Speaker 01: So if they're stuck up in courts doing that role, I can't ask Grey County to pay for it and then also get money from the province—that's called fraud.

05:24:41 Speaker 01: That will result in loss of revenue.

05:24:41 Speaker 01: Go ahead—I just want to pressure-test something with you.

05:24:41 Speaker 01: You said the estimate is a 7.23% increase; the Mayor has asked for five-and-a-half percent.

05:24:41 Speaker 01: My rough math: that's one hundred fifty thousand dollars difference, and then you say not hiring would almost meet financial needs.

05:24:42 Speaker 01: How does four officers equal one hundred fifty thousand dollars resulting in not hiring them?

05:24:43 Speaker 01: That's a huge gap.

05:24:43 Speaker 01: So if you don't hire the four officers, you don't have those four officers to move up to the courts;

05:24:43 Speaker 01: you won't recoup that money from Grey County because you're not going to have the necessary security presence.

05:24:44 Speaker 01: And so you're not going to be able to recoup the time an officer spends at the courthouse Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.—that isn't going to get recouped.

05:24:44 Speaker 01: So when you're looking at the budget, the money it costs to hire four new officers is in excess of $160,000, but it's offset by the fact that they're working at the courts.

05:24:44 Speaker 01: Or somebody; when they're in the position and on the road, and then augment the staff, somebody from the road goes to the courts to fill that spot, and you're not going to get that offset.

05:24:44 Speaker 01: Deputy Mayor Greig: Yeah, I need more time.

05:24:45 Speaker 01: It's your budget, so it's harder for us to be able to process in terms of where you're allocating these funds because we have these court security cards too, right?

05:24:45 Speaker 01: So we see all the costs, and then when we hear it's uniformed officers in this card, then it's like give us some time.

05:24:46 Speaker 01: I'd hate to think that when you say "double dip" there, you use the word fraud.

05:24:46 Speaker 01: We also lose our chief; so we certainly aren't entertaining that.

05:24:47 Speaker 01: I just have a question, and this is probably for the director.

05:24:47 Speaker 01: If you went back a slide, you went past it pretty quick.

05:24:49 Speaker 01: The package here states capital provided by the city remains at $150,000 dollars, but we see it differently.

05:24:49 Speaker 01: Can you just expand on that?

05:24:49 Speaker 01: Like we see all these different items—whether it's HVAC or brick and mortar work, masonry.

05:24:50 Speaker 01: I'll say: Masonry; like all sorts of internal renovations, but as place in the slide deck is $150,000 a year, and I'm just wondering if that can be expanded upon?

05:24:50 Speaker 01: Because there's a budget card even within our other deck coming later that I think is about $335,000 or $385,000 something per year that the city funds for levy.

05:24:50 Speaker 01: And the city's budget covers utilities; contract for snow removal for the police department is in there.

05:24:51 Speaker 01: Like it's got about five or six different line items in there.

05:24:51 Speaker 01: I'm just wondering if that can be expanded upon?

05:24:52 Speaker 01: Because I think the city does a lot more for capital than how that bullet reads.

05:24:52 Speaker 01: This is the police budget side of things.

05:24:52 Speaker 01: This is for policing needs.

05:24:52 Speaker 01: Regardless, yes, there's more provided: they provide a facility and the costs associated with that facility.

05:24:52 Speaker 01: But that isn't a direct cost to police; what I'm talking about are direct policing needs and meeting the needs of the police service.

05:24:54 Speaker 01: And yes, some of those items for the building meet the needs—some things meet the needs of the police service—but it's not a direct cost to police the City of Owen Sound.

05:24:54 Speaker 01: It's a cost to provide the building to provide policing for Owen Sound, but it's not a policing cost.

05:24:54 Speaker 01: Councillor Merton is asking to speak; go ahead.

05:24:54 Speaker 01: So going through the chair: so going back to those four officers that you're hiring—one per platoon—and using them at the courthouse.

05:24:54 Speaker 01: The courthouse I'm assuming would run Monday to Friday, nine-to-five type sort of thing.

05:24:54 Speaker 01: But because we're adding one to each platoon, when it's not court time they will be on the road providing full service to the city.

05:24:56 Speaker 01: Correct?

05:24:57 Speaker 01: That's the advantage of having them: there is one per platoon; eight till four or nine till five usually for court.

05:24:57 Speaker 01: Somebody from that platoon... so there's one extra resource across every shift and each platoon.

05:24:58 Speaker 01: Somebody Monday to Friday from eight till five goes up to fill that armed duty.

05:24:59 Speaker 01: It's not necessarily a new person; it's whoever needs to go up, has time to go up, and can deal with that.

05:24:59 Speaker 01: And then on the weekends, night shifts, and statutory holidays they're there to augment and handle calls for service.

05:24:59 Speaker 01: It would have been much simpler to say I need four resources and two for courts, but in order to keep it more economical we've decided to try implementing it this way:

05:25:00 Speaker 01: save one full-time position and have them covering from the platoon resources because chances are somebody's going to be in the office or doing... you know, make an arrest.

05:25:01 Speaker 01: You make an arrest, and you have two hours of court brief preparation or three hours of court brief preparation,

05:25:02 Speaker 01: and you can go up and relieve the person at the courts and sit in the office that has a window looking out to the front, see everything going on, multitask,

05:25:02 Speaker 01: and do two things at once.

05:25:02 Speaker 01: Okay, thank you; that makes it far more clear.

05:25:02 Speaker 01: So we're hiring for them: they will service the court, and we will be somewhat subsidized in costing because we recover some of that cost.

05:25:02 Speaker 01: But we get the benefit of four extra police officers who will, for the most part, be on the road helping.

05:25:02 Speaker 01: That makes sense.

05:25:03 Speaker 01: Thank you.

05:25:03 Speaker 01: Councillor Merton; through you Mayor.

05:25:03 Speaker 01: Going back to capital: the $150,000.

05:25:03 Speaker 01: Police cars and vehicles are not incorporated within our city fleet management.

05:25:03 Speaker 01: Those vehicles are funded through the budget process, correct?

05:25:04 Speaker 01: Everything that's operational is funded through the police budget.

05:25:04 Speaker 01: The building and other things—everything else than that—if we need anything, if we need a vehicle, pens, paperclips...

05:25:05 Speaker 01: Paperclips; everything else you name it: training supplies, ammunition to train our officers with necessary rounds each year—all of those purchases, all costs are funded through this budget.

05:25:05 Speaker 01: I think Ms. Allan told us earlier that operating costs and facility operating costs are covered by the city—$4 million for the building allocated over the next five years.

05:25:05 Speaker 01: So that came earlier.

05:25:05 Speaker 01: Okay; Councillor Farmer: Through the Mayor, two things regarding the admittedly creative arrangement.

05:25:06 Speaker 01: Like I think that won't win some...

05:25:06 Speaker 01: Reminds me of a drama game where someone's got to be standing, sitting, and lying down.