Owen Sound Council Meeting - Special Meeting Transcript — March 2, 2026

00:00:14 Ian Boddy: Good afternoon.

00:00:15 Ian Boddy: It's March second.

00:00:16 Ian Boddy: This is a special council meeting of the Owen Sound City Council.

00:00:20 Ian Boddy: It's two p.m.

00:00:20 Ian Boddy: I am calling the meeting to order, asking for a declaration of interest.

00:00:27 Ian Boddy: Seeing none in the room.

00:00:28 Ian Boddy: Seeing none on screen.

00:00:30 Ian Boddy: Number three, Councilor Farmer has the motion.

00:00:33 Ian Boddy: Though I note that Councilor Kukreja is not present.

00:00:37 Ian Boddy: Number three, motion to move Councilor into Committee of the Whole.

00:00:41 Jon Farmer: Moved by myself, seconded by Deputy Mayor Greig, that City Council now move into Committee of the Whole to consider reports of City Staff.

00:00:48 Jon Farmer: Call the question on favor, and that is carried.

00:00:53 Ian Boddy: So, in Committee of the Whole, number four.

00:00:55 Ian Boddy: Committee of the Whole at number fourteen, we have a report of city staff, being from the Director of Public Works and Engineering, with regard to Grey County Urban Road Transfer.

00:01:03 Ian Boddy: I'm going to go to Mr. Simmonds first.

00:01:05 Tim Simmonds: Thank you, Mayor and members of Council.

00:01:09 Tim Simmonds: Before we get into the substance of today's report, I want to begin by thanking Lara Widdifield and Mason Bellamy, who are here, and the entire Public Works and Engineering team for the work that's gone into this report today.

00:01:23 Tim Simmonds: This has been a complex, technical, and fast-moving file, and staff have really done a tremendous amount of detailed analysis under very tight timelines.

00:01:32 Tim Simmonds: And I believe that their work will put Council in a position to have a more clear, informed discussion today.

00:01:38 Tim Simmonds: Staff learned earlier this month that the County's Urban Road and Road Exchange Task Force, which met on February 5th, put forward recommendations that went to County Council on February 12th.

00:02:03 Tim Simmonds: County Council on February twelfth, and recommendations that I guess, in practical terms, move the process toward formal road transfer agreements, and would begin the downloading of roads in just a few months from now in July of twenty twenty six.

00:02:13 Tim Simmonds: However, after much discussion at County Council, County Council has deferred its decision regarding the task force's recommendations until March twenty sixth, seeking additional input from the lower tier municipalities.

00:02:16 Tim Simmonds: And then, once it became more clear that this work was advancing and that direction from County Council is coming very quickly, it is important that our council have the opportunity to fully understand the implications from the city's perspective.

00:02:31 Tim Simmonds: And thus, today's special meeting.

00:02:32 Tim Simmonds: I should be clear about what the report is and what it is not.

00:02:36 Tim Simmonds: And the report is not about whether the county has the authority to download roads.

00:02:42 Tim Simmonds: We acknowledge, and the report clearly states that Section fifty five.

00:02:45 Tim Simmonds: Clearly states that Section fifty two of the Municipal Act allows the county to transfer roads to lower tier municipalities, with or without consent, with or without compensation.

00:02:50 Tim Simmonds: That point is not in dispute.

00:02:52 Tim Simmonds: Rather, this report focuses on whether the current approach fully reflects the realities and implications of transferring urban roads, and whether the proposed funding framework appropriately aligns with the responsibilities being assumed by the city.

00:03:07 Tim Simmonds: The report presents the city's perspective and analysis as a starting point for discussion with the county, fully recognizing that county staff will review, analyze, and challenge our information, just as the city has reviewed and challenged the county's as part of a constructive and necessary process.

00:03:23 Tim Simmonds: We absolutely recognize and respect that the county wants to see this work completed.

00:03:28 Tim Simmonds: At the same time, as we always do, staff have a responsibility to protect the interests of Owen Sound taxpayers.

00:03:35 Tim Simmonds: And staff's analysis show that the gap, which could be in excess of seventy million dollars in capital and more than three hundred thousand in annual operational cost, between the county's proposed funding and the city's estimated cost, is too great for the city to proceed as proposed.

00:03:52 Tim Simmonds: Our hope is that the county will understand that this is not a rejection of collaboration, but a clear signal that there is still important work to be done, including further discussion, further analysis, and further study before an agreement of this magnitude can, from Owen Sound's perspective, responsibly move forward.

00:04:11 Tim Simmonds: So, with that context in mind, today's report is intended to ground council in Owen Sound's view of the facts, outline the areas of concern, and clearly identify what remains unresolved.

00:04:21 Tim Simmonds: Laura will now walk council through the report and the key findings that led staff to the recommendations before you.

00:04:42 Lara Widdifield: Thank you, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council.

00:04:46 Lara Widdifield: So today's report, let's see, yep, slide.

00:04:50 Lara Widdifield: Technical difficulties.

00:04:50 Lara Widdifield: Today's today's report deals with the potential assumption from the county of essentially all of the county roads within the city's boundary, that includes Grey Road One from 10th Street West to the city limit, Grey Road Five from the city limit to Ninth Avenue East, and then from Ninth Avenue East to Highway 26 or 16th Street, and Grey Road 15 from Grey Road Five to the city limit.

00:05:09 Lara Widdifield: Slide.

00:05:11 Lara Widdifield: The resolution in the report is that, in consideration of staff report OP 26007 respecting the Grey County Urban Road Transfer, City Council does not approve the proposed road transfer agreement at this time.

00:05:25 Lara Widdifield: Requests that City Council or that City Council not approve the urban sorry County Council not approve the urban road and road exchange task force recommendations in report TRU R O One Twenty Six at this time due to unresolved financial, operational, and equity concerns related to urban road transfers.

00:05:44 Lara Widdifield: Requests that County Council continue the urban road and road exchange task force and directed to undertake further analysis of the financial and operational impacts associated with proposed urban road downloads, including an update to the funding model to explicitly incorporate a risk premium or adjustment that recognizes the additional risk, complexity, and full ten year capital reinvestment needs associated with urban roads, which are fundamentally different from rural roads.

00:06:12 Lara Widdifield: Direct staff to work with Grey County to revise the funding report.

00:06:18 Lara Widdifield: Advises the funding approach so that it more fully reflects the operating, capital, and risk impacts associated with urban road transfers, prior to bringing any agreement back to council for consideration, and provides this report to county council and all Grey County lower tier municipalities.

00:06:41 Lara Widdifield: So, why are we here?

00:06:44 Lara Widdifield: In 2014, Grey County initialized or completed their master plan, their transportation master plan, which recommended to download and download a number of county highways and upload a number of local roads in order to optimize the the road network across the county, primarily in a cardinal compass direction, so north, south, east, west grid of roads connecting settlement areas.

00:07:11 Lara Widdifield: As we noted, Section 52 of the Municipal Act.

00:07:40 Lara Widdifield: Fifty-two of the Municipal Act permits the county to transfer jurisdiction between county of roads between the county and its lower tier municipalities, with or without consent or funding support.

00:07:49 Lara Widdifield: So this this presentation will deal with some of the considerations that staff have come across and and our our comments relating to the proposal as it stands right now.

00:07:51 Lara Widdifield: Slide, please.

00:07:52 Lara Widdifield: At the Grey County Committee of the Whole on February twelve th, there was a discussion about the importance of fulsome consultation.

00:08:01 Lara Widdifield: I just noticed that my slide does not match the one that's on the screen.

00:08:07 Lara Widdifield: Interesting, which resulted in the motion being deferred to March. 26 for six weeks of additional information exchange with the lower tier municipalities.

00:08:37 Lara Widdifield: Slide, please.

00:08:37 Lara Widdifield: Yeah.

00:08:38 Lara Widdifield: Okay.

00:08:38 Lara Widdifield: Uh.

00:08:38 Lara Widdifield: No. Back.

00:08:39 Lara Widdifield: Okay.

00:08:40 Lara Widdifield: That.

00:08:40 Lara Widdifield: Yeah.

00:08:40 Lara Widdifield: That one.

00:08:41 Lara Widdifield: So, staff agree that eliminating the two-tier corridor ownership will make it simpler for utilities and those seeking encroachment or road closure permits, and will also eliminate the need to coordinate above and underground infrastructure replacement when owned by different agencies.

00:09:08 Lara Widdifield: Slide, please.

00:09:08 Lara Widdifield: No. Okay, go back.

00:09:10 Lara Widdifield: Sorry.

00:09:11 Lara Widdifield: One more.

00:09:11 Lara Widdifield: Here we go.

00:09:13 Lara Widdifield: Okay.

00:09:14 Lara Widdifield: County staff in meetings with city staff have cited additional reasons, including complexity of storm servicing, confusion over ownership, and the proximity of county works depots for maintenance needs.

00:09:17 Lara Widdifield: As Owen Sound has seen increased development interest in recent years, another obstacle has been the county's direct involvement in servicing agreements with developers.

00:09:27 Lara Widdifield: City staff wish to collaborate with the county, but we need to ensure that the city is adequately compensated and protected in the process.

00:09:43 Lara Widdifield: Now, slide, please.

00:09:44 Lara Widdifield: So, the county will say that we're jumping ahead on asking you to make these decisions at this time.

00:09:46 Lara Widdifield: However, the resolution provided in the last road transfer task force meeting was clear, and that the road transfer was proceeding, and the draft agreement provided at that meeting was to be approved.

00:09:54 Lara Widdifield: The exact wording was that the draft road transfer template agreement be approved, and staff be directed to customize the template for each member municipality and circulate the agreements for execution, and that warden and clerk be authorized to execute the agreements, and that road assumption deletion bylaws be brought forward to the county council with a transfer date of July six, two thousand and twenty-six, for both urban and rural transfers, and that staff be authorized to proceed prior to council approval as per section twenty-six point six b of the procedural bylaw.

00:10:29 Lara Widdifield: So, at the county council meeting on February twelve, county council voted to allow more time for the lower tiers to review the information the county could provide on the assets being transferred, so councils could make more well-informed decisions.

00:10:54 Lara Widdifield: Slide, please.

00:10:55 Lara Widdifield: So, through the course of this process, we were provided with a number of materials, both earlier in the process and then again later on at the direction of County Council.

00:11:00 Lara Widdifield: Unfortunately, there were gaps in what was sent by the County.

00:11:10 Lara Widdifield: Engineering staff reached out to County Council or County staff to ask for what we thought was missing.

00:11:18 Lara Widdifield: Some additional information was received, but several structural assessments that should exist were not.

00:11:19 Lara Widdifield: County staff indicated that what we received is all they have.

00:11:21 Lara Widdifield: County staff have emphasized that their valuations are based on the asset management plan.

00:11:25 Lara Widdifield: In order to establish an asset's current value, not replacement value, you either have to use condition-based or age-based depreciation.

00:11:32 Lara Widdifield: So, either way, the asset value being used could be refined further to better reflect the condition and resulting financial burden being transferred.

00:11:41 Lara Widdifield: Replacement value is simpler, and would be an estimated cost if you were to build the asset from scratch today.

00:12:02 Lara Widdifield: Slide, please.

00:12:03 Lara Widdifield: So the master plan called for transfers to optimize the county's road network, but the proposed divestments do not align with those recommendations.

00:12:05 Lara Widdifield: For example, George and Bless is recommended to take on several roads, but it is not slated to assume any in this process.

00:12:12 Lara Widdifield: I understand that it's open-ended; there could be a phase two, but this is what we have for right now.

00:12:18 Lara Widdifield: Conversely, a portion of Gray Road One and Five was to remain under county ownership, but all roads within the city's border are to be downloaded under this proposal.

00:12:27 Lara Widdifield: Other rural municipalities are uploading more than they're downloading.

00:12:32 Lara Widdifield: The county has noted that the accuracy is within reason, and that as agreements are finalized, the road lengths will be refined.

00:12:39 Lara Widdifield: So the we will figure out the inconsistency with the length that I've quoted throughout the report.

00:12:47 Lara Widdifield: Slide, please.

00:12:48 Lara Widdifield: Thank you.

00:12:50 Lara Widdifield: Of particular concern is that the is the project that council will likely recall included city water main on Gray Road Five in the vicinity of Harrison Park.

00:13:01 Lara Widdifield: I personally worked with county staff on the procurement for the consulting involved with the road reconstruction, as we intended to fund the water main component within the county's project.

00:13:12 Lara Widdifield: After the proposals were reviewed, county staff approached that the city that they needed to defer the project due to cost.

00:13:19 Lara Widdifield: The city has kept that funding in our capital budget since that time, as county staff committed to undertake a proper geotechnical assessment of the slope to determine next steps, nothing further was ever received from the county on this project.

00:13:33 Lara Widdifield: We have noticed that a number of projects have been moved around within the capital plan, and the county will say that municipalities have an infrastructure deficit, and we all struggle to amass adequate reserve funding to support our assets, particularly bridges.

00:13:53 Lara Widdifield: That's true, but is it reasonable and fair for a municipality with a population of twenty-two thousand to suddenly be made responsible for funding reserve of more than seven million worth of bridge expenses within half of their expected lifespan?

00:14:06 Lara Widdifield: These are things that we need to consider.

00:14:09 Lara Widdifield: There is also culvert replacement required on East Bayshore Road, and three significant retaining walls, one of which was a major component of the project that I just referred to on Gray Road Five.

00:14:23 Lara Widdifield: The county may say that these costs are exaggerated.

00:14:26 Lara Widdifield: However, the price per meter that we used to calculate the 87 million figure that's on the screen was an estimate from curb to curb, not including any infrastructure already owned and maintained by the city, in order to be as close as apples to apples as possible.

00:14:43 Lara Widdifield: County staff have confirmed that the reason why no Owen Sound-based road projects are in the capital plan beyond 2027 is because they don't consider them to be part of the county's inventory after that time.

00:14:56 Lara Widdifield: Slide, please.

00:14:58 Lara Widdifield: So, for operating costs, early in this process, in response to staff's request, county staff offered to provide the current service level policies, but unfortunately, none were ever received.

00:15:09 Lara Widdifield: The county now says that any transferred roads would be under city control and subject to city service levels.

00:15:15 Lara Widdifield: The county has indicated that if the city wishes for the county to support, they we just have to ask in writing, and they will determine if they can or not.

00:15:25 Lara Widdifield: Some maintenance services are already undertaken by the same contractors between the city and the county.

00:15:30 Lara Widdifield: For example, the county contracted with the same signal contractor that the city uses.

00:15:36 Lara Widdifield: The city has opted into adding our own scheduled unit quantities on the county's road resurfacing and line painting contracts.

00:15:43 Lara Widdifield: However, I need to emphasize that the cost for the maintenance done on the county roads is not the city's expense.

00:15:49 Lara Widdifield: Currently, we are just using the same contractors, so all of these additional items—line painting, road resurfacing, and patching, storm sewer maintenance inspection and repair, and traffic signals—are new costs and expansions to projects of projects to manage.

00:16:08 Lara Widdifield: All of the operational costs quoted within the report were the counties.

00:16:12 Lara Widdifield: The counties set the price that they are willing to pay for winter maintenance on their roads.

00:16:16 Lara Widdifield: The county's task force report quoted eight thousand forty-four dollars per kilometer for winter maintenance.

00:16:23 Lara Widdifield: The cost that has been set by the county for the two thousand and twenty-six, two thousand and twenty-seven winter season, however, has gone up since that number was established, as it was quoted at nine thousand two hundred dollars.

00:16:35 Lara Widdifield: The city has not requested more than was offered in signing a new maintenance agreement, and with the snowfall in two thousand and twenty-five and two thousand and twenty-six so far, costs of deicing and traction materials, as well as contractual wage increases, it is unlikely that the amount that the county pays for winter maintenance is full cost recovery.

00:17:01 Lara Widdifield: Slide, please.

00:17:02 Lara Widdifield: So the funding formula.

00:17:03 Lara Widdifield: The county believes that the funding formula is fair.

00:17:05 Lara Widdifield: We agree on the surface; it is fair.

00:17:07 Lara Widdifield: It is fair because it treats all lower-tier municipalities and road segments to be transferred equally within their respective road classifications: urban, rural, and semi-urban.

00:17:17 Lara Widdifield: However, staff suggests that for Owen Sound and the other urban municipalities, the proposed formula is not equitable because urban roads are more complex, constrained, and tend to be multi-laned or subject to forecasted upgrades due to development pressures.

00:17:31 Lara Widdifield: The formula does not include development charges or ancillary tangible capital assets such as bridges, structural culverts, traffic signals, and retaining walls.

00:17:38 Lara Widdifield: All of these factors result in additional risk and cost to the lower-tier municipality.

00:17:51 Lara Widdifield: Slide, please.

00:17:52 Lara Widdifield: So, the funding proposal currently, and I should note this: it is based on estimated increases, because they built it based on estimated levy increases year over year. is a total of nine hundred fifty-two million five hundred twenty-five thousand and twenty-one dollars over the ten-year term.

00:18:14 Lara Widdifield: As staff were analyzing the ten-year capital forecasts from two thousand and twenty-two through two thousand and twenty-six as the starting years, it was noted that over the ten years, the program called for twenty-two million to twenty-four million of reinvestment, of which nine point six to thirteen million was funded from tax, and the rest was from grants and development charges.

00:18:34 Lara Widdifield: City staff suggested if twenty-two million had been funded or earmarked in the capital program, then the funding formula should more closely reflect those amounts, even if the tax-only amount was used.

00:18:45 Lara Widdifield: It's still low compared to the nine hundred ninety-five million that they're proposing.

00:18:50 Lara Widdifield: Slide, please.

00:18:54 Lara Widdifield: So the county's position is that the amount stated in the development charge background study is irrelevant, as it is not a commitment to undertake projects.

00:19:02 Lara Widdifield: That may be the case, but this is one more indicator of how much funding will be required if the contemplated road upgrades proceed.

00:19:10 Lara Widdifield: We already know that several road upgrades are to be undertaken, most notably the concrete box culvert replacement and extension at Thirty-Second Street for Skydive and for the urbanization of Eighth Street East from Sixteenth Avenue to Twenty-Eighth Avenue, to reflect the fifteen hundred or so units in the Graystone Red Hawk and Telfer Creek developments south and east of the hospital property.

00:19:32 Lara Widdifield: Development charges were not included in the funding formula.

00:19:38 Lara Widdifield: That was because the task force directed staff not to include them.

00:19:43 Lara Widdifield: Slide, please.

00:19:47 Lara Widdifield: So, as a beginning of a summary for my for our analysis, urban roads carry higher complexity, cost, and uncertainty or risk than rural roads.

00:19:57 Lara Widdifield: The transfer reallocates assets and responsibilities without adjusting county staffing levels and creates broader implications for grants compliance and service delivery.

00:20:07 Lara Widdifield: Without a risk adjustment, the model remains equitable in theory but not in practice.

00:20:12 Lara Widdifield: And the proposed road transfer presents a material financial risk to the city by transferring significant unfunded capital, life cycle, and previously committed costs that are not fully reflected in the county's funding model.

00:20:25 Lara Widdifield: So, as solutions, staff propose two different options.

00:20:33 Lara Widdifield: Option one being to request that the county fund the entire asset's entire life cycle, which provides a longer funding term for phasing in budgets.

00:20:43 Lara Widdifield: Although seeing that that may be somewhat unreasonable, option two is the recommended option, which would be the funding should include all capital and development-related projects committed to within the last several years, regardless of whether they were deferred or eliminated, plus operational costs, or at least closer to than what the funding formula currently does.

00:21:03 Lara Widdifield: Slide, please.

00:21:03 Lara Widdifield: So, we're suggesting that council should not endorse the agreement in its current form, for I think reasons that we've now said several times, due to the equity and risk issue.

00:21:21 Lara Widdifield: Equity and risk issues that remain, due to the asset information that remains in question, and essentially the remaining question marks that we would like to continue pursuing and discussing with the county, we just it seems premature to be considering it the right time to endorse this agreement at this time.

00:21:50 Lara Widdifield: So, our final word.

00:21:53 Lara Widdifield: If could have the last slide.

00:21:54 Lara Widdifield: Thank you.

00:21:57 Lara Widdifield: Again, we note that the Municipal Act allows them to transfer these roads without any support.

00:22:03 Lara Widdifield: So it's appreciated that they're offering it and that they've gone to the effort that they have to create a fair funding formula.

00:22:13 Lara Widdifield: However, with council support, we'd like to advance ongoing discussions with the county council, with County Council, towards the development of a funding formula that appropriately reflects the needs of urban municipalities, within an equitable and sustainable manner.

00:22:29 Lara Widdifield: If anybody has any questions, I would be happy to answer them.

00:22:32 Ian Boddy: Thank you, Laura.

00:22:34 Ian Boddy: It's a good report.

00:22:36 Ian Boddy: I think thirty-one pages long, and I think every sentence was information and data-laden, so it was good.

00:22:43 Ian Boddy: Council, questions.

00:22:45 Ian Boddy: Councilor Merton.

00:22:48 Carol Merton: Through your worship, I'd like to first thank our mayor and deputy mayor for their comments and for bringing this issue forward at County Council.

00:22:59 Carol Merton: It was clear that they had a focus on ensuring that our city was represented and fairly represented in the transfer.

00:23:08 Carol Merton: So I wanted to mention that right up front.

00:23:12 Carol Merton: I have several questions.

00:23:18 Carol Merton: There was an extended period of time, if I read the report correctly, from two thousand and fourteen until approximately two thousand and twenty-two or twenty-three, before the study was done—the transportation or the transfer study—and any action happened.

00:23:38 Carol Merton: Do we understand why the delay?

00:23:42 Carol Merton: Because most times, a study that's that old needs to be revisited.

00:23:47 Carol Merton: We revisit our studies at a five or ten-year period of time.

00:24:06 Lara Widdifield: Through the mayor to Councilor Burton, I can answer a part of that.

00:24:09 Lara Widdifield: That their transportation master plan had a lifespan on it, like the planning horizon was twenty-five years.

00:24:15 Lara Widdifield: So, although it sounds like it was super outdated, it actually wasn't as far as the grand scheme of their planning horizon in that report.

00:24:25 Carol Merton: Through your worship, we recently received a growth report through Hemson, which indicates how important it will be not to increase the tax burden on our citizens.

00:24:43 Carol Merton: Over the next five years, we will add four hundred and thirty households.

00:24:52 Carol Merton: The recommendations coming forward from city staff today to decrease the burden currently, and recognizing that our growth study has demonstrated that the base to support this cost is not going to be large over the next five years, I'm certainly willing to support the recommendations and make the motion as it's presented.

00:25:19 Ian Boddy: Here we go.

00:25:19 Ian Boddy: So the motion is there.

00:25:21 Ian Boddy: The recommendations as presented.

00:25:24 Ian Boddy: Discussion.

00:25:24 Ian Boddy: I see Councillor Hamley's hand has gone up on screen.

00:25:35 Brock Hamley: Thank you, Your Worship, and I. I understand that this is kind of an ongoing, or it's going to be an ongoing conversation, just about how we're funding this.

00:25:45 Brock Hamley: But right now, the way that this looks and feels, it's kind of like if I owned a business with Councilor Middlebro, and we owned a property together, and this property needed a ton of maintenance.

00:25:59 Brock Hamley: If I just threw up my hands, all of a sudden, in the air, and said, "You know what, Melanie?

00:26:04 Brock Hamley: Here you go.

00:26:05 Brock Hamley: You take my fifty percent and a couple hundred bucks a year.

00:26:09 Brock Hamley: Good luck."

00:26:10 Brock Hamley: You know, I think this proposal certainly affects Owen Sound and our residents the most, but folks shouldn't kid themselves.

00:26:18 Brock Hamley: There are significant outstanding financial issues with this proposal for all lower-tier municipalities in Grey County, as it stands.

00:26:27 Brock Hamley: And I just really hope that this pause gives our partners in other lower-tier municipalities the opportunity to see just how bad of a deal this is for all of our residents.

00:26:42 Brock Hamley: Good.

00:26:42 Brock Hamley: Thanks, others.

00:26:43 Brock Hamley: Councilor Middlebro.

00:26:43 Brock Hamley: Thank you.

00:26:43 Brock Hamley: Through you, Mayor.

00:26:47 Melanie Middlebro: So many comments and concerns on this.

00:26:52 Melanie Middlebro: The county abandoned the rehab of Gray Road Five because of cost concerns.

00:27:01 Melanie Middlebro: Do we know how much was in the capital budget for that?

00:27:04 Melanie Middlebro: We're looking it up right now.

00:27:39 Melanie Middlebro: I'm going to assume that wasn't included in the list that you provided of the 4.7 that had been deferred and 7.7 that had been erased.

00:27:48 Melanie Middlebro: Sorry.

00:27:48 Melanie Middlebro: Yes, that cost was 1.185 million.

00:27:49 SPEAKER_119: And what was the second half of your question?

00:27:50 SPEAKER_119: I apologize, I missed that part.

00:28:06 Melanie Middlebro: So that was not included.

00:28:07 Melanie Middlebro: You gave some figures.

00:28:09 Melanie Middlebro: My apologies.

00:28:10 Melanie Middlebro: All of my stuff got erased when they republished the.

00:28:13 Melanie Middlebro: I think it was 4.8 million, and capital projects were removed from Grey County's capital plan once this process started, and 7.8 million were deferred outside of the window, so that once the transfer took place, that these would be negated.

00:28:31 Melanie Middlebro: Was that 1.8 million included in those?

00:28:33 Melanie Middlebro: Eight million included in those figures.

00:28:35 Lara Widdifield: Through the mayor, yes, that was included.

00:28:37 Lara Widdifield: Yeah, in the eliminated number.

00:28:39 Lara Widdifield: Okay, thank you.

00:28:43 Melanie Middlebro: Have we obtained any sort of legal opinion on the risk that we would be undertaking in assuming these roads, especially Gray Road Five, which they were supposed to be doing assessments every three months because of the slope or whatever rotation is happening?

00:29:06 Melanie Middlebro: Have we gotten any sort of legal opinion?

00:29:08 Melanie Middlebro: Through the mayor, no, we haven't.

00:29:17 Lara Widdifield: This was really quite short notice, so we could now, but since this direction was given to allow the lower tiers more time to comment.

00:29:30 Lara Widdifield: We have not done that.

00:29:32 Melanie Middlebro: No. It also says in the actual draft agreement that the municipal lower tier municipality would be responsible for all land transfer tax.

00:29:46 Melanie Middlebro: Do we know how much that would be?

00:29:48 Melanie Middlebro: We don't have a total for that.

00:29:52 Lara Widdifield: We could.

00:29:56 Lara Widdifield: We, yeah.

00:29:56 Lara Widdifield: No. Sorry.

00:29:57 Lara Widdifield: We don't.

00:29:57 Lara Widdifield: We don't have that available.

00:30:00 Lara Widdifield: I also have a concern with the prorated first year.

00:30:07 Melanie Middlebro: I think that under no circumstances should we be accepting any sort of prorated first year.

00:30:15 Melanie Middlebro: It's a ten year agreement, and I'd be pushing for a ten full ten years of funding.

00:30:21 Melanie Middlebro: If they want to do this, then it starts January one, and we get the full ten years of payment.

00:30:27 Melanie Middlebro: Like this is ridiculous that they think that they can just pick a date and pro rate the amount of money.

00:30:33 Melanie Middlebro: The street lights have they been addressed in this process?

00:30:46 Melanie Middlebro: That we're fighting for coverage of the eleven street lights as well.

00:30:56 Ian Boddy: So the intersection or traffic lights to be clear, not just street lights, but intersection lights.

00:31:01 Ian Boddy: Yep.

00:31:01 Ian Boddy: Through the mayor, just for clarification.

00:31:06 Lara Widdifield: Yeah, the traffic signals is there's eleven set of traffic signals being transferred along with this street light.

00:31:14 Lara Widdifield: Street lights we already own.

00:31:15 Lara Widdifield: Sorry.

00:31:20 Melanie Middlebro: Yeah, I mean the the intersection, the eleven intersection lights, because if it says that they had intended on spending four hundred and sixty-seven thousand dollars in capital upgrades over the next ten years on these street lights, then we absolutely need to be compensated for that.

00:31:30 Melanie Middlebro: Hands down.

00:31:31 Melanie Middlebro: I want to draw attention to Attachment Four, page four, paragraph three, on the funding plan.

00:31:38 Brian Green: If I have it here, is this Attachment Four?

00:32:26 Melanie Middlebro: So, staff in this report—it's a county report—concluded that using replacement values from the asset management plan allows for a more equitable distribution of funding based on the assets being transferred.

00:32:35 Melanie Middlebro: In contrast, allocating urban transfer funding based on the ten-year plan would result in less balanced distribution, favoring municipalities with more county road work scheduled in their upcoming plans.

00:32:55 Melanie Middlebro: Additionally, this approach would disproportionately benefit municipalities with older infrastructure, as their roads require reconstruction in the next ten years, compared to those with newer infrastructure with needs ten plus years away.

00:33:05 Melanie Middlebro: Can I point out how crazy that statement is?

00:33:06 Melanie Middlebro: That they're basing this and saying that because we're we're getting roads that need immediate work because they're in disrepair—that that that would be an advantage to us.

00:33:08 Melanie Middlebro: So they're reversing it, and it it doesn't make any sense.

00:33:10 Melanie Middlebro: And I hope that we point that out.

00:33:28 Melanie Middlebro: That we're now being disadvantaged in in downloading eighty-seven million dollars worth of roads, not including the bridges, culverts, retaining walls, and eleven traffic signals, which probably puts us at one hundred and ten million dollars worth of infrastructure that is in disrepair.

00:33:37 Melanie Middlebro: The county has been negligent in not performing the proper assessments and condition reports.

00:33:39 Melanie Middlebro: I would ask that we would push for a minimum condition rating on all assets that are being transferred, and if it doesn't meet that minimum condition standard, then the county has to fund anything that was in their ten-year plan, and bring these assets up to a standard that we will accept.

00:33:50 Melanie Middlebro: Owen Sound residents are being completely disadvantaged in having to take over these assets, and in addition to that, we are now having to contribute to an increased county levy because they are uploading roads, rural roads from other municipalities that are in disrepair.

00:34:05 Melanie Middlebro: That they have then agreed to pay up to thirty six million dollars in repairs on roads from other municipalities.

00:34:24 Melanie Middlebro: So we're taking it twice, and it is completely unfair.

00:34:28 Melanie Middlebro: And under no circumstances can this council support any further movement in this agreement without coming to a better deal for the Owen Sound taxpayer.

00:34:39 Jon Farmer: Thanks, others.

00:34:40 Jon Farmer: John, through the mayor, the one of the points that the report makes is that. one of the additional operational costs is also the fact that if we have new intersections, we are then responsible for cleaning up crashes at those intersections.

00:34:59 Jon Farmer: What I guess, knowing that the police board recently got the updated annual traffic accidents and collisions reports, how many of the intersections that we're getting are also the intersections known sound with the highest number of accidents?

00:35:09 Jon Farmer: Through the mayor, Third Avenue East is one of our worst.

00:35:23 Lara Widdifield: Third Avenue East at Tenth Street is one of our worst intersections.

00:35:30 Lara Widdifield: Depending on how you sort of slice the the parameters, whether it's highest number or it's always up there.

00:35:36 Lara Widdifield: It's it's always in the top few, so that's a county road.

00:35:50 Lara Widdifield: As far as the others, I'm not sure which ones are.

00:35:53 Lara Widdifield: I don't think there are many.

00:35:55 Lara Widdifield: There's sticking out in my head, but definitely Third Avenue East is.

00:36:00 Jon Farmer: I'm also curious.

00:36:02 Jon Farmer: The reading through the reports from the county, it seems like there were a number of times when the direction was given to go back and negotiate with lower tier municipalities that would be affected.

00:36:14 Jon Farmer: I don't know whether this is a question for city staff or our county reps, but I guess if it's not too obvious of a question, what does negotiation mean in that sense?

00:36:28 Jon Farmer: Like I get the sense that from the report that mostly there was silence, and then we were being told what we were getting.

00:36:36 Jon Farmer: Was there an expectation at the county level that negotiation would include more of a discussion about what made sense, what didn't, what was present, what was missing for for necessary information?

00:36:46 Jon Farmer: I'll maybe answer that one.

00:36:47 Ian Boddy: Back in April of last year, we had a council meeting that I was ill, was at home.

00:36:52 Ian Boddy: Councilor Middlebrooke started to move to ask for a report, and I said, "No, you're premature," because it was our understanding that more information in negotiations was to take place with the city, not just waiting until February to get a report saying, "Here you go, this is what it is."

00:37:12 Ian Boddy: So, in our in our mind, in my mind, that negotiation, that discussion, that consulting didn't take place.

00:37:22 Jon Farmer: I'm also curious to go back to the section that Councilor Middlebrooke cited, and I I will confess that.

00:37:31 Jon Farmer: I read this report after toddler bedtime, and that was late, toddler bedtime two zero.

00:37:34 Jon Farmer: But that description of of how these things were being assessed, I'm I'm wondering if I could just get some more information because I I kind of assumed that this report was not that the report that was cited from back in two thousand and twenty four in September that they were highlighting the issues with the plan that seemed to me to be what we were getting on our desks in in this report now.

00:37:59 Jon Farmer: But admitting that I'm confused, could could staff just parse that for us to to better lay out the problem, like the the two options being presented here and what actually looks like what we're getting now?

00:38:14 Jon Farmer: Because the the funding over a ten year cycle makes me think that. or looks to me like the option B here in the paragraph that they highlight is a bad idea, but again, I reserve the right to be confused.

00:38:32 Lara Widdifield: Through the merit of Councillor Farmer, so option one is what Councillor Middledboro was talking about to essentially assume that every every asset is a minimum condition or or like fully new condition, whatever that whatever that established benchmark is going to be, and then you could because then you know that whoever is receiving that asset gets an entire life cycle out of it before it needs reinvestment, or you basically get to start fresh and you can do your sort of proactive reinvestment so that you can maximize that lifespan.

00:39:13 Lara Widdifield: The like option two. is essentially to carry on with the capital plan the way it was written, which also achieves sort of that same goal because theoretically you're reinvesting where where it needs to be, like where where you need to repair roads or where you need to reconstruct things or expand things.

00:39:32 Lara Widdifield: So you're you're putting the money where it needs to go.

00:39:36 Lara Widdifield: What they've done essentially is to try to equalize across the board per per meter per kilometer so that everybody gets the same amount based on what classification that road is one of one of the three urban rural and semi urban, with different values for each of those three things and then they just multiplied by the number of kilometers of two-lane road.

00:40:13 Lara Widdifield: I think it was for each each road type.

00:40:17 Lara Widdifield: So, assuming that everybody has new condition roads, that format is it makes perfect sense.

00:40:29 Lara Widdifield: But if you start to figure in where the lower tier that's receiving the roads needs to immediately reinvest, then it becomes less equitable because you're assuming excellent condition, but you're receiving in mediocre condition, for example.

00:40:55 Jon Farmer: Through the mayor, I assume that we're all on the same page and having major concerns with this proposal.

00:41:03 Jon Farmer: My impression is also that we don't actually get a say with whether this continues or whether we get to consent or accept things or not.

00:41:11 Jon Farmer: That the county will do what the county is going to.

00:41:14 Jon Farmer: I would hope that the intention around the county table was to provide a mutually beneficial transfer, and acknowledging that some places are going to upload roads only, and other folks are going to be in the position of Owen Sound.

00:41:35 Jon Farmer: Rather than Councillor Hamley's metaphor, I'm thinking more of this like the county has a whole bunch of dogs, and they're giving dogs to people, and it's fair because we're all getting the same amount of dog food and a voucher for the vet.

00:41:50 Jon Farmer: But some folks are getting like a Chihuahua puppy, and we're getting a five-year-old Great Dane, and that in that way, it is the needs are different.

00:41:58 Jon Farmer: But if the arrangement doesn't reflect that difference in need, then doing the calculation based on what is convenient to calculate with the information at hand, when there is not sufficient or appropriate information at hand, does not reflect best practice or organizational excellence.

00:42:15 Jon Farmer: Nor our theme from the Vision Twenty Fifty of mutually beneficial relationships.

00:42:19 Jon Farmer: So I'm happy to support the motion.

00:42:23 Jon Farmer: I'm also curious what we get to with the understanding that county staff will be with us coming up to for a conversation.

00:42:32 Jon Farmer: I'm curious what the intention of those delegations is, and to what extent we get to talk about any of this if we're not in fact in a negotiating position.

00:42:43 Jon Farmer: That last question to either county reps or staff.

00:42:46 Jon Farmer: Yeah, so I guess I can boil that down to: What's the point of the delegation if we don't actually get feedback, or to provide feedback that has an impact?

00:42:59 Ian Boddy: Let's get the delegation here, which will be at the next council meeting, which is next Monday regular time, and we'll have a discussion with them at that time about what we're doing.

00:43:09 Ian Boddy: Okay, Trevor, anything?

00:43:12 Ian Boddy: Thank you, Your Worship.

00:43:15 Travis Dodd: Watching the county council meeting from two weeks ago, there was a—I'll be honest—a feeling of there was a feeling.

00:43:28 Travis Dodd: I would say that county staff have come to a conclusion prior to being voted on by committee, and the reason I say that is there was a repeat.

00:43:43 Travis Dodd: From many members, multiple members of city or county staff were permitted without consent.

00:43:51 Travis Dodd: Okay, we're a partnership, and a partnership of our lower tier municipalities, we can do lots of things that we don't require consent.

00:44:00 Travis Dodd: But it's how do you want to leave the partnership of that county?

00:44:04 Travis Dodd: To me, when we think about the consultation, and I'll go to Councillor Farmer and to the mayor's comments, you know, eleven months for consultation to be received isn't a partnership.

00:44:20 Travis Dodd: And then said, actually, the committee, the task force, has actually passed that motion, so there was no consultation.

00:44:28 Travis Dodd: When we were talking about going to planning, we had three countywide meetings.

00:44:32 Travis Dodd: Everyone had an understanding what the county was planning to do.

00:44:37 Travis Dodd: What their objectives were.

00:44:39 Travis Dodd: They didn't have ideas on financials.

00:44:40 Travis Dodd: They didn't have ideas on anything, but they had all lower tier municipalities on one call to say this is what we're thinking.

00:44:49 Travis Dodd: We didn't receive that at all.

00:44:52 Travis Dodd: You had a PIC, and two people attended, and they're both in this room.

00:44:56 Travis Dodd: A public information space in Owen Sound.

00:44:57 Travis Dodd: There was nothing else.

00:44:58 Travis Dodd: There was no report.

00:45:03 Travis Dodd: There was no further, I'd say, negotiation of what they were looking for, and I just find that odd when we have something that already occurred in this term regarding the planning discussion.

00:45:18 Travis Dodd: It was very clear they wanted to be transparent.

00:45:20 Travis Dodd: There was a part about being partners, and we're working together, finding the best solution.

00:45:26 Travis Dodd: And what we've seen in that report that was passed by the task force doesn't seem like that's a partnership.

00:45:31 Travis Dodd: That seems like that's something.

00:45:33 Travis Dodd: It's a very easy win for the county.

00:45:36 Travis Dodd: You have a hill that's got a critical rating of fourteen that you've deferred twice.

00:45:42 Travis Dodd: Gray Road Five doesn't all of a sudden just magically end.

00:45:45 Travis Dodd: It just ends at the county or the city limits.

00:45:48 Travis Dodd: Gray Road Five becomes back into Georgian Bluffs.

00:45:51 Travis Dodd: It's magic.

00:45:52 Travis Dodd: I have a question about what is the true definition of a county road?

00:45:56 Travis Dodd: Historically, the county road was to get you to back to a provincial road.

00:46:02 Travis Dodd: So has that definition changed?

00:46:04 Travis Dodd: Because it goes from an interior now going to be an interior urban road back to a county road to get you to the province, provincial road.

00:46:11 Travis Dodd: So just just looking for clarity.

00:46:19 Travis Dodd: I do find it odd that Gray Road Five ends at the top of the cemetery hill.

00:46:21 Travis Dodd: And I just drove it.

00:46:22 Travis Dodd: It's amazing.

00:46:22 Travis Dodd: Never knew it could change that quickly.

00:46:24 Travis Dodd: I have concerns about the legal liability there, not even just the legal liability that someone's going to assume when there's an accident happening on Gray Road Five or Gray Road Fifteen, and the city's going to be named in that car accident.

00:46:36 Travis Dodd: Solely the county will now have their name written away from it because there's don't have any ownership in that piece of property, especially if we do a title transfer and all that piece.

00:46:44 Travis Dodd: So there's that component.

00:46:45 Travis Dodd: There's also the component that we're going to add to bridges, to our asset management plan as well as our insurance.

00:46:52 Travis Dodd: So what does that look like?

00:46:53 Travis Dodd: Those costs are coming.

00:46:55 Travis Dodd: I have concerns about the fact that we have a memorandum of understanding from two thousand, and I'm not sure if that was brought into your report.

00:47:03 Travis Dodd: Why the the city joined the county?

00:47:05 Travis Dodd: Marion Koepke was the clerk; she signed it.

00:47:10 Travis Dodd: Deputy Mayor's father was the warden; he signed it.

00:47:12 Travis Dodd: But it broke out in that period about what we were trying to do in Section H of that MOU says that recognizing the City of Owen Sound could be the only municipality in restructured county without the benefit of county roads within its boundaries.

00:47:26 Travis Dodd: The following is means of providing equity in the establishment of such arterial system.

00:47:32 Travis Dodd: So when we remove the county roads, go back, does that not change the equity was provided?

00:47:38 Travis Dodd: I don't know.

00:47:38 Travis Dodd: What's that agreement?

00:47:39 Travis Dodd: Do we have to relook at that agreement?

00:47:40 Travis Dodd: What's legal opinion on that agreement about why we joined the county 26 years ago?

00:47:49 Travis Dodd: Has anything changed?

00:47:50 Travis Dodd: Clearly, Section H has.

00:47:53 Travis Dodd: So I would say when we're talking about legal opinions, I'd like a legal opinion on what's that doing to the original agreement and why we joined the county 26 years ago.

00:48:01 Travis Dodd: I have a question with DCS.

00:48:04 Travis Dodd: I thought, and I should say this: I think the report was well written, great report.

00:48:09 Travis Dodd: The report speaks for itself on the financial components, but DCS legally, what can happen there?

00:48:15 Travis Dodd: Developers have provided funding with the expectation of an end result.

00:48:20 Travis Dodd: Who's paying that?

00:48:20 Travis Dodd: Is that now us?

00:48:21 Travis Dodd: Clearly.

00:48:24 Travis Dodd: So, what was the expectation before that agreement was signed?

00:48:28 Travis Dodd: I know that they can move, we can move where DCS go.

00:48:35 Travis Dodd: Just seems like it's a little bit of a wishy washy when you've already met with Skyline or whoever and said, "Yeah, we're going to do this," and now that culvert is going where?

00:48:45 Travis Dodd: Where's that roundabout?

00:48:46 Travis Dodd: Who's paying for that?

00:48:47 Travis Dodd: I can tell you, roundabout probably isn't going to happen anymore.

00:48:49 Travis Dodd: Probably just be back to a two-lane road.

00:48:52 Travis Dodd: But what's the expectation that was left with that developer?

00:48:56 Travis Dodd: So I have lots of concerns, more procedurally, and on those pieces there, I'd like to have a legal opinion on, and I think should be provided to the county.

00:49:05 Travis Dodd: And that's not even inclusive of everything else that everyone else has spoken about, including the financial components of it.

00:49:13 Travis Dodd: Three hundred thousand comes off our operating; it's a one percent increase for doing what?

00:49:17 Travis Dodd: Just because.

00:49:21 Travis Dodd: So it's great for the county to take on a responsibility of saying, "Hey, look at us."

00:49:25 Travis Dodd: Other municipalities are facing the same challenge when we have a road index that says our road is actually rated as whatever X, and theirs says it's up here, and we're saying it's down here.

00:49:35 Travis Dodd: I don't know.

00:49:35 Travis Dodd: Does Hanover know what they're taking?

00:49:37 Travis Dodd: Does Chatsworth know what they're truly taking?

00:49:41 Travis Dodd: Or is that going to be surprise after they send out their engineers and say, "Wait a second, one point five isn't going to do us anything."

00:49:47 Travis Dodd: Down in Blue Mountains is taking a bridge.

00:49:49 Travis Dodd: Do they know the assessment of that?

00:49:50 Travis Dodd: So I do think that there is some questions there about about it all.

00:49:55 Travis Dodd: I will also say when I hear county staff, who we are supposed to be equal from our in our positions of working together for the embetterment of Gray County residents, say permit without consent, well, what's next?

00:50:04 Travis Dodd: EMS is that not successful?

00:50:05 Travis Dodd: Is that going to be it?

00:50:06 Travis Dodd: And then what?

00:50:07 Travis Dodd: What's the other?

00:50:16 Travis Dodd: What's where else does it go?

00:50:20 Travis Dodd: If it's this part where you want to be a partner, we talk about economic development, all of the things the county does, and they we benefit from it, right?

00:50:28 Travis Dodd: We they they help us with court security costs, but as we all know in around this room, that is a county that should have been through the county funding from day one.

00:50:37 Travis Dodd: But but there is portions of that.

00:50:40 Travis Dodd: But when you're doing something without taking into account or the considerations of lower tier municipalities and the position it puts them in, especially providing assets that you know are in a critical level, I don't know how you think that's a partnership, personally.

00:50:59 Travis Dodd: That makes me question, you know, what's next when something doesn't become affordable for the county anymore.

00:51:07 Travis Dodd: It's easy for them to permit without consent.

00:51:08 Travis Dodd: I don't know.

00:51:09 Travis Dodd: So I think the report was fantastic.

00:51:11 Travis Dodd: I agree wholeheartedly with every single one of those recommendations.

00:51:19 Travis Dodd: I think it's inappropriate for council to argue the fact that you know what what is happening here.

00:51:21 Travis Dodd: In the end, who knows how the county will respond to that?

00:51:31 Travis Dodd: Hopefully, it at least provide some information about why the city is providing the feedback they are.

00:51:39 Travis Dodd: I think that's the best thing we can do.

00:51:41 Travis Dodd: But at this point, right now, this download is going to have a severe operational and capital consequence in Miss Valleyville Town for a very long time.

00:51:51 Travis Dodd: I think it's a it's a it's a big problem with with it's going to have some some cost here, and that's unfortunate.

00:51:58 Travis Dodd: That even knowing what they're doing and the cost that would do to their own county residents, it took eleven months to get a consultation.

00:52:06 Travis Dodd: I feel that's I think that's inappropriate.

00:52:08 Travis Dodd: So, anyways, those are my comments.

00:52:09 Travis Dodd: Thank you, Councilor Capkey.

00:52:09 Melanie Middlebro: Thank you, Worship.

00:52:10 Melanie Middlebro: I agree with the comments around the table.

00:52:17 Melanie Middlebro: I agree with the recommendation.

00:52:20 Melanie Middlebro: However, we also have to realize the amount of staffing that our municipality has to increase, probably equipment.

00:52:30 Melanie Middlebro: I don't know if those costs have been estimated or not, but it's certainly going to be a big hit for us. along with all the other things that are being downloaded, and I just I just don't see where they've actually done any negotiation with us.

00:52:39 Melanie Middlebro: It's just here it is, and and take it or leave it.

00:52:43 Melanie Middlebro: Thanks.

00:52:44 Melanie Middlebro: I'm going to go next.

00:52:46 Melanie Middlebro: That's okay.

00:52:48 Melanie Middlebro: Yeah, I'm going to go.

00:52:52 Melanie Middlebro: So, so Laura, I want to start with the development charges.

00:53:07 Ian Boddy: There would have been a study that would have been done for development charges that would look at potential works, capital works.

00:53:16 Ian Boddy: It'd be identified.

00:53:20 Ian Boddy: I believe some of our roads were on that development charge study, and one would assume that there is some money collected along the way in development from. on-site developers and developers in general that would have been earmarked for these projects.

00:53:30 Ian Boddy: Do we know anything about that?

00:53:31 Ian Boddy: Has that been offered?

00:53:32 Ian Boddy: Sure, Mr. Mayor.

00:53:45 Lara Widdifield: So the short answer is no, it hasn't been offered.

00:53:50 Lara Widdifield: The long answer, with a bit of an explanation, is the way development charges work is the the background study identifies all of the growth-related projects within a particular time horizon.

00:53:58 Lara Widdifield: All of those costs go into a bucket, and then that gets distributed amongst the development lands so that a calculated, like sort of prorated amount is figured out per hectare or whatever, or per building unit.

00:54:08 Lara Widdifield: I'm not sure how how those are done.

00:54:21 Lara Widdifield: Is it per building unit or per hectare?

00:54:29 Lara Widdifield: So, residential unit or per or per area of the building, that's all figured out, and and then the developers are charged that when they go to develop.

00:54:38 Lara Widdifield: So, while specific projects may not have like you you don't collect like money per project, it just goes into a big pot.

00:54:50 Lara Widdifield: But theoretically, any development that's happened in Grey County since the developments the since the background study was created would have been collecting money towards the value of whatever projects were identified within the City of Owen Sound's boundary.

00:55:08 Lara Widdifield: I don't think I'm misrepresenting that, am I?

00:55:10 Lara Widdifield: No. Okay.

00:55:11 Lara Widdifield: Yeah.

00:55:11 Lara Widdifield: Yeah.

00:55:11 Lara Widdifield: So yeah.

00:55:13 Ian Boddy: So to clarify, there is projects within Owen Sound that would have been identified in their background study.

00:55:18 Ian Boddy: There has. been money collected, put into a general pot, but none of that was offered or discussed with these downloads.

00:55:25 Ian Boddy: Correct?

00:55:26 Ian Boddy: Correct.

00:55:29 Ian Boddy: Okay, so they've had a capital plan at Grey County for roads for a number of years, like we all do.

00:55:36 Ian Boddy: Some of the projects within Onondaga were identified in that project and that capital plan.

00:55:44 Ian Boddy: Grey County is pretty good at collecting reserves and building reserves.

00:55:47 Ian Boddy: Was there any discussion about transferring any of the reserves to these capital projects that are going on with that should be going on within Onondaga?

00:55:56 Lara Widdifield: To Mr. Mayor, no. I could speculate that maybe they're using them towards funding this, but no, that hasn't been offered.

00:56:05 Lara Widdifield: Good.

00:56:06 Lara Widdifield: Thanks.

00:56:06 Lara Widdifield: I want to focus in specifically on one.

00:56:07 Lara Widdifield: I'm going to call.

00:56:10 Ian Boddy: Specifically on what I'm going to call the Cemetery Hill, because nobody knows what number five is, number nineteen, number Highway sixty-seven, whatever Cemetery Hill comes down between Harrison Park and the Cemetery.

00:56:25 Ian Boddy: I understand we've got a study on it, and is it called OSEM?

00:56:28 Ian Boddy: Can you explain what OSEM is?

00:56:32 Lara Widdifield: Sure, Mr. Mayor.

00:56:33 Lara Widdifield: OSEM is Ontario Structural Inspection Manual, and it's sort of it's a standard for inspecting the condition of structures that are related to well, basically anything that holds up human health and like life and safety.

00:56:48 Lara Widdifield: So retaining walls, bridges, the the and structural culverts.

00:57:00 Lara Widdifield: Oh yeah, structural culverts over three meters.

00:57:02 Lara Widdifield: That's yeah, same thing.

00:57:05 Lara Widdifield: So, it's a standard way to rate the condition of a structure like that.

00:57:13 Ian Boddy: So that's the safety condition of it.

00:57:15 Ian Boddy: I understand it's out of a hundred, and have we had a study done on the Cemetery Hill?

00:57:24 Ian Boddy: When was it done?

00:57:25 Ian Boddy: What was the rating?

00:57:28 Lara Widdifield: We had one done in two thousand and twenty-five, and it had a an condition index of fourteen.

00:57:35 Lara Widdifield: Fourteen out of a hundred.

00:57:37 Ian Boddy: So that is probably getting to be at the danger position.

00:57:41 Ian Boddy: I'm not going to put you under that spot.

00:57:44 Ian Boddy: I'm going to withdraw that question.

00:57:47 Ian Boddy: It is of big concern to us that that road has to be done soon.

00:57:56 Ian Boddy: That's maybe a better question.

00:57:57 Ian Boddy: The mayor.

00:57:57 Ian Boddy: Yes.

00:58:18 SPEAKER_004: To the mayor, yes, we we were going to do water main along that that stretch, but when the county's road reconstruction was deferred, we've obviously held off on our water main because we were waiting to see the structural condition of the road before we try to disturb it, trying to repair or replace our water main.

00:58:28 SPEAKER_004: We've got money reserves set aside for that water work, and we're ready to go.

00:58:30 SPEAKER_004: That's correct.

00:58:30 Ian Boddy: You said when that study or when that project—I think you used the word—was deferred.

00:58:33 Ian Boddy: When was it deferred?

00:59:13 Mason Bellamy: Through you, Mr. Mayor, the best we can figure here, Greywood Five had multiple sections that were deferred at different times.

00:59:22 Mason Bellamy: So, just for clarity, the hill section alone it was deferred in two thousand and twenty-five.

00:59:24 Mason Bellamy: There was other sections that were deferred earlier in the process as a whole, but specifically the hill we believe was deferred in two thousand and twenty-five.

00:59:26 Mason Bellamy: Sorry, in those other things that were deferred before, did they include part of the hill?

00:59:28 Mason Bellamy: Greywood Five was initially intended from Third Avenue straight up to the city limits in three different sections.

00:59:44 Ian Boddy: So, the section downtown was deferred in the two thousand and twenty-four budget, and the hill section and the above the hill section were deferred in the two thousand and twenty-five budget, county budget for clarification.

00:59:54 Ian Boddy: Okay, so we've had two or three years of deferred.

00:59:56 Ian Boddy: So we've had two or three years of deferral coming to this point.

00:59:57 Ian Boddy: Of here you go, it's at a rating of 14 out of 100.

00:59:59 Ian Boddy: Okay, I think think those are all my questions.

01:00:01 Ian Boddy: I was sitting here at this table between 2010 and 2014, not in the center chair, when this first came from the county, and I remember the discussion.

01:00:08 Ian Boddy: And the idea was that roads that are specifically of interest to the entire county and everybody in them should remain within the county, and others that are more local should be should be downloaded, passed on, however you want to word it.

01:00:27 Ian Boddy: Principle that makes sense to me.

01:00:30 Ian Boddy: We have a hospital that is a regional hospital that is on County Road Five, up Eighth Street East, that is being downloaded.

01:00:37 Ian Boddy: But what could be more of a regional importance than the regional hospital.

01:00:43 Ian Boddy: I know golf courses were in that list as being of interest.

01:00:47 Ian Boddy: Oddly enough, the Bayshore Community Center that puts three thousand people in, in you know two thousand and eleven, two thousand and twelve was right about the time the attack were going to the provincial finals, so there was people coming in from all over, and it was a center, you know even even more so.

01:01:02 Ian Boddy: But then a few years later, it comes out the study that County Road One within One Sound, being the Edis Sergeant Parkway out to the city limits, was not being downloaded, but other parts of County Road One all around Georgian Bluffs were being downloaded.

01:01:21 Ian Boddy: Seventeen B, which is Nichols Gully, and then going up to the old drive-in theater, which absolutely is duplicated by Highway Twenty Six going out through Sunset Strip, was on.

01:01:33 Ian Boddy: That strip was on the list to be downloaded.

01:01:37 Ian Boddy: Poof, those aren't anymore.

01:01:37 Ian Boddy: And it seems that every couple of years we come back and it's something different.

01:01:41 Ian Boddy: I can only speculate that if we were to approve, you know what?

01:01:47 Ian Boddy: I better shut up.

01:01:49 Ian Boddy: I'm going to bite my tongue here.

01:01:55 Ian Boddy: But it seems to me that without acknowledging what had been passed and approved by the Council of Grey County, that it changed and we approved other things without consideration of previous things, unless I'm dead wrong.

01:02:12 Ian Boddy: But it seems to me that it's been a moving target.

01:02:16 Ian Boddy: Certainly, the dollar value that is to come to us has been a moving target.

01:02:22 Ian Boddy: The dollar amounts in the report seem All the amounts in the report seem to be seems to be various things, and it doesn't feel I don't feel like we're getting the clear information that we need to be able to assess this and represent our taxpayers as best we can and as fairly as we can.

01:02:49 Ian Boddy: I certainly know that other municipalities, other councils at Grey County, their lower tiers are coming out of it okay, so they they'd love to get going a little bit sooner, and we may end up with what happens in other counties where it's look after your lower tier first, and the county is there just to see what you can get for your lower tier.

01:03:10 Ian Boddy: Grey County has traditionally not been like that.

01:03:13 Ian Boddy: There's maybe one example, but otherwise we've always tried to work at the county to be in the best interest of everybody's interest and everyone in Grey County.

01:03:21 Ian Boddy: Certainly, that Cemetery Hill is a road that's used by people in this room to come to work that live outside the city of Owen Sound.

01:03:24 Ian Boddy: It's a well-traveled Grey County road, bringing Grey County citizens into the city to go to work, which should be what the county wants to retain.

01:03:36 Ian Boddy: I'm not opposed to two of these downloads in principle.

01:03:42 Ian Boddy: I just think it's got to be really fair, and the money's got to be fair.

01:03:45 Ian Boddy: So I'm going to hand it to Scott, the chair of the committee at Grey County, to follow up.

01:03:52 Scott Greig: Well, I guess I can provide a broad perspective and response.

01:03:58 Scott Greig: First, Councillor Merton, you talked about timelines.

01:04:01 Scott Greig: I do recall this first approaching operations committee, probably 2015 as well from the county.

01:04:09 Scott Greig: This is something that I believe Dauphin County revisits every 15 years, pretty much on a continuum. 15 years, pretty much on a continuum, is road rationalization, reevaluating what roads make sense, going where, and they move them up, and they move them down.

01:04:27 Scott Greig: I think they're currently in the process of a net download of 38 kilometers.

01:04:32 Scott Greig: They originally started at 50, but this is always moving, so there is precedent in terms of evaluating these on a routine basis.

01:04:42 Scott Greig: I'm glad for some of the comments.

01:04:44 Scott Greig: I have all the 10-year capital plans right here, and I've got check marks against every project that's been accomplished at the county, and you know, kudos to the county.

01:04:53 Scott Greig: If I go through the 22 to 30, 23 to 32 10-year plan, their success rate is very strong, and roads that haven't been completed, like 18, Grey Road 19, and bordering Simcoe County, is an extremely complex and multifaceted project involving Collingwood, Town of Grey, Town of Blue Mountain, Simcoe County.

01:05:11 Scott Greig: There are some that are very complex, and they continue just to bump along.

01:05:16 Scott Greig: But I'm glad that we've had some discussion against ones like Grey Road Five, which effectively is a little outside of the norm here in the ten-year capital plan, in terms of what's got done, what hasn't got done.

01:05:28 Scott Greig: Certainly, we're not going to entertain doing Grey Road Five when we're doing Ninth Avenue East in the year 2025 and 2026.

01:05:37 Scott Greig: You're not for a second going to shut down the two roadways from the south coming into your into the community.

01:05:45 Scott Greig: So you're going to stagger it a little bit, and that's a road with a preeminent concern around this table.

01:05:54 Scott Greig: Certainly, I can look.

01:05:55 Scott Greig: We had the police report last March came through council.

01:06:00 Scott Greig: One hundred and fourteen incidents.

01:06:08 Scott Greig: Quick count was five of those twenty intersection locations were county roads.

01:06:13 Scott Greig: That's twenty-eight of one hundred and fourteen incidents from that report that went to council last March/April.

01:06:21 Scott Greig: So there is there's a lot of really good information in the report.

01:06:23 Scott Greig: I do have a couple questions.

01:06:26 Scott Greig: We've talked about DCs.

01:06:28 Scott Greig: Are there any other fees that have been collected on agreements with developers that operate outside of formal DCs?

01:06:36 Scott Greig: Because we've had DCs.

01:06:38 Scott Greig: It's not contemplated in the report that have been waived by council over the last few years.

01:06:44 Scott Greig: So what's the impact of yeah?

01:06:46 Scott Greig: We have a DC bylaw and it's there to collect, but once we waive those fees, is that relevant to some of the conversations?

01:06:56 Scott Greig: Relevant to some of the conversation we've had, or do we have a site plan agreement in place for like the culvert where the county had committed to paying for at Thirty Second Street?

01:07:05 Scott Greig: So, there's my first question: Are there ancillary agreements in place outside of DCs?

01:07:11 Pam Coulter: Through you, Your Worship, from time to time, when we're working on a development that includes a county road like SkyDev or like the Bruce Great Catholic School site, there would be servicing agreements for those offsite works.

01:07:25 Pam Coulter: From time to time, those include either separate agreements between the developer and the county, or a tripartite agreement with the developer, city, and the county.

01:07:34 Pam Coulter: But so there may be an agreement under the Planning Act relating to those types of projects.

01:07:40 Pam Coulter: The culvert example is a great example.

01:07:45 Scott Greig: So I think moving forward, certainly, we'll continue to have those conversations and speak to any of those formal agreements where funds are set aside for contemplation in terms of how those get transferred, how those get protected, utilized, etc. We have some boundary roads right now with Meaford.

01:08:05 Scott Greig: The report didn't touch upon the extension of Grey Road Five.

01:08:09 Scott Greig: If that were to happen, the boundary road situation on Superior Street and then going north, shared with Meaford.

01:08:17 Scott Greig: Do staff wish to comment on that or what conversations do you anticipate having in the future on that from Eighth Street to Sixteenth Street?

01:08:30 Lara Widdifield: Through the mayor to Deputy Mayor Greig, the boundary road with Meaford, Twenty-Eighth Avenue, is that the one we're talking about?

01:08:42 Lara Widdifield: Yes.

01:08:43 Lara Widdifield: Okay.

01:08:58 Lara Widdifield: So it wasn't contemplated in the transportation master plan, but when it's come up through the development conversations, what we've talked about is if it requires urbanization, that it would only be on one side potentially.

01:09:07 Lara Widdifield: Like so, we have thought about that because this has been mentioned, as I noted, a few times during conversations like with developers and the county staff at the same time.

01:09:19 Scott Greig: Okay.

01:09:20 Scott Greig: Thanks.

01:09:20 Scott Greig: And I guess I can circle back to it's still a contemplation in that master transportation plan.

01:09:28 Scott Greig: The mayor mentioned Gray Road One, Gray Road Seventeen B. There were roadways like that that could be downstream that the county council of the day does revisit.

01:09:38 Scott Greig: It's just not a component of what's going on right now.

01:09:40 Scott Greig: There, there is a component we're talking about.

01:09:46 Scott Greig: We're representing our residents here.

01:09:49 Scott Greig: That's what makes the job a challenge at the county.

01:09:53 Scott Greig: And I'm going to note there's one particular report that's not included, which is the roads rationalization report, and what's going up and what's going down.

01:10:04 Scott Greig: Because at the county, our responsibility has been noted as for all residents of Grey County in terms of moving people and goods.

01:10:13 Scott Greig: I think it's actually within four kilometers of large generators, so aggregate manufacturing and similar entities.

01:10:23 Scott Greig: That's where the county endeavours to have a road network in place to facilitate the types of loads and traffic that's required.

01:10:35 Scott Greig: So there's a big difference between when we're sitting up the county.

01:10:39 Scott Greig: There's a big difference between the type of traffic that is going past the Bayshore Community Center or sitting in front of the Home Hardware in Fletcher's Corn, watching lumber trucks and grain trucks and fuel tankers go by, and the impact on the road network is entirely different.

01:10:57 Scott Greig: I think the old calculation used to be a thousand vehicles every tractor trailer in terms of impact on your roads.

01:11:06 Scott Greig: We have actually last autumn I was at a tour of Bruce Power.

01:11:10 Scott Greig: Sat sat had lunch with a senior administrator from Georgian College.

01:11:15 Scott Greig: How did you get here today?

01:11:16 Scott Greig: Maps took her on this gravel side road and equated.

01:11:20 Scott Greig: She wondered where in the world she was going, and I said, "Did it have three dilapidated bridges on it?"

01:11:27 Scott Greig: And that seemed to yeah, that was the road I was on.

01:11:31 Scott Greig: That road alone is about forty million dollars in terms of the upload.

01:11:36 Scott Greig: But if people are using that road, from the county perspective, that's what we're endeavoring to do.

01:11:42 Scott Greig: Is we're not looking to create winners and create losers.

01:11:47 Scott Greig: We're looking to make things safer, and create a road network that works.

01:11:52 Scott Greig: And on that same trip, when I was coming home at two in the afternoon, I passed Concession Five, George and Bluffs, Gray Road sixteen east of Katy, where there was about eight vehicles backed up on the southern direction of travel flow.

01:12:07 Scott Greig: This is an intersection that has seen at least seven deaths in the last I don't know twenty approximate years.

01:12:14 Scott Greig: So there is a responsibility at a ten thousand foot level to ensure that we have a road network in place that is working for what and where people are traveling to.

01:12:27 Scott Greig: So, we have a great report here talking about the impact to urban's, but there is a parallel or an ancillary component to this, which is the road rationalization piece, and they are working together.

01:12:41 Scott Greig: There are some big winners.

01:12:44 Scott Greig: There probably are more losers, but some of that losing is constituted upon creating a county road is a much larger expense than a local road.

01:12:55 Scott Greig: That's the nature of the road.

01:12:57 Scott Greig: It's more expensive to construct.

01:12:59 Scott Greig: It's more expensive to maintain that level of service in some of these municipalities.

01:13:05 Scott Greig: So, if we weren't doing anything, that Concession Twelve in West Gray, or the road that's east of Chesley, these wouldn't be changing, but it's not enhancing the level of safety, and lower tier municipalities get to maintain a lower level of service and a lower cost of ongoing construction than what the county has to entertain if we upload those.

01:13:31 Scott Greig: So that commitment right now is what is before the committee, and so far council has endorsed both of those projects moving together in harmony.

01:13:42 Scott Greig: There's been some really good questions.

01:13:44 Scott Greig: I was at the Town of Blue Mountains this morning.

01:13:47 Scott Greig: County staff presented to their council for the first presentations.

01:13:53 Scott Greig: There'll be a great opportunity next Monday night as well to ask some of those questions again to county staff for follow up.

01:14:00 Scott Greig: We have this was I think the impetus.

01:14:03 Scott Greig: This is what we were hoping for when we had that meeting a month ago, saying, "Hold on, we haven't had that level of communication with lower tier municipal partners that we've been wanting and we thought we were going to get."

01:14:15 Scott Greig: And this is the report.

01:14:17 Scott Greig: This is the meeting.

01:14:19 Scott Greig: Next Monday night is another meeting to help give the committee, and well, I guess it'll go right to council, but to help provide any discrepancies and even a discrepancy such as the county says it's fourteen point nine four.

01:14:32 Scott Greig: Our report indicates it's a little bit more than that.

01:14:36 Scott Greig: Our report indicates we have two point seven nine lanes of three lane traffic.

01:14:42 Scott Greig: What are those?

01:14:43 Scott Greig: There's also a county comment where, if this is parking, then parking is not part of the calculation.

01:14:49 Scott Greig: So there are unresolved components here that we need to work out and make sure that's a hundred percent.

01:14:57 Scott Greig: And make sure that it's one hundred percent that it's there's a level of fairness.

01:15:00 Scott Greig: I'm glad Councillor Dodd mentioned the memo, the memorandum from like twenty six years ago.

01:15:07 Scott Greig: That was a big undertaking, and it came down.

01:15:10 Scott Greig: It was predicated the the city residents provide about nine point eight million dollars of tax to the county for expenditure in a breadth of different ways.

01:15:21 Scott Greig: So what is fair to the city residents in exchange for that level of assessment that is going up?

01:15:26 Scott Greig: And that was the conversation that was had twenty six years ago.

01:15:30 Scott Greig: What is fair for the residents for the City of Owen Sound in exchange for that level of taxation that was going to funnel up at the time?

01:15:38 Scott Greig: So certainly appreciative of the comments.

01:15:42 Scott Greig: I have a little bit of concern with recommendation.

01:15:46 Scott Greig: The bullet, the second bullet. that I'm a little concerned.

01:15:53 Scott Greig: I'm not certain.

01:15:54 Scott Greig: Just to this point, committee and county council has not entertained getting approvals from every lower tier council, and I don't think maybe it's appropriate that we are telling the task force perhaps what or what not to do.

01:16:14 Scott Greig: I'm hopeful that for the most part, it's information and concerns that are going that maybe haven't been considered that we need to consider.

01:16:22 Scott Greig: But just the language in that has gives me a little bit of concern.

01:16:28 Ian Boddy: I just note on that at number two it says request, so it isn't telling them what to do.

01:16:33 Ian Boddy: It's a request, and you'll recall that I tabled the motion, agreed county, so that it kept all the options open.

01:16:41 Ian Boddy: If it wants to go back, I'm going to ask you.

01:16:43 Ian Boddy: Want to go back?

01:16:44 Ian Boddy: I'm going to ask you one more thing.

01:16:48 Ian Boddy: If you can clarify, there is a deadline of July six that nobody's asked me about that I assumed was going to come up.

01:16:51 Scott Greig: If you want to fill us in on that, yes, I'm glad you did because there's a part there that we are not actually that impacted by.

01:17:03 Scott Greig: But the level of municipal address changing that could occur with this, in preparation for the pending election in October, July six is effectively the latest date that the road exchanges could occur this year.

01:17:20 Scott Greig: That said, and the subsequent date is to allow for the completion of road projects because it doesn't it does not make sense to transfer responsibility for a road that is currently undergoing reconstruction.

01:17:32 Scott Greig: So hence the two dates.

01:17:33 Scott Greig: But July six was the latest date that it could be accomplished this year, providing proper timelines for the election.

01:17:46 Scott Greig: Early reports, though, did indicate two thousand and twenty-seven as a timeline when this could occur.

01:17:53 Scott Greig: The very first action by council was to remove it from the two thousand and twenty-five budget consideration, and then it went into the twenty-six.

01:18:01 Scott Greig: So the timelines are fluid, but right now that July six was predicated on the latest it could be preparing for the upcoming election.

01:18:10 Ian Boddy: Thank you, Councillor Farmer.

01:18:11 Ian Boddy: Had to stand up, and Councillor going that way.

01:18:19 Ian Boddy: So we're going into the second round here, just to be clear.

01:18:23 Jon Farmer: Thank you, through the Mayor.

01:18:26 Jon Farmer: Questions inspired by the conversation.

01:18:28 Jon Farmer: Yeah, why this year?

01:18:29 Jon Farmer: Seeing that, and maybe this is to the Deputy Mayor.

01:18:33 Jon Farmer: The timeline certainly from this chair feels very short.

01:18:38 Jon Farmer: The pile of unanswered questions seems high, and I'm curious when initial reports going back through and looking to reports from two thousand and twenty-four.

01:18:51 Jon Farmer: The thought was maybe that this was happening in two thousand and twenty-five, and the project has been kicked down the line of calendars.

01:19:00 Jon Farmer: If this feels hasty to lower tier municipalities, was there a particular reason that this needed to be two thousand and twenty-six, or was this just when the fire happened to be in the belly of the project?

01:19:19 Scott Greig: You're correct.

01:19:19 Scott Greig: So early discussions had contemplated like two thousand and twenty-five, but needed budget approval, and that budget allocations were not approved by County Council, hence kicking it back.

01:19:29 Scott Greig: We went then from a meeting early in two thousand twenty-five to just this latest meeting in February six or February of this year, where we saw those dates for the first time.

01:19:39 Scott Greig: So there hadn't been any notice before that February meeting of the July six.

01:19:57 SPEAKER_020: That's fairly new information for everyone to see those formal dates established and to be considered then for two thousand twenty-six because there was a budget allocation provided by County Council to support the initiative.

01:20:06 SPEAKER_020: So that's the date that staff move forward with that we first saw a month ago.

01:20:08 Jon Farmer: And trying to get it done this council term, so artificial deadline basically.

01:20:12 Jon Farmer: But can you two?

01:20:14 Jon Farmer: Just go.

01:20:15 Jon Farmer: Okay.

01:20:16 Jon Farmer: So the Deputy Mayor made a comment about it being very different to have a county road for the weight and requirements of that for the amount of traffic.

01:20:25 Jon Farmer: I note that the comparison was county road to local road, but the report points out that there are within Owen Sound we have arterial and collector and local roads, and I'm curious if staff can speak to the difference in the construction and planning requirements of an arterial road within the city limits compared to a regular county road cross section.

01:20:52 Lara Widdifield: Through the Mayor to Councillor Farmer, so arterial roads are highest classification of road.

01:20:59 Lara Widdifield: Their primary purpose is to convey traffic as you know as efficiently as possible.

01:21:07 Lara Widdifield: So we've got limited direct access, typically, so you generally don't have a whole bunch of residential driveways onto an arterial road, at least try not to.

01:21:19 Lara Widdifield: And though they're generally multi-lane, so in our case, I think most of them are two lanes each way for so four lanes total.

01:21:32 Lara Widdifield: Most of our arterial roads tend to have traffic signals at some point along their length.

01:21:37 Lara Widdifield: They may end up fading off as they sort of reach the periphery of the city, and they are typically have a more robust pavement structure and granular thickness so that they can carry heavy truck traffic.

01:21:52 Lara Widdifield: They're often the preferable route for trucks.

01:21:55 Lara Widdifield: They won't generally be signed as no trucks allowed, although they may or may not still have load restrictions in the spring.

01:22:04 Jon Farmer: With that understanding, it strikes me that for Owen Sound in particular, the cost to maintain our arterial roads is going to be equivalent to maintaining the general county road.

01:22:17 Jon Farmer: I'm also grateful that Councillor Dodd brought up the MLU and the return to the county 25 26 years ago.

01:22:24 Jon Farmer: At the time, obviously, the cost and benefit weighed in favor of the benefit.

01:22:28 Jon Farmer: I wonder how that calculation would be made now if we're assuming upwards of 70 million dollars in direct capital liability and more than 300 thousand dollars a year in additional operational cost.

01:22:42 Jon Farmer: And I don't want to presuppose that answer.

01:22:45 Jon Farmer: I'm also curious what the process would even be to make that calculation, knowing that the county's proposal has a very tight timeline and that that's a big question of what are the pros and cons.

01:22:57 Jon Farmer: If we are sitting here specifically thinking about what our friends and neighbors pay in their taxes and what they get back for those various services?

01:23:07 Jon Farmer: If we're not seeing a substantial proposal that matches that historical approach of it's got to be equitable across the county, our staff in a position to speak to how that calculation might be made, the pro and con of or the cost and benefit of county membership versus not.

01:23:27 Jon Farmer: If we're facing a sea change in the nature of that relationship, I'm seeing some heads kind of shaking.

01:23:39 Tim Simmonds: No, just through you, Mayor, to Councillor Frimer.

01:23:43 Tim Simmonds: At this time, no, we'd be in no position to make that calculation.

01:23:46 Tim Simmonds: So I think, Councillor Merton, I promise.

01:23:50 Carol Merton: Through you, Mayor, I want to go back to the comment about election that Deputy Mayor had made earlier today.

01:24:00 Carol Merton: I did speak with our Clerk because I do have concerns about this happening within the election year.

01:24:08 Carol Merton: Although the impact may not be so great on Owen Sound itself, as Councillor Hamley mentioned earlier in the meeting, there's an impact throughout other municipalities.

01:24:21 Carol Merton: When I looked up what would the impact be, municipal election results can be challenged if a municipality transfers roads, excuse me, and changes addresses, particularly if these actions, excuse me, result in voter confusion, incorrect voters lists, or disenfranchisement.

01:24:45 Carol Merton: We know that there's been concerns over the last election phase or two that voter turnout is of concern, and voter confusion may lend itself to a risk of reduction because of disenfranchisement.

01:25:02 Carol Merton: Any election can be challenged, even if one address list is not accurate, and a person does not feel or does not exercise their right to vote.

01:25:16 Carol Merton: I think this is a really important consideration around the whole discussion around timing, and I think we need to recognize in an election year may have some unanticipated, unintended consequences.

01:25:34 Carol Merton: Thank you.

01:25:37 Scott Greig: Go ahead.

01:25:39 Scott Greig: Just further to that, there's about three hundred approximate civic addresses which would need changed, and I think you will hear next Monday if you ask that same question.

01:25:49 Scott Greig: County staff have committed to literally visiting on a personalized basis, driveway by driveway, to ensure that everyone is informed of the changes as they should be, and that costs associated would be covered.

01:26:04 Scott Greig: So if you had a trucking company in your articles of incorporation, currently this as your address, and you're getting a new address, you're going to have legal fees incurred subsequent to that, and we don't feel that those individuals would be should be put out financially that way.

01:26:25 Ian Boddy: Maybe Councillor Hamley, anything else?

01:26:28 Ian Boddy: He's shaking his head.

01:26:29 Ian Boddy: No. Yeah.

01:26:30 Ian Boddy: Good.

01:26:31 Ian Boddy: I'll maybe call the question, which was an hour ago.

01:26:35 Ian Boddy: I think Travis's motion, Carol's motion, with regard to the recommendations that are on the screen.

01:26:44 Ian Boddy: All in favor.

01:26:46 Ian Boddy: That is carried.

01:26:47 Ian Boddy: Nothing else.

01:26:49 Ian Boddy: Councillor Dodd.

01:26:51 Travis Dodd: Thank you, Worship, and through you, I would like to add a secondary motion, if we can, asking for a legal opinion regarding the MOU for when the city originally joined the county.

01:27:03 Travis Dodd: Just taking a look at that of how everything's been modified from then from them.

01:27:08 Travis Dodd: The use of DCs, as well as I'll include Councillor Middlebrooks' discussion about any liability assumption.

01:27:17 Travis Dodd: Those were with.

01:27:21 Ian Boddy: Good.

01:27:23 Ian Boddy: Yep.

01:27:28 Ian Boddy: Everybody understands that motion.

01:27:30 Ian Boddy: Don't need to discuss.

01:27:31 Ian Boddy: Call the question.

01:27:31 Ian Boddy: All in favor?

01:27:33 Ian Boddy: And that is carried.

01:27:34 Ian Boddy: I think there is one opposed, but carried.

01:27:42 Ian Boddy: Do we?

01:27:43 Ian Boddy: No, we don't need any more motions.

01:27:45 Ian Boddy: So, just motion that the committee of the whole rise and report.

01:27:51 Ian Boddy: Moved by myself, that the committee of the whole rise and report.

01:27:55 Ian Boddy: All in favor?

01:27:56 Ian Boddy: That is carried.

01:27:57 Ian Boddy: So, back in formal session.

01:27:58 Ian Boddy: Motion to adopt proceedings in committee of the whole.

01:28:02 Jon Farmer: Moved by myself, seconded by Deputy Mayor Greig, that the action taken committee of the whole in considering reports of city staff be confirmed by this council.

01:28:10 Jon Farmer: All in favor?

01:28:11 Jon Farmer: That is carried.

01:28:12 Jon Farmer: That includes Councillor Hamley on screen.

01:28:15 Jon Farmer: Number seven bylaw.

01:28:18 Jon Farmer: Moved by myself, seconded by Deputy Mayor Greig, that Bylaw Number 2026-018, being the Bylaw to confirm the proceedings of today's meeting, be passed and enacted.

01:28:30 Ian Boddy: And all in favor?

01:28:32 Ian Boddy: That is carried.

01:28:34 Ian Boddy: That completes our business for today.

01:28:36 Ian Boddy: It is now 3:30 p.m.

01:28:37 Ian Boddy: Thanks for coming in.