Conclusions

The cost of service delivery in Owen Sound is $11 million more than the average of the three primary comparators in the study group. This accounts for Owen Sound taxes being $10.5 million more than the other municipalities in the study group. What makes this situation worse is that Owen Sound residents can least afford these high taxes given that high taxes drive high rents. Half of Owen Sound households have less than $1,096 per week to house, clothe and feed their families. Keep in mind Owen Sound’s median after-tax income of $57,600 is significantly below the average municipality in the study group.

The facts suggest that one possible reason for the excessive growth in the cost of service delivery is that successive part-time Councils have, on a balance of probabilities, accepted staff recommendations for the expansion of the workforce and growth in expenses. But who can blame members of council? They are subjected to powerful, marketing campaigns that include numbers and persuasive statements that members of council have no way of verifying; even if they had the time. This is because public administrative staff’s most powerful tool is the control of information. For this reason, often members of council have little choice but to accept the information staff presents as being accurate and factual. However, as we pointed out in in this report, this is not always the case. As you may recall the workforce numbers the city manager presented, at the July 17th Service Review, were not in agreement with the official records in the Financial Information Returns and the numbers presented in the budget books cannot always be verified by the official Financial Information Returns or even Owen Sound’s own published organization charts.

The Root of the Overstaffing Problem
I believe that the root cause of overstaffing is the city’s propensity to solve workload challenges by adding new positions. Within municipal administrations and the public service in general, there is a natural tendency for managers to grow the workforce, partially driven by a desire to build empires and grow silos. In municipal administrations the only check on this is the municipal Council. However, a part-time council is poorly equipped to challenge a well-thought-out staff argument for just one more position. Most members of council have significant time demands from their jobs and families that limit the time they have to review large volumes of material. As a result sometimes it’s just easier to trust that staff has the best interest of the community in mind, as opposed to the best interest of the Administration.

The fact is, that the larger the budget, the greater the financial discretion there is to find money for non-essential projects – like marketing materials. As the poorest municipality in the study group the Owen Sound Administration needs to practice the art of ‘stretching a dollar’. Instead, what they seem to be doing which is analogous to buying a second car when you can barely afford to make the payments on the one you’re driving. Perhaps they can learn something about ‘stretching a dollar’ from those who are struggling with an after-tax household income of only $57,600.