Reducing Costs while Maintaining all Current Services

Council can do it if they consider all ideas

I read the mayor’s response to the questions posed to him by the Editor of the OwenSoundCurrent.com regarding my research paper. First of all I have to say that I’m a little jealous. He took the time to give the Owen Sound Current Editor a comprehensive response in only four days. I’ve been waiting 7 weeks and he still hasn’t acknowledged receipt of my paper. It would appear that the mayor has changed his mind about considering all ideas as he expressed in 2014 when he was running for mayor for the first time.

First of all, it’s also important to keep in mind that my report is a snapshot of what existed in 2021. If the city has made progress since 2021, then that’s good news. However residents won’t have any ability to measure this progress until the Fall of 2024 when the 2023 Audited Financial Statements are released to the public. My research was based on the latest reliable records available to the public. Owen Sound’s 2022 Audited Financial Statements were only made available to the public on 20 Dec 2023 and the 2023 BMA Report was only made available earlier that month.

The mayor correctly points out a positive takeaway from the 2023 BMA Report. That is that there has been improvement on the city’s ranking on taxes per capital among other municipalities. So what does that actually mean? Well it just means that in 2022 Owen Sound didn’t increase taxes as much as other Ontario municipalities which include many single tier municipalities which have greater responsibilities than Owen Sound as a lower tier municipality. However, this is indeed good news because it shows that Owen Sound is slowing the rate of taxes growth.

The reality is that although it good that taxes didn’t go up as much as others, it’s still a hit in the taxpayer’s pocketbook. The 2022 BMA report informs us that in 2021 the tax levy per capita was $1824 while the 2023 BMA report tells us that in 2022 the tax levy per capita was $1850. Now from the taxpayer’s perspective we each had to pay $26 more in 2022 than we paid in 2021 – that's Tax Growth!

I take issue with his assertion that we need to cut important services in order to reverse the trend of annual tax increases. If he had taken the time to read my report, he would have read 14 different actions that Council can take to reverse the trend without cutting any services. We just need do a few things differently by implementing the 14 solutions I outlined in my report. Many of these can be rolled out fairly quickly. For example, creating an Ancillary Business Department, expanding Shared Services, uploading the Art Gallery to the County and reducing Economic Development spend, are relativity easy ones to get off the ground with minimal pain. However, Council’s apparent lack of interest in both my report and the solutions offered is puzzling given the mayor’s assertion that he wants to, “give citizens the lowest possible required taxes to provide service at the best possible value”. You would think that Council would want to fully explore all potential recommendations and not just the ones that come with a $108,000 price tag.

Although a whole day was set aside to review the proposed 2024 budget they really on spent a little over 2 hours discussing the particulars of the budget. That is just not enough time to fairly evaluate the tax increases proposed by staff. Click this link to email all members of council and tell them to: SEND THE 2024 BUDGET BACK.