Introduction

Twenty years ago I spent a great deal of time researching the complexities of the 14 municipal governments in the Greater Victoria area in British Columbia. This work was part of my studies at Royal Roads University that led to a Master’s Degree in Business Administration. (MBA). This research opened my eyes to how some municipal governments could be so grossly inefficient right next door to municipalities that were providing similar services at a fraction of the cost. During my research I observed an inverse correlation between the financial health of a municipality and the degree of influence that the senior administrator exercised over Council’s decisions. Municipal councils showing strong, collaborative leadership tended to be more successful than others, particularly in the area of economic development. Those that were more passive and regularly deferred to their senior administrator were almost always identified as being bureaucratic and inefficient.

The best examples of this are the municipalities of Colwood and Langford. In 1986 they both had similar populations of approximately 14,000. Today Colwood has a population of 18,961 and Langford has a population of 46,584. The primary difference in these two municipalities was that Langford had a small Council of five that exercised strong collaborative leadership giving clear direction to the city Administration. Colwood, on the other hand had a Council of nine and often deferred to the CAO for guidance. Langford also had a strong mayor who was able to build a cohesive team after each election. He was so successful at team building that he served as the city’s mayor for 30 years and ran unopposed in most elections.

(Owen Sound’s population in 1986 was 19,805 or 1,807 residents less than we have today)

I returned to my home town, Owen Sound, upon my retirement and immediately began to see the same municipal disparities in this region. For example, Owen Sound’s 2020 expenses were in the order of $52 million1 while next door the municipality of Georgian Bluffs expenses were only in the order of $13 million2. Although some of this disparity could be accounted for by the difference in population the magnitude of the disparity just didn’t justify the huge difference in spending. Looking a little further away, I discovered the community of Strathroy-Caradoc that had a slightly greater population of 23,871, spent only $28 million3 to provide a wide variety of services to its residents. This was nearly half of what Owen Sound spent to provide similar services to a population of only 21,612. Why was this?

Encouraged by the availability of a provincial grant, the city was prompted to commission a Toronto firm to conduct an independent review of its service delivery model. Everyone was expecting the consultant to deliver some clear advice on improving services and reducing the cost of service delivery. However after waiting 14 months for the final consultant report everyone was extremely disappointed at both the $108,000 cost of the study and with its failure to deliver anything concrete4. As one councilor succinctly put her frustrations in her only question: “Where’s the Meat?”. The report stated the need to redesign the organization but failed to explain why, or how this should be done. As another councilor put it they were expecting the $108,000 report to tell them: “What is someone else doing that’s better than us? …. What are the best practices … the identification of opportunities. … we already knew we have serious taxation challenges. … we were expecting solutions.” Another councilor asked how, Belleville, a single tier municipality of 47,000, could possibly be a fair comparator to Owen Sound, a lower tier municipality of only 21,000. The response echoed the report’s vague and confusing style. She was told that selecting comparator municipalities “was more of an art than a science” and that they relied heavily on “staff input” to select the comparators. In attempting to answer this one question the consultant explicitly told us what some had suspected. This $108,000 study was really not “independent”. Staff played a significant role in helping to select the comparator municipalities and by doing so not only eroded the independence of the study but invalidated the results by selecting single tier municipalities such as Belleville.

The problem, as we found out, was not that the consultant failed to deliver the answers that Council was seeking, but rather the city manager held on to “the meat” and instructed the consultants to limit their presentation to a high-level overview. The city manager told members of council that he held back the bulk of the consultant’s deliverable so it could be massaged and “interpreted” by staff before being presented to Council. This is reflected in the minutes of the meeting. “the City Manager advised that MNP has provided some high-level business analysis on the recommendations; however, it is a consultant's viewpoint and report, and staff need to take this information and analyze it further” 50 Minutes of April 17th Meeting.

A consultants viewpoint! – in other words it doesn’t agree with “our viewpoint” and how we do things at Owen Sound city hall. The city manager implies that a consultant’s-viewpoint is somehow less valuable than the staff’s viewpoint and shouldn’t be considered by members of Council without first having staff interpret it for them. It makes you wonder why city hall spends taxpayer’s money on consultants if they don’t value their opinions.

My objective in doing this research was to see for myself just how Owen Sound compares to similar municipalities. From my review of MNP’s work, I believe they fell short in this area. In doing my own research, it was my hope to identify areas for improvement by contrasting Owen Sound’s policies, procedures and service delivery methods with those employed by the other municipal governments. To achieve this I relied solely on publically available information which included; Statistics Canada, Audited Financial Statements, Financial Information Returns, municipal websites, annual BMA Reports and municipal organization charts. As a result the graphs, tables and charts contained in this report can easily be reproduced by anyone with an interest.

Note:   This study did NOT review or compare any costs associated with the delivery of Protective Services.

Approach

  1. Identify suitable Lower-Tier municipalities to compare with Owen Sound. A good comparator municipality will have a similar population within +/- 3000 residents, a similar total number dwellings, similar population densities and a similar number of owner occupied dwellings.

  2. Compare revenues and revenue sources and with an emphasis on revenue from taxation and the community’s ability to pay taxes.

  3. Compare each municipality’s non-Protective Services expenses, with the objective of identifying underlying causes for differences and contrast the relative size and composition of the workforces.

  4. Compare the actual services being delivered along with the cost of service delivery and where possible a measure of the service’s value to the community.

  5. Identify the root causes of any service delivery inefficiencies and driving forces behind cost-effective service delivery.

  6. Identify service delivery inefficiencies and attempt to identify municipal practices that promote the cost-effective efficient delivery of services.

  7. Identify potential solutions for resolving any recognized disparities within a reasonable timeframe.

Read the Executive Summary