Introduction
Welcome to my website. Here you will find a number of opinion articles I've written over the past four years along with a research paper I published in 2022. This paper and the articles are critical of Owen Sound's administration who, in my opinion have not been acting in the best interest of Owen Sound residents. Taxes have been growing well above inflation for the past twenty years and spending at city hall is out of control. As you will see Owen Sound has a much larger workforce and spends significantly more than other, similarly sized, municipalities to deliver virtually the same services. Why is this? I've been quietly putting this question to members of Council for several years and have not seen any interest in addressing this problem.
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 example of this is 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.
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?
Two years ago, I decided to take a look at Owen Sound's policies, procedures and service delivery methods to see if I could find some answers 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. The results of my 2022 research are posted on this website at the links above. You can down load mu 2022 report on this research at this Link: Owen Sound is Slowly Dying.
New 2023 Research Project
I was encouraged by the municipal election last year that help was just down the road. I heard new ideas presented at the 'All Candidates' meetings like the establishment of a Budget Committee. Now that it's been a year since the election I've decided to release another research paper based on research I've been conducting over the past six months. This research involves comparing Owen Sound to seven very similar municipalities based on Population, Population-Density, and the number of Occupied Dwellings. I have given each member of our city council a copy of my findings, along with the references I relied on so they can verify the facts I presented. I hope to hear soon what changes they intend to make based on my findings. This report contains sensitive information so for this reason and in the interest of fairness I will not be making my findings public until member of council have had an opportunity to fully assess the impact of my report and plan a way ahead to resolve the disparities the report identifies. Once Council has had sufficient time to evaluate my report I will be making my findings public via the link below.