Dec 9 - City Council Budget Meeting + Local News & Events
Plus: Suspect arrested for truck theft after snowy foot chase in Owen Sound
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Owen Sound City Council begins its 2025 Budget deliberations today in a special meeting that kicks off with staff’s presentation of the Draft Budget.
Now, the City of Owen Sound didn’t request public input on the Tom Thomson Art Gallery budget. Nor did they put out a call for public comments on any topic to be included in the Director of Corporate Services’ 2025 Draft Budget Presentation.
However, you will find a letter dated October 30, 2024, submitted by one community member who is supportive of staff’s desire for more funding for the gallery, in the draft budget document. This singular point of view is labelled “Art Gallery Questions from the Public” as though it is a fulsome representation of resident questions and concerns.
As a result, The Owen Sound Current has submitted a request to Owen Sound Council, the City Manager, and the Clerk that David McLeish’s well-research and data-backed letter on the information being used to make financial decisions on the gallery be included, as well.
Residents have been begging to be heard on several key issues that will be discussed in Council Chambers today. Since one piece of input is included, it may have been appropriate to include all correspondence submitted to the City over this past year. Would the volume have been overwhelming? Perhaps.
At the very least, a reasonable person would expect to see a fair and balanced representation of public input.
The City didn’t have to go to any extra work or expense to present a more accurate representation of public feedback, either.
They could have included the Vision 2050 community survey responses in the budget package.
That input from over 1,000 residents that taxpayers funded as part of the up to $80,000 Vision 2050 consulting project would certainly have provided some food for thought. Including it would also have made those community inputs a part of our shared public record.
The City is refusing to release the survey responses, though. We are supposed to be content with “insights” staff and consultants compile for us, summarizing what should be neutral data into soundbites that seem designed to persuade vs inform.
As the bias introduced to this budget presentation shows, democratic systems are made up of multiple layers of accountability with checks and balances throughout for good reason.
We’ve seen enough shared examples of questionable data presentation this past year that it should be clear to all of Council: requests for verifiable data are not mean, rude, or divisive. They’re essential for the responsible stewardship of municipal resources, and that is a goal we all share.
You can watch the meeting live beginning at 9 a.m. on Rogers Cable TV, the Rogers TV website, or by selecting the meeting from the calendar on this page of the City’s website.
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Keep reading for our original reporting + curated local news updates, plus upcoming event listings. Today, we have reports on the arrest made after a truck was stolen from an Owen Sound parking lot, a triplex fire being treated as suspicious by investigators, the Grey Bruce Greens upcoming nomination meeting, and a lot more.
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