By Anne Finlay-Stewart

Blood on the floor.

That is how city manager Ruth Coursey referred to the creation of Owen Sound's 2015 capital budget.

Not that it was particularly visible when the council got its first look at the numbers at their Friday the 13th meeting. The slashing and burning had already been done for them. As Coursey put it "Every single member of staff is passionately committed to this city and removing important projects from this list is agony."

Every item in the budget had been given a priority from A to E. Priority A expenditures were defined as those "required in order to correct or prevent an imminent failure and/or an issue of life safety". Essentially something that might cause much greater expense if it were left to fail, or something that might trigger a death or injury lawsuit. In fact, only those A's had any hope of consideration.

Before the discussion Councillor Jim McManaman offered a word of caution from his own early days on council. "We wanted to get the tax increase below 3% so we made some cuts just to get it to 2.9%. It was the worst decision I ever made on council." The problems of the city are not going away, he said, and that kind of thinking just pushes them down the road.

This year's capital budget is almost $37 million, with three large provincial and federal grants for infrastructure projects all requiring city investment. The wastewater treatment upgrade, rebuild of 3rd Avenue East and the 8th Street hill from 5th to 7th with Ryerson Park represent 12 to 24 months of work, much of it with local firms.

Beyond these big and visible projects, what else is in and what further cuts were made on the council floor?

Vehicles and heavy equipment are only being replaced as they are deemed inefficient or failing by our mechanics, and we are selling them off and buying used replacements where possible. Even the fire service could not keep replacement of non-compliant protective clothing on the list without a long debate. A leaking foundation at the Bishop House and a crumbling retaining wall at the Library raised the spectre of potential risks of not acting, but don't look for repaving on your street any time soon. Potholes will be fixed, but there is no money in the asphalt budget at all this year.

Manager of IT Jamie Walpole had, predictably perhaps, the best power-point of the day to illustrate necessary upgrades to the city's connectivity. At the moment, the city's back-up server is right across the river, receiving data every fifteen minutes. The plan is to move that back-up further away from city hall to make it safer from the incalculable cost of retrieval.

Some of our capital obligations are contractual – solar installations, energy audit and streetlight conversion to LEDs- but the return on investment is swift and impressive. The capital cost of changes to transit routes this spring are in this budget, including new stops, but any upgrading of existing stops is a B priority. Not on the list.

Much of the city's capital expenditures are underground or in little grey boxes. Director of Operations Ken Becking has most of these on his plate, Drains, culverts, watermains and switches – it is what you do not see that is often essential to every day life in our city. Only the A priorities are in the budget thus far, even though an asset audit in 2014 showed the city spends $3 million less every year than is required to maintain our infrastructure.

Community Services are highly visible to the public, but even they are reduced to the essentials – patching the liner of the Harrison Park pool and fighting invaders like phragmites and emerald ash borer. Councillor Jim McManaman spoke in support of money for updating the Recreation Master Plan, which director Pam Coulter says she refers to on daily basis, saying it will help council with a "process we can defend" if it comes to debate on parks and services. The plan was removed from this year's budget.

The Owen Sound harbour, a significant election issue which the Chamber of Commerce and MP Larry Miller have continued to keep in the spotlight, was a matter of some discussion. A Harbour Divestiture Study was in the capital budget, a preliminary study to " determine if there is a commercial/industrial business case for this harbour – can the city make money on it?" Councillor McManaman asked if staff could determine if Transport Canada might provide funds toward a study. He pointed out that the federal government has indicated for some time that it wants to divest itself of the Owen Sound harbour, which McManaman called both "an opportunity and a burden". As the city currently has a Harbour Master Plan around land use but no business plan for the use of the harbour itself, the federal government might see an investment in such a plan as a way to speed up the divestment decision process. Ultimately the line item was reduced by 75 percent, but retained in the budget.

According to the Association of Municipalities Ontario, Owen Sound is pretty much average for the province when it comes to asset management. In Wayne Ritchie's words "we are no worse than most municipalities, and better than many." Ritchie says this structured deficit has been built up over most of a century, through the terms of successive councils, and it will not be fixed by this one. Working with realistic plans, five years at a time, it will take at least twenty years to address this capital deficit, he told council.

Throughout the day-long staff presentations there was not a single mention by councillors of fat in the system, but you could see many cuts to the bare bones, and certainly smell the blood on the floor.

Anne Finlay-Stewart is Community Editor of www.owensoundhub.org. She can be reached at [email protected].