By Anne Finlay-Stewart

A full day for council and staff – more work on the Strategic Plan and an in camera meeting that included union issues and the disposition of the site of the former Scopis Restaurant.

• Deputations showed the breadth and depth of community commitment in this city.

First up were Greg Fryer and John McLachlan from Habitat for Humanity. Grey Bruce had one of the first Habitat organizations in Canada, providing 35 safe affordable homes since 1987. Buyers pay no down payment or interest, but repay the cost of the home at a rate set at 25% of the family's gross income. Those funds are used to build future homes, and the net income from Habitat's three Grey-Bruce Re-Stores pays the administrative costs. Habitat has had generous supplies of materials, services and volunteers, and is particularly looking for land.

• Councillors got a crash course in the work of the Community Foundation Grey Bruce from Executive Director Aly Boltman. The Foundation currently has $14.5 million in endowed funds – that is, donations which have been pooled and invested in perpetuity with the income – almost $600,000 last year alone – granted to local charities and non-profit groups.
• The Grey Bruce Residential Hospice is a step closer to having a free-standing home for what it hopes will become a centre of excellence in palliative care. Executive Director Scott Lovell brought news that the hospice board had made a conditional offer to purchase a lot on the south side of 10th Street East almost equidistant between its current home in the Seasons Retirement building and the hospital. Citing local jobs and a stronger community, Lovell successfully made a case to council for significantly reduced permit fees and exemption from development charges.

Councillor McManaman voted against the reduction in city revenue given the tightly constrained budget and added winter expenses, but Councillor O'Leary, who campaigned on restraint, said his support was "not setting a precedent" but was a response to a unique opportunity which "will touch every one of us."

• The Tom Thomson Art Gallery expansion was back on the agenda, with a letter from Leigh Greaves about the merits of looking at the old courthouse building and jail as an alternate location for the gallery. Greaves established her bona fides in Owen Sound's heritage preservation when she renovated the Chicago Building on 10th Street East, home of the Artist's Co-op, and the former Knox Church now the lively and well-used Harmony Centre. She would like to see a healthy community conversation about the courthouse building. The Gallery has agreed to include the site in its deliberations around a business plan to be presented to council in the spring.
• The Scenic City Lions Club has asked for an exemption to the policy around flags flying over city hall and other municipal properties. The club will hold a regional convention in the spring and would like to follow the tradition of flying the Lions' colours in the host city. The request was received (that is, not approved) after the city manager's admonition, "Be very careful of this one because one day you will be asked for something you won't like." The flag policy was amended in 2005 after the raising of the rainbow Pride flag was met with protests and threats against city councillors.
• A Canadian veteran of the UN mission in the former Yugoslavia has organized a cross-country horseback journey "to raise the awareness of veterans' issues in our communities." The City of Quesnel B.C wrote to Owen Sound to ask for support for this "Ride Across Canada" which will come through our city this summer. Any money raised above the costs of the ride will be given to un-named charities supporting programs for veterans. The letter was referred to staff and the Legion.
• As directed, City Manager Ruth Coursey brought council some options for doing a comprehensive service review. An exercise in deciding what programs and services the city should be offering and to what standard, council has recognized it as essential in the face of declining revenue. Coursey related some of the mixed successes of the city's attempts to make changes to service delivery – contracting out garbage collection and reconsidering its transit decisions as examples - and suggested that such a time-consuming review should only undertaken if council were willing to act on agreed-upon changes.
• Council accepted Coursey's recommendation of an internal core service delivery review over twelve to eighteen months. The City Manager also recommended the review be undertaken by an ad hoc committee consisting of herself, the senior staff team, the mayor and one council representative, but several of the new councillors were unwilling to be excluded from the process. Recognizing the challenge of getting everyone in the same room and the risks of constant re-capping, Coursey offered to come back to the council with proposed terms of reference. The process will begin when the strategic planning process is complete in June.
• Centre Suites – The professional building, now being converted into condominiums, was the original home of RBW printers. Council approved an application for a progressive program to encourage the environmental clean-up and development of this type of "brownfield" site. The difference between the current and future taxes will be rebated over time, up to the amount of the cost of a remediation – in this case over half a million dollars.
• Development Charges – After months of committee meetings, public meetings and considerable discussion during budget deliberations, council seemed to have arrived at a development charges by-law on which they could all agree, yet one clause in the by-law appeared to come as news to Councillor Lemon. A strategy was included in the by-law to ensure that no one would take inappropriate advantage of the two year holiday on DCs for residential building by buying permits for construction years in the future. Lemon denounced the clause as "anti-development" and ultimately voted alone against the by-law.
• Accessibility Committee – Throughout the discussions of transit routes and new buses, the Accessibility and Operations Committees worked closely together. The inclusion of many motions about specialized transit (an Operations responsibility) in the Accessibility Committee minutes raised some concerns, and the minutes were ultimately not received in their entirety. Operations Committee member Bob Hope questioned at a public meeting whether or not the "concrete and pipes" skills of that committee were suited to the very human concerns of public transit systems. Is it time to consider a dedicated Transit Committee?
• In response to an e-mail he received that raised questions about the performance of the Owen Sound Fire Department fighting last month's 2nd Avenue house fire. Councillor O'Leary investigated and spoke to set the record straight. Water was on the fire within 7 minutes of the alarm, all Owen Sound firefighters were notified of the fire, and the Inter-township fire department was there to assist.

Councillor O'Leary commended all emergency workers on their service.

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