By Anne Finlay-Stewart

Let's make this personal. If you have an average house and pay the average Owen Sound property taxes of $3,100, about $1,250 will go towards the budgets of Grey County and one of the local school boards.

You will contribute approximately $1,850 toward the expenses of the City of Owen Sound.

The half of that which supports the fire and police departments, most of it to pay the salaries and benefits of front-line service providers and support staff, was the focus of attention as the budget process continued.

The fire department will be looking for new equipment soon. Its two first-responding trucks are seven and eight years old, and built by a company that has been out of business for the past five years. The mini-pumper that was touted as a big money-saver in 2012 has "not worked out as hoped" and the department would like to trade it in for a more useful vehicle to help move contaminated equipment.

Both the fire and police departments are currently in negotiations, so the large salary portion of their budget has not been finalized. Police Chief Bill Sornberger estimated increases there might be 4.6 per cent. Although he called his draft budget a "worst-case scenario," he assured council that it was not padded in any way in order to hand them a surplus at the end of the year.

Councillor Jim McManaman asked for a more "drilled down" expense estimate by the final city budget meeting scheduled for February 18th, but the chief made no promises that negotiations would be finalized by then.

Lack of control over expenses was highlighted in the conversation about court security, an expense that falls to the municipality which hosts the court building. The shooting in a Brampton court building last year and the sudden relocation of bail hearings to Owen Sound immediately effected the level of service and personnel hours required.

Much of the Chief's presentation focused on the million dollars in revenue and the local jobs created by the department's five-to-seven-year contracts to provide five police and twenty-one fire services with dispatch services. Any further contracts, however desirable, would require expansion of the police services building.

Councillor Richard Thomas opened the second day of budget deliberations with three motions on the subject of police, all aimed at addressing the high municipal tax levels much discussed during the recent election campaign. Carefully worded to respect the Police Act, the first two motions asked the Owen Sound Police Services to refine its budget with a goal of reducing an eight-per-cent increase to fie per cent (about $200,000 in savings) and to participate in the city's service-analysis process.

The third motion, also offered as a very preliminary and investigative step only, requested a report from staff on the process of initiating an OPP costing.

All three motions were carried unanimously.

Before the end of the day, City Manager Ruth Coursey reported that there is a province-wide moratorium on OPP costings, at least until mid-year.

Anne Finlay-Stewart is Community Editor of Owensoundhub.org.