The municipality will hold an information meeting on shared services on Sept. 26 at 2 p.m. at Woodford Hall.
Meaford Mayor Francis Richardson said the meeting will gather information only, similar to what Grey County did when it brought the county's municipal leaders together to discuss corporate structure.
"We need to discover if it is already being done by the county, because the county does a huge amount of this sharing and coordinating of sharing, or are there some things that are specific to us and our local area here that we need to work on ourselves," Richardson said Thursday.
Four municipalities have been invited by Meaford to attend the meeting — Owen Sound, Georgian Bluffs, Chatsworth and The Blue Mountains.
Chatsworth and Georgian Bluffs have both indicated plans to attend, while The Blue Mountains has declined the invitation. Owen Sound council has yet to decide.
One service expected to be discussed at the meeting is the agreement Meaford has with Owen Sound for residents of the former Sydenham Township to use the Owen Sound & North Grey Union Public Library. Richardson also expects the lack of a recreation agreement to be discussed as well.
Earlier this year, Meaford and Georgian Bluffs were unsuccessful in reaching a recreation agreement with Owen Sound. Both have gone to a user pay system, with the municipalities reimbursing a percentage of the users' costs.
"Those are the two that jump to mind," said Richardson, who added there are other opportunities where services can be shared.
He gave the example of tendering for gravel for roads, where municipalities could put a group tender out as opposed to doing it individually.
"I think that council might discover there are opportunities that are being taken advantage of already at the staff level, at the operations level, that council may or may not be aware of," said Richardson. "It is always good to get that information out to everyone including council and the public and show that we do a lot of this sharing in this municipality because we know how important it is."
Richardson said council wants to see what is already being done at the county level as well.
"Some feel what the county is doing is just fine and we don't need to put in another layer of organization when it is already being done," said Richardson. "Any amount of time where we can get together in shared groups is valuable to all of us."
Richardson said the meeting will also provide Meaford councillors an opportunity to see how other municipalities are providing certain services and vice versa.
"Sometimes it is good to poke our heads up and look around and say are other people doing the exactly the same thing and can we do it together?" said Richardson.
He said the idea for the meeting came about in the spring when council discussed the services it provides. At that time Coun. Deborah Young brought up the idea of meeting with surrounding municipalities to talk about shared services.
"The ultimate goal is to provide the services that our taxpayers and our residents want and deserve, but do it at the most economical price," said Richardson. "Dollars and cents are always involved with it and it has been that way forever."
The public is invited to observe the meeting, but there will not be an opportunity to speak or ask questions.
"They will give us their input afterwards and we will respond to that as well because we certainly want that too," said Richardson.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Rob Gowan
Quelle/Source: Owen Sound Sun Times, 29.08.2013
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