The Municipality of Grey Highlands had a busy year and staff turnover made it feel even busier.
At council’s meeting on March 5, Grey Highlands CAO Karen Govan delivered a review of the past year of activity in the municipality.
Govan highlighted two key points: the workload continues to grow and keeping staff remains a challenge.
“Generally, there is a lot more work being done by each department,” Govan told council. “We continue to struggle with vacancies.”
Govan said in 2024 staff received a total of 549,746 email inquiries. This was combined with 128,355 external phone calls to the Grey Highlands municipal office. In addition, Govan said the office in Markdale averages 20 - 30 in-person visits per day.
In the report, Govan also endeavoured to answer one of the most common questions local residents have for municipal leaders: is the municipality over-staffed?
The CAO said there is no easy apples-to-apples comparison for staffing levels between local municipalities, because often service levels and facilities differ greatly depending on the municipality.
“There is no easy benchmark,” she said.
In her report, Govan used full-time equivalent (FTE) for 1,000 residents as a data comparator. In that respect, with 85.47 FTEs (not including library staff), Grey Highlands is ranked 5th out of nine local municipalities in the comparison group.
“We fall in the middle point where we expect to be,” Govan said.
Above Grey Highlands are The Blue Mountains, Owen Sound, Meaford and Clearview. Below are: Chatsworth, Southgate, West Grey and Georgian Bluffs.
Other highlights of the report included:
- From administration: 91 employment candidates interviewed, 44 onboarding (new staff joining) events, 37 offboarding (staff departing) events and 1,362 training assignments completed
- From planning: 90 planning applications processed, 12 public planning hearings and 11 committee of adjustment meetings
- From the clerk’s department: 126 meetings, agendas and minutes, 12 boards and committee meeting admin support, 27 wedding ceremonies, 66 documents commissioned, 31 reports to council and 125 bylaws passed
- From finance: $30 million+ vendor payments processed, $16 million+ local property taxes billed, $8.5M+ collected and remitted to Grey County in property taxes, 26 payroll runs processed. 6,179 water bills issued and 14,557 property tax bills issued
- From roads and bridges: 211 kms new gravel, 6.2 kms gravel road base improvements, winter maintenance and snow removal, street sweeping and ditching, brushing and tree cutting
- From the fire department: 292 incident responses, 59 motor vehicle responses, 61 medical assistance calls, 45 smoke/CO detector calls, 43 assisting other agencies calls, 37 fire related responses and seven reports to council
- From arenas and parks: 3,576 Hours of arena/ice bookings, 5,967 hours of hall bookings, fleet equipped with GPS, new pavilion at Eugenia Park, 3,200+ bags of garbage collected from parks, established three-year fire compliance plan
- From the building department: 529 permit applications received, 475 permits issued (construction value $75,253,104) and 2,864 inspections completed (avg. 11/day)
Members of council thanked the CAO and the entire municipal staff for the report.
“There is a lot of good information in here,” said Mayor Paul McQueen. “It gives you a bit of a snapshot of what’s happening.”