Don't Let the Numbers Confuse You

Apply Your Critical Thinking Skills

This morning I received an email from a member of council who was understandably confused by conflicting numbers around staffing and expenses. BTW this was the first contact I had with any member of council since I dropped off my report over a month ago. The fact that they mentioned that they were receiving emails from residents on this topic did not go unnoticed.

The Internet has an endless stream of numbers on any topic. It’s important to keep things in perspective. My report provided a snapshot of what existed in 2021 and the data it contains came from reliable sources, the 2021 Audited Financial Statements, the 2021 Financial Information Returns and Stats Can databases. As such, anyone with an interest can reproduce every chart and graph presented in the report.

The confusion they had stemmed from a media report that they read on Cobourg’s 2023 budget that appeared to indicate that Cobourg actually had a larger workforce than Owen Sound. First of all, media sources are historically unreliable, but more importantly comparing data from a 2023 budget proposal to data from 2021 Audited Financial Statements is like comparing apples to oranges. As well the numbers they pointed out contained Fire Services and Library employees which were not included in my study.

The bottom line is, never accept numbers from anyone, including me, if they can’t show that they come from a creditable source and include sufficient information to independently verify their accuracy. The complete text of my response is attached below and I copied all members of council in my response.
 


Good Morning,

Thank you for getting back to me on my services report. I was pleased to read that you’ve been doing your own research. This is something I would recommend all members of council do on all topics. When compiling the facts it’s important that we don’t start comparing apples to oranges and that we only use verifiable publicly available data sources. It’s also important to keep in mind that my report is a snapshot of what existed in 2021 and it would be misleading to compare my numbers to what currently exists. The reason for using 2021 data is that this was the latest, reliable and verifiable publicly available data at the time. If you recall I relied on Audited Financial Statements, Financial Information Returns and Stats Can databases.

In regard to employee numbers, the full time employee number published in the city’s 2021 Financial Information Return was 242. When you remove 31 Fire, 61 Police and 17 Library you end up with 133 which is the number in my report. Cobourg reported174 full time employees in their 2021 Financial Information Return. When you remove 19 Fire, 46 Police and one Court Security you get 108 which is the number in my report. It’s important to note that Cobourg’s Return doesn’t break out Library FTEs which are removed from the Owen Sound figures.

It’s also important to note that the spread in the FTE numbers is correlated with the spread in Salaries and Benefits shown in the Audit Financial Statements. This confirms that there is a sizable workforce gap between Owen Sound and Cobourg.

As for the media report on Cobourg’s 2023 budget it looks like the owner of the Cobourgblog.com, John Draper, includes Fire in his 136 figure. However, these are 2023 budget numbers from a media source which are historically unreliable sources. It would be confusing to the public and professionally inappropriate to compare these 2023 numbers to 2021 numbers from reliable, verifiable sources as presented in my report.

As I mentioned the numbers I presented in the facts section of my report represent a snapshot of what happened in 2021. If the city has fewer employees today than it reported in 2021 or has made spending reductions, it would be helpful to publish this data. However I did review the draft 2022 Audit Financial Statements and the growth rate in salaries and benefits expenses is consistent with past years. 


I am confident that if you use the 2021 Financial Information Returns and the 2021 Audited Financial Statements you will come up with the same numbers and will be able to reproduce all of the charts shown in my report.

Once you complete this exercise and confirm that what I reported was indeed what existed in 2021, then Council’s focus should turn toward finding realizable solutions. The solutions section of my report, contain my opinions of what I believe are reasonable recommendations for change and are based on my experiences. However, I have zero visibility into the boundary conditions that Tim may be facing which could make some of my suggestions unrealizable.

When Council is ready to implement changes I would welcome an opportunity to work with Tim in finding the most appropriate changes aimed at closing the expense-gap with the municipalities in my study group. In the meantime please give serious consideration to restating the 2024 budget following Zero-Based Budgeting principles.
 

Jim