Decade of excess

Shire Hall tends to go through phases in which it forgets what it is. Who it serves. Where it exists on a map. It uses terms like “sustainable finances” and “affordability” as if it knows what the words mean. Yet Shire Hall repeatedly demonstrates that it doesn’t know—or doesn’t care—that it is part of the problem.

Shire Hall sees its primary purpose as growing Shire Hall. Bigger for its own sake. The larger the beast becomes, the more it must be fed. The wider its waistline expands, the hungrier it gets.
Where local government once existed to serve its residents, the roles have now been flipped. It is now the job of residents to keep Shire Hall fed and contented. But we are failing to keep up. The cost is growing exponentially. Shire Hall is growing faster than our ability to shovel tax dollars into its maw. Something has to change.

To illustrate my argument, I am leaning this week on two measures: salaries and wages and contracted services. I rather dislike using these line items as they tend to represent humans who live in our community. However, local government is primarily about delivering services, so it is an unavoidable gauge of how bulky Shire Hall has become—a flashing red signal warning of the trouble we are in.

To illustrate my argument, I am leaning this week on two measures: salaries and wages and contracted services. I rather dislike using these line items as they tend to represent humans who live in our community. However, local government is primarily about delivering services, so it is an unavoidable gauge of how bulky Shire Hall has become—a flashing red signal warning of the trouble we are in.

Simply put, there is no reason to believe the next census will show anything other than flat to marginal population growth in 2026. Bear this in mind because, again, local government is meant to serve its population. Not the other way around.

In 2015, Shire Hall spent $19.3 million on salaries, wages and benefits. Last year, it spent nearly $35 million. That is an 80 per cent increase over a decade. Take a moment.

But inflation. Surely the cost of living drove similar increases across the economy? Nope. The cumulative price increase in Ontario over the same period was 27 per cent. Shire Hall blew past the cost of living by a wide margin. It is still accelerating.

Did the workload expand? Perhaps. But five times more? Serving the same number of residents? It doesn’t add up.

Shire Hall pays well, too. Folks are well compensated. The average total annual income of County residents measured by StatsCan in 2020 was $46,120. Last year, Ontario’s sunshine list showed 46 municipal employees earned more than $100,000 in 2024. As the gap widens, it is harder to relate to the folks living on the margins, struggling to get by.

Contracted services include the folks who do things Shire Hall staff won’t or can’t do. They include consultants, snowplow operators and road builders. Shire Hall spent nearly $11 million on such services in 2014. It spent more than $20 million last year—an 84 per cent increase in a decade.

Now, one might expect wages to rise quickly if there were a push to bring contracted jobs in-house. You might also imagine the opposite—contracted services growing as the organization outsources jobs it once handled internally. But when the charts are both spiralling upward, it suggests something is terribly wrong.

It is bloat—dangerous, unchecked, bloat. It won’t end until Shire Hall chooses to change its ways.

I raise this point for two reasons this week. Salaries and wages expenses are likely to be off the charts in 2025. A half dozen senior staff have departed and been replaced at Shire Hall this year. Council has not disclosed the terms nor the cost of these departures, nor the financial impact for future years. It will be a big number. Shire Hall should put these costs on the table and make a clean break with the past decade. It should use 2025 as a watershed.

We are paying the bills for a decade of big ideas. Of grand ambition. Of forgetting what this place was. And who it serves. We are paying the cost, frankly, of poor governance and oversight.

Shire Hall can choose to do the things local government was meant to do. It can admit it can’t do everything. It should stop trying—stop loading up on debt in a useless attempt to do so. There is simply too much geography and too few people. This place will never be Markham, Nepean or Halton.

Shire Hall has the opportunity to change its trajectory. To reject a decade of excess and loathing for the taxpayer. Shire Hall has the opportunity to start anew.

It has a moment here.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca