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The Cost of Living in Your Own Community

This article is Part 6 of County First’s six-part investigative series examining municipal taxes, user fees and affordability in Ontario.

Part 1 – The $25 Burn Permit
Part 2 – The $56 Boat Launch
Part 3 – Permit Hell
Part 4 – The User Fee Economy
Part 5 – Who Decides What You Pay?
Part 6 – The Benchmarking Trap (this article)

A Special Investigation into Taxes, User Fees and Municipal Affordability especially in rural Ontario.

For decades, municipal governments were funded primarily through property taxes, with user fees reserved for specialized services or optional activities. Today, many residents feel that balance has shifted. Property taxes continue to rise, yet so do parking fees, permits, licences and a growing list of charges attached to everyday activities.

County First is launching a six-part investigative series to examine whether Ontario municipalities have quietly created a new “user fee economy,” where taxpayers increasingly pay multiple times for services and public assets they already help fund through their taxes.

This series is not an argument against responsible regulation or reasonable user fees. Many permits protect public safety, the environment and shared community assets. Instead, we will ask a different question: Have municipalities gone too far, and are taxpayers receiving good value for the growing number of fees they are asked to pay?

The Series

Part 1 – The $25 Burn Permit
Why do some municipalities using the same software provide burn permits free of charge while others charge $25? What does the permit actually cost to administer, and should public safety programs be funded through user fees at all? Read more.

Part 2 – The $56 Boat Launch
Have public boat launches become another revenue source for municipalities? When residents already pay property taxes to maintain public infrastructure, is charging additional parking or launch fees the right approach? Read more.

Part 3 – Permit Hell
Why can a straightforward property project require multiple permits, overlapping approvals and repeated applications? Can Ontario modernize its approval system without compromising environmental protection or public safety?

Part 4 – The User Fee Economy
How much do Ontario municipalities collect through permits, licences and user fees each year, and how has that changed over time? Are municipalities becoming increasingly dependent on fee revenue?

Part 5 – Who Decides What You Pay?
How are municipal fees established? Who recommends them? What evidence is presented to council, and how transparent is the decision-making process?

Part 6 – The Benchmarking Trap
Municipalities often compare themselves with neighbouring communities when setting salaries, fees and charges. Does benchmarking create an unintended cycle where costs gradually rise across Ontario because everyone is measuring themselves against one another?

Ontario Has 444 Municipalities. How Many Are Paying to Compare Themselves With One Another?

When councils set salaries and fees by looking sideways at their neighbours, the provincial average can become a moving target that rarely moves down

Ontario has 444 municipalities, ranging from Toronto, with a government larger than those of some provinces, to rural townships where a small administrative team may oversee roads, fire protection, planning, recreation, waste, drainage and dozens of other responsibilities.[1]

They differ enormously in population, geography, wealth, services and capacity, yet many eventually confront the same deceptively simple questions. What should a mayor or chief administrative officer be paid? How much should a planning application cost? Is the marina fee too low? Should building permits recover more of their administrative expense? Are recreation charges keeping pace with neighbouring communities?

The customary answer begins with a comparison.

Staff members or consultants identify a group of municipalities considered similar, collect their salaries or fees, calculate a median or percentile and show council where its municipality sits. The process appears factual, disciplined and reassuringly mathematical. A number that may have seemed arbitrary suddenly has a professional lineage: it is not merely what one council proposes to charge or pay, but what “the market” appears to require.

Benchmarking is not inherently wasteful or misguided. Used well, it can reveal poor performance, identify innovations and prevent a municipality from losing capable employees because it has allowed compensation to fall far behind comparable employers. Greater Sudbury, for example, participates in benchmarking systems that compare financial information, taxes, fees and 36 municipal service areas, including roads, planning, fire services, human resources and waste management. The stated purpose is to identify where services can improve and where successful practices can be borrowed from other cities.[2]

The difficulty begins when comparison changes from a source of information into a substitute for judgment. If municipalities repeatedly decide what they should pay by examining what other municipalities already pay, the benchmark ceases to be stationary. Every increase becomes part of the evidence considered during the next review somewhere else.

That creates an uncomfortable question for every Ontario council:

When all municipalities are measuring themselves against one another, who is measuring the result against the ability of residents to pay?

A Benchmark That Moves When You Approach It

Imagine a runner chasing a finish line that shifts forward whenever another runner reaches it. No single movement seems unreasonable, but the race never quite ends.

Municipal benchmarking can operate in a similar way. One council learns that its compensation is below the median of its selected comparator group and approves an increase. That higher amount then enters another municipality’s survey. The second municipality discovers that its position has slipped and adjusts accordingly. A third council is later advised that it must “remain competitive,” and the average rises again.

No council has deliberately decided to increase compensation throughout Ontario. Each may believe it is making a prudent local adjustment supported by market evidence. Collectively, however, a system in which many participants aspire to the median, the 60th percentile or the 75th percentile contains an obvious arithmetic tension: everyone cannot remain above average.

The expression sometimes used in compensation research is the Lake Wobegon effect, borrowed from the fictional town where “all the children are above average.” Research into corporate executive compensation has found that organizations may favour comparison groups containing more highly paid peers and that peer pay can influence their own compensation decisions. One study examining S&P 900 companies found a preference for selecting benchmark firms with higher CEO compensation, even after accounting for similarities among the businesses. The author estimated a substantial relationship between the pay of peers and a company’s own executive compensation.[3]

Municipal councils are not corporate boards, and private-sector findings cannot simply be transplanted into local government. Municipal compensation is more transparent, elected officials are publicly accountable, and public-sector roles are shaped by legislation, budgets and collective agreements. Nevertheless, the underlying mechanism deserves examination: once the pay of one organization becomes evidence supporting the pay of another, comparison may contribute to an upward ratchet even when no participant intends to inflate the market.

The same risk extends beyond salaries. Municipalities compare planning charges, building permit rates, water bills, marina fees, recreation prices and dozens of other charges. A rate adopted in one community can gradually become the justification for a similar rate elsewhere, even if the first municipality’s cost structure was unusually high or its original decision was never tested against efficiency.

Prince Edward County and the Thirteen Comparators

Prince Edward County offers a useful window into how the process works because its experience is not unusual.

In 2026, the County retained Stratford Group to conduct an independent review of council remuneration. The consultant designed a custom survey and obtained responses from 13 Ontario municipalities: Port Hope, West Nipissing, Collingwood, The Blue Mountains, Huron County, Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, Kawartha Lakes, Quinte West, Grey County, Uxbridge, Cobourg, Leeds and Grenville, and Niagara-on-the-Lake.[4]

The group was intended to reflect communities reasonably similar to Prince Edward County in characteristics such as population, tourism, geography, service responsibilities and governance. That is a sensible effort to avoid comparing a rural single-tier municipality with jurisdictions bearing little resemblance to it.

The resulting report found that the County’s 2025 mayoral salary of $59,290 sat slightly above the median and below the average of the full comparator group. Among municipalities with populations below 35,000, it was approximately at the average. The County’s councillor salary of $29,645 was described as very close to the median among comparators using a salary-only model.[5]

The survey itself revealed how sensitive the result can be to the group and compensation model selected. Across all 13 participants, the median mayor or warden salary was $56,537, while the average was $64,359. Among the nine municipalities paying salary without separate meeting fees, however, the median rose to $67,221. Municipalities combining salary with meeting fees produced a median of $53,919. The report noted that the salary-only median was approximately 20 per cent higher than the median among those also paying meeting fees.[6]

None of these figures is incorrect. Each answers a slightly different question.

But they illustrate why benchmarking is never purely mechanical. Should Prince Edward County compare itself with all 13 municipalities, only those paying salary without meeting fees, only those below 35,000 residents, only rural single-tier municipalities, or only tourism destinations? Each choice produces a different market position, and the selection of the market can influence the conclusion before council ever debates the recommendation.

The report ultimately concluded that Prince Edward County’s remuneration framework was generally aligned with comparator practice and positioned around the median. In this case, benchmarking did not produce a dramatic increase. It largely validated the existing structure and recommended limited clarification and housekeeping changes.[7]

That is important because it demonstrates that benchmarking does not inevitably drive costs upward. It can confirm that current arrangements remain reasonable.

The larger concern is systemic rather than accusatory. Prince Edward County paid for a customized survey of 13 municipalities. Those municipalities may later commission their own reviews, select overlapping groups and ask many of the same questions. The work is professionally legitimate, but taxpayers can still ask why the foundational information must be repeatedly gathered and purchased.

Toronto and the Power of a Percentile

Toronto provides a much larger and more dramatic illustration of what happens when a percentile becomes a policy objective.

In 2025, city staff reviewed councillor compensation using nine Canadian comparators: Brampton, Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, Markham, Mississauga, Ottawa, Vaughan and Winnipeg. Staff found that Toronto councillors were at the 62nd percentile of the comparator group and recommended raising their compensation to the 75th percentile.[8]

The recommendation would have increased the base salary from $137,537.40 to $170,588.60, including the annual consumer-price adjustment. The estimated 2025 financial impact was $956,816.30, consisting of approximately $829,458 in salary and $127,358 in benefits.[9]

Toronto’s report gave several reasons for the proposed position, including councillors’ large constituencies, the City’s extraordinary budget and service responsibilities, and its historic practice of using the 75th percentile. The analysis was conducted largely by the City’s internal People and Equity team and validated with Korn Ferry, rather than being fully outsourced. That hybrid model used existing municipal expertise while retaining independent specialist input.[10]

The policy question is not whether Toronto councillors work hard or whether the proposed amount was justified. Toronto’s responsibilities are plainly unlike those of most municipalities.

The revealing feature is the benchmark itself.

The 75th percentile means Toronto deliberately aims to pay more than three-quarters of its comparator group. There may be defensible reasons for doing so, but when many employers attempt to locate themselves above the middle of the market, the market cannot remain static. Those below may later use the new higher figure as evidence that they have fallen behind.

Toronto also proposed continuing annual CPI adjustments between formal market reviews. This creates two separate mechanisms of increase: inflation protects the salary from losing purchasing power, while periodic benchmarking can restore the chosen percentile if the comparators have advanced more quickly. The system may be reasonable from a recruitment or workload perspective, but it is structurally designed to prevent the compensation level from falling relative to peers.

A taxpayer may therefore ask whether the chosen percentile reflects measurable performance and responsibility or whether the percentile has become an objective in itself.

The Same Dynamic Can Reach the Fee Counter

The benchmarking trap becomes more immediate for residents when it moves from salaries into fees and charges.

A municipality considering a $25 permit can point to several neighbouring municipalities charging similar amounts and conclude that its rate is within the market. The comparison may be accurate, yet it still does not establish what the permit actually costs to administer, whether technology has reduced that cost or whether the fee creates unnecessary barriers.

The consequences are especially visible in housing. The Canadian Home Builders’ Association’s 2024 Municipal Benchmarking Study compared 23 Canadian municipalities and found that average development charges and planning fees had risen by approximately $27,000 per low-rise unit since its previous study. Across the municipalities examined, average fees on a new low-rise dwelling reached approximately $82,600, ranging from about $8,700 in Moncton to $195,300 in Toronto. The five highest-cost low-rise jurisdictions in the study were all in Ontario; for high-rise housing, the nine most expensive were Ontario municipalities.[11]

Those figures do not prove that municipalities raised fees merely because their neighbours did. Development charges are affected by infrastructure needs, growth projections, land values, legislation, servicing requirements and local capital plans. Nor was the study itself produced by a neutral public agency; it was commissioned by the home-building industry and should be read with that perspective in mind.

It nevertheless demonstrates the scale of the costs now being compared. When municipalities benchmark their charges against peers in a province where charges are already high, “being near the average” may offer little comfort to the eventual homebuyer.

Benchmarking can tell a council that its fee is ordinary.

It cannot, by itself, tell the council that the ordinary fee is affordable, efficient or necessary.

The Consultant Is Not the Cause

It is tempting to blame consultants whenever a comparative review supports an increase, but that would misunderstand the relationship.

Consultants answer the question they are retained to examine. A mandate to assess market competitiveness will naturally produce comparator data, percentiles and recommendations about alignment. A mandate to identify the lowest sustainable cost while preserving service quality would produce a different analysis.

The more important responsibility rests with council and senior administration, which determine the scope of the assignment.

Before commissioning a review, they must decide whether the central question is:

What do our peers charge or pay?

or:

What outcome do residents require, and what is the most efficient way to deliver it?

Those questions overlap, but they are not interchangeable.

There are also valid reasons to seek independent advice. Staff should not be placed in the position of determining their own compensation without external evidence. Specialized actuarial, legal, engineering or labour-market expertise may not exist internally, particularly in smaller municipalities. An independent review can add credibility and insulate the process from actual or perceived conflicts.

Yet municipalities employ CAOs, treasurers, human-resources professionals, planners, clerks, engineers, department directors and managers precisely because these positions carry management responsibilities. Routine data collection, fee analysis, process review and performance measurement should often fall within the capabilities of the administration already funded by taxpayers.

Toronto’s compensation review provides one possible model: internal experts conducted the jurisdictional work and used an outside adviser to validate the method. That approach may not suit every municipality, but it challenges the assumption that an entire exercise must always be outsourced.

The correct principle is not that consultants should never be hired. It is that consultants should supplement municipal competence rather than substitute for it.

Why Pay for the Same Foundation 444 Times?

Ontario’s municipal system already recognizes the value of shared information. The Municipal Benchmarking Network Canada brings together a smaller group of Canadian municipalities to compare performance and operational practices. Greater Sudbury reports that the network assembles data from 17 municipalities across 36 service areas, while the annual BMA comparative study has involved more than 100 Ontario municipalities examining taxes, user fees, water and sewer costs and financial indicators.[12]

These initiatives prove that common datasets are possible.

AMO represents most of Ontario’s 444 municipalities and already provides advocacy, training, policy development and collective services.[13] It could potentially play a larger role in maintaining standardized provincial datasets and methods for recurring questions such as compensation, user fees, permit administration and service performance.

That would not mean imposing a single provincial salary or fee. A Northern township, a rapidly growing suburban city and a tourism-dependent rural county should not be governed by one number.

It would mean collecting the foundational information once, applying consistent definitions and allowing municipal staff and councils to interpret it according to local circumstances.

A shared system might include:

standardized compensation data by municipal size, tier and service responsibility;
common definitions for salary, benefits, meeting fees and allowances;
model user-fee costing methods distinguishing direct costs from corporate overhead;
performance indicators showing cost per transaction and processing time;
anonymized data on recruitment difficulty and employee turnover;
templates for assessing public benefit, affordability and cost recovery; and
a searchable record of municipal innovations that lowered costs or improved service.

The result would not eliminate consultants. It could allow them to spend less time rebuilding comparator tables and more time analysing the genuinely distinctive features of a municipality.

It could also allow staff to complete more reviews internally, because the most difficult and expensive part of benchmarking—obtaining reliable, consistently defined information—would already be available.

Benchmarking the Wrong Side of the Equation

One reason benchmarking can become inflationary is that municipalities often compare the inputs easiest to count: salary, fee, tax rate, staffing level or expenditure.

Those figures matter, but they represent only half of public value.

A salary comparison without performance data cannot tell council whether the municipality is receiving exceptional leadership. A planning-fee comparison without processing times cannot reveal whether applicants are paying more for faster service or simply paying more. A road-budget comparison without road condition and kilometres maintained may reward spending rather than outcomes.

Greater Sudbury’s description of benchmarking acknowledges this complexity. Its international benchmarking exercise warned that no two cities necessarily measure the same services in the same ways. That caution should accompany every apparently precise municipal ranking.[14]

A better system would compare paired measures:

compensation and organizational performance;
planning fees and approval times;
building-permit charges and inspection turnaround;
administrative expenditure and resident satisfaction;
water rates and system condition;
staffing levels and service volume;
road costs and kilometres maintained to an acceptable standard;
consultant spending and demonstrated implementation results.

The surprising possibility is that the municipality paying the least may not be the most efficient, because poor services can impose costs on residents and businesses. Equally, the municipality spending the most cannot claim excellence merely because it is “investing” more.

The benchmark that matters is the relationship between cost and result.

A Provincial Average Is Not a Moral Standard

Municipal reports often describe a salary or fee as falling below, near or above the market median. That language can quietly transform the average into a standard of fairness.

But an average is merely a description of what others are doing. It carries no inherent judgment about whether the collective behaviour is affordable or efficient.

If every municipality doubled a fee, the new average would double. The benchmark would describe the change accurately without telling council whether the change was wise.

This distinction is particularly important during a period when homeowners, tenants, farmers and small businesses are absorbing increases in property taxes, utilities, insurance, housing and everyday expenses. Municipal government cannot control all of those pressures, but it should avoid treating the practices of other municipalities as sufficient proof that another increase is reasonable.

“Everyone else is doing it” is a useful warning signal.

It is not a complete business case.

The Questions Council Should Ask Before Following the Market

Before approving an increase based substantially on comparator evidence, council should understand how the comparison was constructed. Why were those municipalities selected? Were lower-cost or higher-performing communities included? Are salaries being compared on a total-compensation basis? Do fees cover the same services? Are population, geography, service complexity and workload genuinely similar?

Council should then ask what the benchmark does not reveal. Has the municipality experienced difficulty recruiting or retaining capable people at the existing salary? Has workload measurably increased? What is the service’s actual cost? Has technology reduced processing time? Could staff perform more of the analysis internally? What result would justify the proposed increase?

Finally, council should consider the direction of the benchmark. Is the municipality learning from a peer that delivers excellent service at lower cost, or merely moving toward a higher average?

Benchmarking should inform the decision.

It should never make the decision appear inevitable.

A Better Benchmark for Ontario

Ontario does not need to abandon municipal comparison. It needs to decide what behaviour it wants comparison to encourage.

If councils compete to reach higher salary percentiles, match rising fees and mirror organizational structures, the province may gradually produce a more expensive municipal system without any single decision appearing excessive.

If municipalities instead compare productivity, affordability, processing speed, resident satisfaction and cost per unit of service, benchmarking can become a force for improvement.

The same mechanism that may pull costs upward can be redirected.

Imagine an annual Ontario municipal report identifying:

the fastest planning approvals at comparable service levels;
the lowest administrative cost per household;
the greatest reduction in permit-processing time;
the strongest resident satisfaction at a sustainable tax level;
the lowest consultant expenditure achieved without weakening professional capacity;
the best-maintained rural road system per dollar spent; and
the municipalities that reduced fees after digitizing services.

The prestige would no longer come from paying at the 75th percentile or charging near the market median. It would come from delivering a result that other municipalities wanted to copy.

That is benchmarking worth paying for.

The Prince Edward County Lesson

Prince Edward County did not invent comparator studies, and its 2026 remuneration review did not expose misconduct or prove that benchmarking had inflated compensation. The study actually found that existing council remuneration was broadly aligned with the selected market and recommended no sweeping financial change.

That is precisely why the County is a useful case study.

The concern is not one report or one council. It is a system repeated across 444 municipalities, often through separate surveys, separate consultant assignments and overlapping comparator groups.

The public should not reject benchmarking. It should ask more of it.

Comparisons should reveal not only who pays more, but who performs better. Consultant work should be reserved for genuine independence or expertise, while routine analysis should remain within the competence of professional municipal staff wherever possible. AMO and other municipal organizations should make standardized data available so taxpayers do not repeatedly finance the reconstruction of the same information.

Most importantly, councils should remember that the provincial average is not a destination.

It is merely a point on a chart.

The purpose of local government is not to resemble its neighbours. It is to provide the services its community needs at a cost its community can sustain.

When every municipality looks sideways, costs can drift upward almost unnoticed.

Someone must still look outward—to the resident opening the tax bill, the family paying a recreation fee, the builder calculating the price of a home and the small business deciding whether another municipal charge can be absorbed.

That is the benchmark that cannot be allowed to disappear.

County First’s Position

Benchmarking is a valuable municipal-management tool when it is used to understand performance, identify successful practices and test whether compensation or fees remain reasonable. It becomes a risk when “market alignment” is treated as sufficient justification for an increase without equal attention to affordability, efficiency, service quality and measurable results.

County First proposes that AMO and Ontario’s municipal sector establish a standardized benchmarking framework available to all 444 municipalities. The framework should permit local variation while reducing duplicated data collection, strengthening in-house analysis and shifting the emphasis from what municipalities spend to what residents receive.

Before approving a benchmark-driven increase, every council should be able to answer four questions:

What does the service or position actually require?

What measurable result will residents receive?

Could existing municipal staff perform the analysis?

Are we following the average—or learning from the best?

📍 One Town. One Lesson.

Every week, County First examines one municipality and asks:

What can every county learn from it?

This week: Prince Edward County and the hidden risks of municipal benchmarking.

Next week: What Norfolk County can teach Ontario about attracting—and keeping—year-round employers.

One Town. One Lesson. Because the best ideas do not stop at the county line.

Footnotes

[1] Government of Ontario, List of Ontario Municipalities. Ontario has 444 upper-tier, lower-tier and single-tier municipalities. (Ontario)

[2] City of Greater Sudbury, Performance Measurement. The City participates in BMA comparative studies and Municipal Benchmarking Network Canada, which reports across numerous municipal services and performance measures. (Greater Sudbury)

[3] Ron A. Laschever, “Keeping Up with CEO Jones: Benchmarking and Executive Compensation,” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 93, 2013. The study found that companies preferred benchmark peers with higher CEO compensation and estimated a peer-pay effect on the firm’s own compensation. Corporate evidence is used here as an illustration of the possible mechanism, not proof that the same magnitude applies to municipalities. (IDEAS/RePEc) See also research summarized by Harvard Law School’s Forum on Corporate Governance concerning peer selection and the ratcheting potential of compensation benchmarking. (Harvard Law Forum on Governance)

[4] Stratford Group, Prince Edward County Council Remuneration Review, presented to Prince Edward County Committee of the Whole, May 14, 2026. The custom survey included 13 named Ontario municipalities and examined their remuneration practices. (Prince Edward County)

[5] Ibid. The report listed Prince Edward County’s 2025 mayoral salary at $59,290 and councillor salary at $29,645, positioning both near relevant comparator medians. (Prince Edward County)

[6] Ibid. The report showed an overall mayor/warden median of $56,537, an average of $64,359 and a salary-only median of $67,221. (Prince Edward County)

[7] Prince Edward County staff report accompanying the Stratford review. Staff reported that the County’s remuneration framework was generally aligned with comparator municipalities and typical market practice. (Prince Edward County)

[8] City of Toronto, Review of Councillor Remuneration, March 2025. The jurisdictional review used nine Canadian comparator municipalities and found Toronto councillors positioned at the 62nd percentile. (City of Toronto)

[9] Ibid. The proposed increase to $170,588.60 carried an estimated 2025 impact of $956,816.30, including salary and benefit costs. (City of Toronto)

[10] Ibid. Toronto’s People and Equity division conducted the comparative work and validated the comparator group and methodology with Korn Ferry, illustrating a hybrid internal-external model. (City of Toronto)

[11] Canadian Home Builders’ Association and Altus Group, 2024 Municipal Benchmarking Study. The study reported an average increase of approximately $27,000 per low-rise unit in development charges and planning fees, average low-rise municipal charges of $82,600, and a concentration of the highest-cost municipalities in Ontario. The study was commissioned by an industry association and should be interpreted with that context. (Canadian Home Builders’ Association)

[12] City of Greater Sudbury, Performance Measurement; City of Windsor, Municipal Benchmarking Network Canada. These sources describe collaborative municipal datasets covering multiple municipalities and service areas. (Greater Sudbury)

[13] Government of Ontario, How Municipalities and Ontario Work Together. AMO is a non-profit organization representing most Ontario municipalities and acts as a principal municipal-sector partner. (Ontario)

[14] City of Greater Sudbury, Performance Measurement. Its summary of an international KPMG benchmarking exercise notes the challenge that cities do not always measure the same services in the same ways. (Greater Sudbury)

Disclaimer

This article examines the methodology and potential systemic effects of municipal benchmarking. It does not allege that Prince Edward County, Toronto, another municipality, AMO, municipal staff or any consultant acted improperly, selected comparators for an improper purpose or recommended unjustified compensation or fee increases.

The corporate compensation research cited in this article illustrates a potential peer-comparison mechanism but does not establish that municipal benchmarking produces the same effects or that benchmarking caused any particular Ontario salary, tax or fee increase. Municipal costs are influenced by inflation, legislation, labour markets, infrastructure, service levels, geography, population growth and many other local factors.

Comparator studies remain legitimate and frequently valuable management tools. The public-policy question is whether they should be accompanied by stronger analysis of affordability, performance, efficiency, actual cost and taxpayer value. County First welcomes corrections, additional evidence and differing perspectives that contribute to a fair and informed discussion.

Help us advocate for you. Please follow, share and like our content. Join our Facebook Group.

A Special Investigation into Taxes, User Fees and Municipal Affordability especially in rural Ontario.

The Series

Part 5 – Who Decides What You Pay?
How are municipal fees established? Who recommends them? What evidence is presented to council, and how transparent is the decision-making process?

Part 6 — The Benchmarking Trap

The Cost of Living in Your Own Community

A Special Investigation into Taxes, User Fees and Municipal Affordability especially in rural Ontario.

The Series

Ontario Has 444 Municipalities. How Many Are Paying to Compare Themselves With One Another?

A Benchmark That Moves When You Approach It

Prince Edward County and the Thirteen Comparators

Toronto and the Power of a Percentile

The Same Dynamic Can Reach the Fee Counter

The Consultant Is Not the Cause

Why Pay for the Same Foundation 444 Times?

Benchmarking the Wrong Side of the Equation

A Provincial Average Is Not a Moral Standard

The Questions Council Should Ask Before Following the Market

A Better Benchmark for Ontario

The Prince Edward County Lesson

County First’s Position

📍 One Town. One Lesson.

Footnotes

Disclaimer

A Special Investigation into Taxes, User Fees and Municipal Affordability especially in rural Ontario.

The Series