About

How this works

Council Books takes the records a town already has to publish and turns them into something anyone can read in ten minutes.

What we read

• Financial reports. Every Ontario town reports its finances to the Province each year in the same format (the Financial Information Return). Because the format is the same, towns can be compared fairly.
• Budgets. What the town planned to spend.
• Meeting minutes. What council decided, when it met in private, and when members declared a conflict of interest.

How a question gets raised

Some questions are found automatically: the same rules run on every town, looking for costs that grew much faster than prices, spending well above similar towns, and signs of money trouble. Others are found by a person reading the town's documents. Both are marked so you can tell which is which.

Our fairness rules

1. Questions, never accusations. We never say someone committed fraud. That is for investigators and courts. We say what is unusual and ask why.
2. Always the innocent explanation. Every question lists ordinary reasons it could be true.
3. Every fact has a source. If we cannot link to it, we do not say it.
4. Compare like with like. A small rural town is compared with small rural towns, not cities.
5. Public roles only. We name elected council members and senior officials acting in their public role. Residents appointed to local committees are shown by their initials. We do not name family members or private citizens.
6. Answers get published. When a town answers a question, we add the answer next to it.

What this site can't tell you

Council Books is a starting point for questions, not a verdict. Please read it with these limits in mind:

• Totals, not payments. Financial reports show how much was spent on each service, not who was paid or why. Favouritism, split contracts or overpaying would only show up in the town's list of payments, which is not public unless someone requests it.
• Old and new numbers. The most complete figures are from the latest year the town has reported to the Province, which can be more than a year old. Newer budget figures are less final and change after the audit.
• Different bookkeeping. Towns sort the same costs into different categories, so comparisons between towns are a guide, not proof.
• What we haven't read. We read the documents linked on each page. Some things are only in reports we have not seen, in conversations, or in closed meetings.
• Our mistakes. We check our work, but we can still get something wrong: a number copied from a scanned page, a misread sentence, a link that has moved. If you find a mistake, please tell us.

Corrections

If something here is wrong or out of date, or if you work for the town and have an answer to one of the questions, please get in touch. We will correct mistakes quickly and note what changed.

When we change a claim, we list it here: what the page said, what it says now, and why. We do not quietly rewrite a page.

No corrections since the site went public.

Who pays for this

Council Books is paid for by its readers, through Ko-fi. It runs no ad networks, carries at most five labelled local sponsors on a town's page, and takes no money from candidates, political parties, councils or municipal staff. No one can pay to add, change or remove a question. Our rules about money are on the Support page.

What comes next

Every Ontario town, township and city that runs its own local services has an automatic page, built from the yearly report every municipality files with the Province, with the same plain categories and the same checks. We have also read the budgets, audited statements and reports of the places listed under "Looked at closely" on the home page, from Toronto down, and we are working through the rest, largest first. Support is what lets us read more of them.