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On Saturday, February 24, 2018 the Friends of Frontenac Park will be holding their Annual General Meeting. The business part of the AGM will be held at 12:00. At 1:00, we have scheduled two exciting lectures for your edification, David Miller of A2A and Hannah
Barrom of Earthroots will entertain and inform you for about 40 minutes each. Questions are welcomed. Refreshments will be served.

The Algonquin to Adirondacks Program aims to ensure ecological connectivity and help restore biodiversity within a broad region of eastern Ontario and northern New York State stretching from Algonquin Park to the Adirondack Mountains.www.a2acollaborative.org

Earthroots is a leading grassroots environmental organization dedicated to the preservation of Ontario’s wilderness, wildlife, and watersheds through research, education and action. They work in coalition with other conservation organizations to coordinate
the best strategies to move issues forward. The focus of this lecture will be on Ontario’s wolves. www.earthroots.org

Published in General Interest

Newspapers don’t often do advance stories for local council meetings but in this case, North Frontenac Mayor Ron Higgins is scheduled to present his vision for a self-sustaining community at a special Council meeting following North Frontenac’s regular meeting at the Ompah Community Hall this Friday at 1 p.m.
The agendas for both meetings are on the Township’s website.

Higgins has been working on his presentation for months now.

“The special meeting is to introduce North Frontenac’s One Small Town project to move North Frontenac into becoming a self-sustainable municipality at some point in the future,” Higgins said. “This project is literally a world first.”
And indeed it is.

Without getting into too many spoilers, here are a few things you might want to know about the concept.
A big part of it is based on ‘contribution’ from its residents whereby community members provide three hours a week (strictly voluntary) in return for benefits like free electricity.
Some of the contributions could be:

• Apiary (bee keeping): This could include the obvious honey production as well as wax for candle making, queen husbandry and starter hives.
“We would identify how much honey our community needs for those who contribute their three hours a week,” the implementation plan says. “Once we know how much honey our community needs for those who contribute their three hours a week, we triple that amount.
“The other two-thirds would be sold within and outside the community at a slightly higher price than it cost to produce but substantially lower than market prices due to a lack of significant labour related costs.
“Once the initial investment is paid off, the full two-thirds will go into the sustainability fund, which will be used to fund new projects.”

• Forest products manufacturing: Three areas have been identified in the plan — canoe making, furniture and wood pellet manufacturing.
“Over the winter of 2018 a canoe will be built in the recently acquired Plevna facility,” the plan said. “This canoe will be made to show the community the quality of canoes that can be made (and) publicity would be enhanced by raffling off the canoe.
“Once an adequate facility is in place, canoe making will become a new project and applying the contributionism model will allow free canoes for those who contribute.”
Two other proposals include furniture making once a facility has been established and pellets for pellet stoves manufacturing.
“This item (pellet manufacturing) has been talked about before and one of the restrictions to starting up was the upfront costs,” the plan said. “By building our sustainability fund, we will eventually be in a position to establish a facility within North Frontenac.”

• Aquatic and agricultural food production: The production will be based on a food requirement assessment to be conducted in early 2018.
Other areas in the planning stages include a health and wellness centre, a First Nations centre (tanning, crafts, education) and eco-tourism.
One of the more intriguing aspects of the proposal is a partnership of sorts with Langenburg Technologies from Eugene, Oregon, who use water systems to generate electricity. Under the proposal, Langenburg would install approximately $20 million worth of equipment and recover their investment by selling power into the grid. To do this, they would require an electrical infrastructure assessment that would cost $280,000 but Higgins has said he’s had discussions with an Ontario Electricity Distributors representative who suggested this project could “probably get full funding.”
If the electrical generation aspect works, then providing free electricity to the various contribution activities should provide an aspect that has been an impediment for many would-be startups in the past.
“As an example if we were to mass produce tilapia (the common name for almost a hundred species of cichlid fish that are increasing in importance in aquaculture and aquaponics) there would be about four harvests per year with a capacity to produce about 240 tons per year with a yield of 35 per cent to produce fillets,” the plan said. “the required total installed electrical effect is about 200kW for the fish farming equipment and the average effect during normal operation will be 100-120kW.”

If Council approves the plan, the first step would be to get funding in place for the electricity infrastructure assessment, Higgins’ presentation concludes.
Council will be presented with three options ranging from accepting the report for information purposes only to authorizing the Mayor to supporting implementation of the plan.

Published in NORTH FRONTENAC

South Frontenac Council decided to re-advertise a public meeting regarding a request to sever a lot on Itinerary Lake in response to an Inverary Lake Association letter at its regular meeting Tuesday night in Sydenham. The proposed severance would create a new non-waterfront lot on Round Lake Road (15 acres) with the retained portion becoming a smaller lakefront lot (37.8 acres with 434 metres water frontage).

Planner Lindsay Mills said the resulting rezoning application could be supported from a planning perspective and both the health unit and conservation authority had no objections. However, in a letter dated Sept. 14, the lake association expressed concerns that proper procedure had not been followed. Mills admitted that the notice placed on the property had the wrong date for the public meeting on it but “when I was notified of this, it was corrected.” Members of the lake association in attendance said this error had not given them sufficient time to prepare for the public meeting. “I wonder if we could postpone this public meeting to give the lake association time to respond,” said Coun. Ross Sutherland. CAO Wayne Orr said that the public meeting would have to be adjourned and re-advertised.

Council passed a resolution to that effect. Mills agreed to respond in writing to the lake association’s concerns. Budget time again It’s not quite budget time but the jockeying for economic positions appears to have begun in earnest. Treasurer Louise Fragnito was at Council asking for direction and to remind Council of the long-range budget plans implemented in 2015. If Council were to strictly adhere to those plans, she said, then taxes would have to increase by 2.2 per cent in order to maintain capital reserves of $10,445,421. If the tax increase were 2.0 per cent (as Council has expressed interest in maintaining), then capital reserves would be at $7,796,901.

“I hate budget time,” said Mayor Ron Vandewal. “Anyways you know I’m going to argue it to death.” From the list of long-term projects Fragnito presented, Vandewal singled out a separate intersections fund (“just a way of increasing the roads budget”), a reserve for new fire halls (“putting aside $1.5 million for a new fire hall every three years is fantasy land”) and a million-dollar reserve for a new library in Verona. Coun. John McDougall said the original plan for libraries was to build a small one in Verona and a new small one in Sydenham. But a grant became available to build a big one in Sydenham and that’s what happened. Still, being a councilor representing Portland District, he wasn’t necessarily opposed to a new library for Verona.

Coun. Ross Sutherland thought there was too much being put away for roads. “There’s no reason roads should increase by five per cent when inflation is two per cent,” he said. “You’ve given us plenty to think about,” said CAO Wayne Orr. “So we’re going to work with a two per cent increase and $10 million in reserves. COW’s staying home next week Council officially cancelled next week’s (Sept. 26) Committee of the Whole meeting as there are no reports forthcoming from senior management in accordance with the unofficial policy adopted at last week’s Committee of the Whole meeting.

Published in SOUTH FRONTENAC

Addington Highlands is still tinkering with its waste disposal (tipping) fees but Council did instruct staff at its regular meeting Tuesday afternoon to bring back another draft schedule to a future meeting. Council did seemingly establish some parameters, for example eliminating the distinct between compact and full-size pick-up trucks as well as the number of axles on trailers, but actual charges are yet to be determined. “If you’ve got a small truck, you just pile it higher,” said Reeve Henry Hogg. There was general agreement that the charge to dispose of a single mattress should conceivably be less than that for a queen size but again the actual charge has yet to be determined. In fact, most fees are still under discussion.

“I don’t know anywhere you can dump a dual axle for 20 bucks,” said Coun. Bill Cox. “We charge $30 for a mattress whether it’s twin or queen,” said CAO/Clerk-Treasurer Christine Reed. “Currently, we’re charging more for a mattress than a truck load.” “There are so many variations,” said Coun. Tony Fritsch. “Unless you’ve got a weigh scale and taking tonnage, it’s hard to determine,” said Hogg. “If we knew how to make it easy, we’d do it.” “Well, we’ve got to establish something,” said Cox. “We’ve only got two years left at the Kaladar site.” “Some of this may just be temporary,” said Hogg. “the province passed the Waste-Free Ontario Act which puts the onus on producers to dispose of their products.”

Post Office Closure - Following a presentation from Diane Mitchell, national coordinator for the Save Canada Post Campaign that featured 45 recommendations, Council voted to support the Campaign by signing and mailing a sample letter provided by Mitchell. Mitchell said the Post Office in Cloyne is on a list the Campaign is asking for a moratorium on closure for but the outlet in Flinton is not. Coun. Bill Cox pointed that the Flinton operation is an “outlet” as opposed to the Cloyne Post Office.

Salvage Yards - Council passed Bylaw 0504/2017 being a bylaw to regulate and govern any business carried on within the Township and for prohibiting or regulating and the use of any land and structures for storing used motor vehicles for the purpose of wrecking or dismantling them or for salvaging parts thereof for sale or other disposal. There was no discussion of the bylaw before passage. ■

Published in ADDINGTON HIGHLANDS
With the participation of the Government of Canada