Seniors lose out as Frontenac County Council plays politics

Jeff Green | Oct 05, 2022

Two quite minor items at the Frontenac County Council meeting a couple of weeks ago revealed something about the council being out of touch with each other, and with the real workings of Frontenac County.

While township council meetings are not exactly riveting events, they do, for the most part, deal with day-to-day issues and infrastructure- roads, bridges, waste sites, creating and severing building lots, etc.

But Frontenac County is ‘upper tier’ and sometimes the issues at the county table seem far removed from the reality in Frontenac County itself. For the most part, members of Council maintain a co-operative attitude towards each other and county staff.

That was broken early this year when a staff-initiated integrity commissioner report aired some staff grievances against North Frontenac Mayor Ron Higgins and his response to the report did really satisfy county staff or the rest of council.

Now that we are at the tail end of the current county mandate, more of the veneer of co-operation at the county council table has worn off. Here are three items from the September 21 meeting that demonstrate this.

Central Frontenac Mayor Frances Smith prepared a motion, seconded by South Frontenac Mayor Ron Vandewal, to take back $337,500 that was set aside in 2014 as seed money for North Frontenac to arrange for the construction of five affordable units for seniors in the township.

Each township in Frontenac County was allocated the same amount. Since 2014, only one, Frontenac Islands, has made use of the money. They put together a project that has been built by a private sector developer in Marysville.

South Frontenac and Central Frontenac both have been working in recent years on projects in their own townships, but it could be years before anything gets built.

At this point, both townships are waiting for the creation of a municipal services corporation (MSC) to be set up, and then they will start planning in earnest. Both are hoping to build much larger projects than the 5 units envisioned in 2014, which is why they are waiting for the corporation to be set up.

North Frontenac surveyed their residents in 2017, and found they were not interested in having a 5-unit project and asked Frontenac County Council to let them use their $337,500 for services aimed at helping seniors remain in the township in their own homes. Council refused. In 2019 and 2020, North Frontenac tried to put a housing project together, going so far as to issue a request for proposal in 2021 for a builder to take on the project. There were no takers. They came back to Frontenac County in September with some options for the use of the money.

In response, Frances Smith moved the following, seconded by South Frontenac Mayor Ron Vandewal.

“Be It Resolved That the Council of the County of Frontenac allocate the North Frontenac share of the 2014 Seniors Housing reserve (approximately $337,500) to the start up cost related to the MSC (municipal services corporation), with the specific intent to provide a full range of housing options for County citizens, including seniors.”

There are two other facts that are relevant here. First, the MSC is being set up as a mans of improving options for residential and commercial development in Frontenac County. Senior’s housing was not central to its business plan, but both South and Central Frontenac have attached their own plans for senior’s housing to it.

Secondly, North Frontenac decided to opt out buying into the MSC in early August, which was the prerogative, on the grounds that it will not be of benefit to North Frontenac ratepayers. At the North Frontenac Council table, Ron Higgin’s cast the deciding no vote on the motion which would have seen North Frontenac opt in to the corporation.

Because North Frontenac opted out, most of the $97,000 that North Frontenac ratepayers would have put towards the setup costs of the corporation will come out the Central and South Frontenac budgets.

That is, unless Frances Smith’s motion is accepted, in which case almost half of the cost of setting up the corporation will be covered.

Money set aside to help house North Frontenac Seniors will provide about half of the setup costs for a corporation that their township has opted out of, creating cost savings for ratepayers in the rest of the county.

To be clear, the intent of the MSC is to attract large, deep pocketed developers to Frontenac County by making it cheaper to build here than it is now. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. But using tax dollars that were intended to help Seniors in North Frontenac for that purpose, is neither fair nor equitable.

Dennis Doyle

At the same county meeting, a proposal to spend an extra $5,000 for a sit-down warden’s dinner instead of a wine and cheese reception, put forward by Warden Dennis Doyle, was rejected by council on the grounds that is was not appropriate to have a dinner when ratepayers are facing the fallout from inflation and a potential reception.

Dennis Doyle has been the Mayor of Frontenac Islands and a member of Frontenac County Council for 12 years, and served as warden on 3 different occasions, including during the 150th anniversary of Frontenac County in 2015. He is not running again, and in his final weeks as Warden he wanted to host a dinner on Wolfe Island. It would be a good way to showcase the Wolfe Island agricultural and artistic community to the rest of the county, and would have been a fitting end to his career in municipal politics.

Frontenac could have taken the offer by Dennis Doyle as a generous invitation, but instead they saw it as a frivolous expense and quashed it.

By the way, Dennis Doyle has been a stalwart supporter of Frontenac County, serving as chair of KFLAPH before and during COVID, and rarely if ever missing a committee or council meeting for 12 years. He defended the interests of Frontenac Islands, but never stood in the way of any attempt to further the interests of mainland Frontenac County.

To say no to this $5,000 seems rather shoddy. Anyone who claims that among all of the millions in reserve funds Frontenac County has access to, $5,000 can’t be found, is not looking very hard.

By the way, Dennis Doyle is a senior citizen.