Over the past few months I have been asked a couple of times to make sure that I let our readers know either that the average ratepayer will pay $34 more per $150,000 in assessment in one township; or that the tax rate increase is 0.03% in another township; or that the increase in another budget, when weighed against growth, is only 2%.

As the dummy in this scenario I have decided to maintain my practice of recent years, to focus on numbers that I understand, on the thinking that if I at least understand something, maybe the readers will be able to understand what I am writing. That presupposes that I will make myself understood - not always a likely possibility, I know.

What I do understand is that municipalities deliver services, and once a year they get each of their department heads to submit a budget, an estimate of what it will cost to run their own operation for the year. Municipalities also collect money for services that they do not deliver directly but must pay for, such as policing. They also receive money from other levels of government under ongoing and one-time granting programs. This all comes together in a number, the “levy to ratepayers”, which is the total amount that will be collected from all of the property owners in a given jurisdiction.

When you compare the 2016 “levy” with the 2015 “levy” you come up with the tax increase. In South Frontenac, whose budget was completed back in December, the increase was $1 million, or 6.66%. In Central Frontenac, the increase was $600,000, or 9.3%. In North Frontenac, the increase was $163,000, or 2.98%, and in Addington Highlands it was $138,000, or 5.58%.

While those numbers are real, they do not compare well with each other, because each township faces different sets of circumstances, and also each township has different amounts of money in reserve funds for future needs.

Translating those global numbers into individual tax bills is not straightforward. We pay taxes based on the assessed value of our properties, and those assessments are done by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC). Assessments go up when properties are improved, and they also tend to go up just about every year as MPAC accounts for the gradual increase in property values over time. As assessments go up, the township receives more money from the ratepayers even if they apply the same tax rate.

Therefore, while the levy to ratepayers may go up 6% or more, the tax rate may stay the same. Some municipal officials and politicians have been targeting the tax rate in budgeting, instead of just looking at spending from year to year, telling themselves and the ratepayers that the “tax rate is flat” or the “tax rate is up by the rate of inflation”.

The problem is that ratepayers pay cash, not tax rates, and if more cash is needed, one way or another more tax is paid.

Also, when assessments are brought into the equation, each property goes up at its own rate, so while I might be impacted in a minimal way for my residential property on a back road, my neighbour who lives on a lake might face a major increase.

There is no way to realistically talk about the impacts of tax increases on individuals, and even taking an average does little good.

Municipal politicians do not want to increase taxes. However, they also need to make sure the township they serve has enough money to take care of its responsibilities each year and over the long term.

That means tax increases in most years. All we ask is for them to be honest with themselves and with us as they work on their budgets. Being honest requires that they make sure that when they talk about spending, they talk only about spending, and they compare spending with the only thing they can compare it with, spending in the previous year.

There is no other way around it. If it costs $1 million to clear snow one year and a $1.1 million the next year, $100,000 more needs to be collected, and one way or another the taxpayers are going to have to pay that extra money.

We pay municipal politicians, rather poorly, to make decisions about how to spend our money. We ask that they be careful, and that they be honest about that spending. If we don't like how they spend it, we can vote them out. But if we do that, we need to find others in our midst to take their place.

Public meeting and budget adoption set for March 18

The budget process in North Frontenac has been underway for several months, with the township having passed their capital budget back in October.

Finally, a complete draft budget was presented to Council by staff last Friday, February 19, which included the operating and capital budgets.

Staff proposed to spend just under $13 million this year, including monies to be transferred to Frontenac County and the Ministry of Education.

Of those expenditures, Frontenac County ratepayers are on tap for $5,570,000, an increase of just over $100,000 or 1.87% over 2015.

In order to get to that number, staff had to basically keep all departmental spending at the same or less than in 2015 because the township is facing an increase of $173,209 in the cost of policing by the Ontario Provincial Police.

That amount is partially offset by a $76,400 increase in transfers this year from the Ontario government through the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund (OMPF), which is the vehicle for the province to support rural and remote townships in covering their financial obligations. The township will receive $1.2 million from the OMPF in 2016.

However, still facing a new $97,000 cost, it was up to staff to find ways to trim operating costs in order to keep the budget from increasing beyond the rate of inflation.

“We managed to find savings in operations without affecting service levels, while maintaining our reserve funds and keeping our commitment to our long term asset management plan,” said Treasurer Kelly Watkins when contacted by phone earlier this week.

In order to make this happen, costs for administration have been cut by $20,000; for protection and emergency services by $55,000; for waste disposal by $37,000; and for recycling by $27,000.

Some of these decreases are due to changes in the way administrative costs are being allocated to different services, and others come from projected costs based on actual costs from recent years.

When Council went over the budget last week, they made a few changes, and added some costs, bringing the overall increase to just over 2%.

One item that is not included in the 2016 budget is the cost of the renovation and upgrade to the township office, a project that has a very preliminary estimated cost of $900,000. Although there is $370,000 in reserves for the project, the remaining $530,000 is not included in the 2016 budget. Instead, a committee has been struck to look in detail at the project and report back later this year. The project will likely be funded through an infrastructure loan, and payments towards that loan will come out of budgets starting in 2017 at the earliest.

At this point it is projected that policing costs will increase by another $140,000 in 2017 as part of a five-year phase-in of a new OPP billing formula that has hit many local communities hard, but none as hard as North Frontenac.  

Levy increase sits at $400,000 or 6.2%, but reserves remain at 2015 levels

Central Frontenac Council spent a day going through a line-by-line consideration of the township's 2016 budget last Friday, with department heads trooping up one after another to explain their spending requests.

Of all the numbers facing them, the largest impact comes from a $235,377 increase in the cost of policing, which the township has no option but to pay. That cost alone is responsible for a 3.5% increase in the amount the township will be requisitioning from ratepayers.

Among other fixed costs that are up this year are salaries – 0.9%; heat and hydro – 6%; and insurance – 4.4%. These increases are mitigated somewhat by an increase in provincial transfers under the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund of $80,000.

In order to keep the budget from slipping into double-digit increase territory, Public Works Manager John Badgley has deferred the purchase of a vehicle for one year, and has restricted major road work to the south end of Arden Road, and Henderson Road from Hwy. 7 north.

A request to make a donation to Pine Meadow Nursing Home for new windows has been deferred to later budget deliberations.

The budget that staff presented to Council last week was more bare bones than the one that came out of the meeting. However, that budget also saw a decrease in reserves to 16% of the annual budget from the current 17%. The recommended level, according to the township's auditor, is 20%. Council has restored the reserves to just under the 17% level.

Council will look once again at the budget in early March at their regularly scheduled meeting. No further special budget meetings have been scheduled and no date has been set for adoption.

“All I can say at this point is that these are draft budget numbers. Council will have chances to make alterations before the budget is finalized,” said Treasurer Michael McGovern.

Local municipalities have received notification about funding for 2016 from the Province of Ontario under the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund (OMPF). While the funding favors smaller, more rural municipalities, which are the ones that will be hardest hit by increases in the cost of policing services starting next year, the OMPF has not increased to any great extent.

North Frontenac Township, which will be paying over $145,000 more for OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) costs than they did in 2015, have seen their OMPF allocation go up by $77,100, to $1.183 million.

Central Frontenac will see an increase of $76,400, to $1.74 million.

Addington Highlands will see an increase of $47,000, to $1.65 million.

South Frontenac will see an increase of $17,700, to $1.49 million.

The provincial government set up a funding program after a series of costs were downloaded to municipal governments by the Province of Ontario over 15 years ago. These included policing costs, which until then had been fully funded in rural municipalities by the province. The revised version of the program, now called OMPF, is designed to compensate smaller municipalities for unspecified costs related to running a municipality.

The stated goal of the OMPF, according to the provincial government website, “is to help support areas with limited property assessment and recognize the challenges of northern and rural municipalities, while targeting funding to those with more challenging fiscal circumstances.”

This week South Frontenac passed their 2016 budget with a 2.00% increase in taxes.

That sounds pretty reasonable. But when you look at the budget summary you see some other numbers.

The first number that I look at with these budgets is the “levy to ratepayers”. That is the total amount of money that will be collected from the ratepayers

In South Frontenac the number is about $16.5 million, up from about $15.5 million in 2015, an increase of 6.66%.

How then, do we get 2.00% A 2.00 increase in the levy to ratepayers would mean a budget of $15.5 million, $700,000 less than the one that was approved on Tuesday night.

That extra money is going to come from growth. South Frontenac's finance department calculates that there has been about 4.4% assessment growth between 2015 and 2016.

The finance department is cashing in on new assessment, either from brand new construction that is being assessed for the first time, or re-assessments due to renovations and expansions of existing properties.

On the surface it is legitimate to take these things into account. New homes and new people moving into a township lead to increased demand for services, and ultimately more costs for the township.

However the cost don't necessarily hit right away, or ever in some cases.

The increase in assessment does not lead to an increase in the cost of running the township office, the road budget does not have to go up, and waste management is paid for by a separate levy by household. When new subdivisions are built the roads that are turned over are in prefect shape, they don't need maintenance other than snow clearing, for 10 or more years.

While it is basically legitimate to cash in on growth when calculating taxation, the fact is that the increased assessment does not result directly in added costs this year. What these increases do, however, is create budgetary space for staff.

Instead of living with a cost of living increase and little more, they are able to do more; fix more roads, buy more vehicles, improve ball-fields, build fire halls, while still saying they have kept to the budgetary goal set for them by Council.

If Council, however, had indicated they want staff to budget directly to the levy and keep to 2%, South Frontenac staff would have had to keep their budget ask to $15.8 million.

They would have had $700,000 less to spend.

It is worth noting that smaller, slower growing township's such as North and Central Frontenac, who will not complete their budgets until the new year, will not have the same kind of luxury that South Frotenac enjoys.

Particularly in the case of North Frontenac, they are faced with debilitating cost increases in policing this year and for three more years, have much less assessment growth to use as a buffer, and do not have the kinds of economy of scale that South Frontenac enjoys.

It would be unfair to say, if and when they bring in increases that are well above 2%, that they should take some lessons in management from the tough, frugal South Frontenac politicians.

At that time, we should all remember that in South Frontenac, 6.66% ($1 million) more was taken in through taxation in 2016 than it was in 2015.

Sitting as a Committee of the Whole, Frontenac County Council had their last look at the 2016 budget on November 12, and are set to approve the document at a meeting this week.

The budget was developed with a target for operational costs of a 1.2% increase, based on the annualized Consumer Price Index increase as of August. Although costs were higher, a reserve fund was used to get to that number. On top of that, Council approved two extra expenditures of $30,000, one for a study and one for an allocation to the sustainability reserve fund, bringing the increase up to 1.9%.

Then, another $56,000 (0.65%) was put aside for replacement costs for county-owned buildings, bringing the total increase to 2.55%.

The only outstanding item is a potential donation to Pine Meadow Nursing Home, which will be decided before the budget is finalized (see Pine Meadow on page 1).

If the County does decide to support Pine Meadow, and does so over five years ($21,150 per year) it would increase the overall budget by 0.25%, bringing the overall increase to 2.8%.

Before sending the budget to this week's meeting for approval, South Frontenac Mayor Ron Vandewal asked, “Can I make my comments now or should I make them later?”

“You might as well make them now,” said Deputy Warden Frances Smith, who was chairing the meeting.

“I will not support the budget. I did not support the Economic Development strategy or the cost. I am not in favour of 2.5%. I will be voting no to this,” said Vandewal.

“Do you have a number that you could support?” asked Smith.

“I do not want to go over 2%,” Vandewal replied.

“Should we bring this back on the 18th of November or do you want to bring it back in December?” Smith then asked Vandewal.

“I won't be here next week, so December is best for me,” said Vandewal.

“I might not be here on December 16,” said Warden Dennis Doyle.

A motion to consider the budget bylaw on November 18 was approved. In a recorded vote, only Ron Vandewal voted against the motion.

Betty Hunter and Ernest Lapchinski, members of Northbrook-based Pine Meadow Nursing Home's management board, appeared before Frontenac County Council on October 21, seeking financial support for new windows at the home.

Pine Meadow Nursing Home, a 60-bed long term care facility, is located in Addington Highlands Township, County of Lennox and Addington, but up to 50% of its residents at any given time come to the home from North and Central Frontenac, Ernest Lapchinski pointed out.

Over the years representatives from the home have made numerous presentations to Frontenac County seeking funding, mostly for the major renovation and upgrade to Pine Meadow that was completed in 2014.

“L&A County put in $250,000 over 10 years, and Addington Highlands waived the building fees for the project, but Frontenac County declined several requests for support,” said Betty Hunter.

Frontenac County operates the municipally owned Fairmount Home. In rejecting annual requests for funding, successive Frontenac County Councils argued that maintaining Fairmount is already a burden for county ratepayers, and satisfies the legislative requirement that the county pay into the long term care system in Ontario.

There is a precedent for the county to support capital projects for health care institutions outside of its jurisdiction, however. The budget includes a 10-year commitment of $25,000 per year towards capital upgrades to Kingston General Hospital.

“What we are looking for today is funding support for the replacement of 11 bay windows in the original Pine Meadow building, which was built in 1993 to standards that are not what they are today. The new section of the building is up to those standards, but there are still challenges in the original building. The repair is extensive since it includes the supports, and the cost is $13,530 per window plus HST, about $165,000, which would be about $25,000 per year for seven years from Frontenac County,” said Betty Hunter. “It is a matter of some urgency.”

“The home operates within the funding envelope provided by the Ministry of Health,” said Ernest Lapchinski, “and we manage our operations within budget and have always done so, but since the home is owned by the Land O'Lakes Community Services, which has its own funding challenges, there is nowhere to turn except fund raising and grants for capital projects such as this one.”

“For years Pine Meadow has been coming to us looking for money. Council needs to find some niche to allocate money to this building, which is important to our residents in the North. We have to find an envelope to pull that money from; that is our challenge,” said North Frontenac councilor, John Inglis.

“May I point out there is no long-term facility in Frontenac County,” said Betty Hunter, referring to the fact that Fairmount Home, although county-owned, is located within the City of Kingston,

“I would try to see us do something; when it comes to budget time, I will be supporting this,” said Central Frontenac Mayor Frances Smith.

While Pine Meadow (60 beds) and Fairmount Home (128 beds) receive money from the Ministry of Long Term Care according to the same funding formula, and also charge resident fees, as a municipally owned home, Fairmount receives an additional $2.6 million from municipal sources. Of that money, $1.7 million comes from the City of Kingston and $900,000 from Frontenac County. The total operating budget for Fairmount Home in 2015 is $11.6 million.

The discrepancy in funding has been brought up at Frontenac County Council in the past, particularly under the late warden Bud Clayton, who coincidentally also chaired the Pine Meadow Management Committee.

Steve Silver, the interim administrator of Fairmount Home, said recently that care staff tend to be paid more at municipal homes as compared to the not-for-profit sector, based on how arbitration hearings tend to settle contract disputes between unions and management in the municipal sector.

Silver, along with Chef Administrative Officer Kelly Pender and Councilor John Inglis, are visiting Pine Meadow this week to get a first hand look at the operation and its finances. They will also be paying a similar visit to Rideaucrest Home, which is another municipally owned home in the City of Kingston.

Frontenac County will be entering budget deliberations for 2016 on November 12, when the draft budget will be tabled by staff.

Frontenac County staff are preparing to bring forth a draft budget for Council's consideration next month, but in keeping with CAO Kelly Pender's penchant for a drama-free environment, Council can expect little in the way of surprises.

Staff are planning to keep increases to within a 1.25% window, and with an additional 0.65% to be slated for a reserve fund for long term capital replacement costs, the increase to the taxation will stay under 2%.

A number of small capital projects and a new Economic Development employee (to be hired on a three-year contract) were considered by Council last week in a Committee of the Whole meeting devoted to budget preparation. These costs are to be funded through added increases to the budget, through transfers from existing reserve funds, or grants.

These include small expenditures at Fairmount Home. These include a $5,400 cost to the County for a study aimed at establishing that the water supply to Fairmount Home is not influenced by groundwater. There is also a $12,800 cost to the county for a septic system study at Fairmount. Each of these costs are associated with potential savings in the near future or mitigation of major costs in the medium to long term.

Frontenac Paramedic Services Chief, Paul Charbonneau, proposed an increase in the staffing in the logistics department, from 1.6 persons to 2 full time people as well as a dedicated vehicle. The total cost of these changes is about $7,500 per year to the County. It will be offset by decreases in contracting costs as well as vehicle-related savings by not using ambulances to deliver supplies to stations within Kingston and Frontenac County.

Both Frontenac Paramedic Services and Fairmount Home each cost over $10 million per year to operate, and are funded by county ratepayers as well as City of Kingston ratepayers and provincial ministries.

In receiving these proposals, members of Frontenac County Council asked technical questions for the most part. They will be up for final approval when the budget is presented as a package later in the fall.

Proposals for changes in scope for the new combined department of Planning Services and Economic Development were more controversial, partly because the department's operations are entirely funded by county taxation.

As part of a new work plan for the economic development department, Department Head Joe Gallivan and Manager of Economic Development Anne Marie Young are proposing to create a new position, that of Economic Development co-ordinator.

In the work plan the position is described in the following way: “Through the work done on the Economic Development Charter, it was recommended that an Economic Development Coordinator position be created to focus directly on implementation of the Economic Action Plans. This position would act as the ‘point person’ for working with existing and potential businesses in the Frontenacs.”

The cost of the position is set at $210,000 over three years, to be funded using existing reserves, but the work plan includes a $30,000 allocation in 2016 to the “sustainability reserve”.

“I still don't see why this position is necessary,” said South Frontenac Mayor Ron Vandewal, who expressed his misgivings when the idea was first proposed a month ago. “The CFDC [Frontenac Community Futures Development Corporation] already works with businesses all the time.”

Anne Marie Young presented a chart that showed how expenditures in Economic Development in Frontenac County are lower, per capita, than its neighboring municipalities.

“Look at Prince Edward County; they spend eight times as much as we do, and have built up a tourism and recreation economy we can only dream about. And where did they come from? I was born there and I remember that it was only made up of scrub land and farms. We are taking baby steps here. But we need someone to do the outreach if I am going to work in the office getting all the grants that are available,” said Anne Marie Young in response.

Council voted to put the Economic Development Plan, including the new position, in the 2016 budget.

The decision will be subject to further scrutiny when the budget is presented to Council on November 12.

Taxes to remain stable, on an upward curve

Frontenac County ratepayers will not see large increases in the county portion of their tax bill in coming years. However, as long as the Consumer Price Index goes up, so will taxes, but at a little higher rate.

Frontenac County Council approved a budget policy that sets as a target the annualized Consumer Price Index (CPI) in Ontario from August of each year, and adds an extra 0.65% per year for the next 10 years to pay towards a capital sustainability reserve. That reserve fund is in place to cover for ageing infrastructure, such as the county office complex in Glenburnie.

While the budget process will require that each department demonstrate that it requires the extra money to maintain the level of service they offered in the previous year, the over-riding assumption of the process is that the increase will be necessary. If the budget deviates from the target in one department, the needs of other departments will be looked at, followed by the replenishing of various reserve funds that may have been depleted over time. Only once all of those factors are considered would the possibility of setting a lower tax rate be put forward.

Similarly, if the needs of the departments exceed the target, reserve funds will be used as much as possible to keep the county from levying an increase above the target.

“In general it is preferable to plan for stable increases in county taxation, rather than a roller coaster ride where the levy can swing up and down,” said Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Pender. “That way the lower-tier councils and, ultimately, the ratepayers, can make their own financial plans without fear of surprises coming from the county.”

The 0.65% added levy was adopted by County Council last year after completing an asset management plan, as called for by the provincial government, in an effort to avoid large costs over the long term. The county has less infrastructure than most, if not all other counties in Ontario, because with municipal amalgamation the county roads system was divested to the local municipalities. The only water treatment plant in Frontenac County is in Sydenham and it is owned and managed by South Frontenac Township.

Frontenac County ratepayers pay the county rate in addition to the rates set by their own municipality and the rate set by the Ministry of Education for school taxes. The county rate is applied equally to each property owner based on the assessed value of their property as determined by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC).

County supports maintaining Land Information Ontario:

People who visit Frontenac County maps at frontenacmaps.ca will notice that, when zooming in to near ground level, some of features from the past tend to linger on the mapping. That is because, until recently, the digital imagery that is the base layer of Frontenacmaps.ca was from 2008. That all changed earlier this year when new imagery, produced in 2014, replaced the 2008 imagery.

That six-year cycle of new imagery is a produced by Land Information Ontario, a division of the Ministry of Natural Resources, and sold to municipalities. Because of the economy of scale offered by a service that is province-wide in scope, smaller, rural municipalities such as Frontenac County pay less for imagery than they would otherwise, according to a report to Frontenac County Council by David Millard, the county’s manager of Information Systems.

“In 2014, the County acquired 5,727 sq. km. of imagery through DRAPE (Digital Raster Acquisition Project - East), at a cost of $17,473,” Millard wrote in his report.

The report recommended that the County send a letter to the province to urge them to renew the mandate for Land Information Ontario beyond 2017.

The imagery is of use to planning and building departments on a township level, and helps with bylaw enforcement as well.

The County is going to send the letter urging the province to keep Land Information Ontario in place.

5.29% increase on tap for North Frontenac ratepayers

It was a long day for councilors at North Frontenac's special budget meeting on February 17. Treasurer Angela Millar presented the draft budget and Council spent the day going through it with a fine-toothed comb.

Looking to cut the fat where they could, they approved, in principle, a new budget that will mean a 5.29% increase in the total to be raised from North Frontenac residents as compared to last year, or a $274,820 increase in actual dollars. However, the increase in the assessed value of North Frontenac properties will mean a 0.52% decrease in the tax rate at the township level.

Councilor Inglis was concerned about whether the assessment funds were higher because of new construction or just re-assessment. “If [the increase] was entirely due to everybody's houses being re-assessed then you don't have an argument to increase their taxes,” Inglis said.

Policing is the biggest challenge for North Frontenac Township as they begin to shoulder the cost increase in policing by the OPP. Policing will cost North Frontenac residents $365,996 this year, up from $230,000 in 2013, representing 45% of the increase in township taxation. OPP costs will grow to $845,817 by 2019.

“Who are the crooks in this community?” Councilor Gerry Martin asked jokingly.

Mayor Ron Higgins plans to ask Frontenac County about commissioning a study on sharing policing and fire services throughout the Frontenacs, in hopes that there might be some way to reduce future costs associated with these services.

Councilor Denis Bedard was in agreement, saying, “If we could share services in terms of tendering equipment...if we have to tender a tanker for example, and we can tender two or three at the same time...I'm sure that could be coordinated. There is a huge cost savings in something like that. If you're buying three tankers from the manufacturers instead of one....”

Treasurer Millar's presentation pointed out increases in WSIB fees and heating costs, along with the policing expenses. She also highlighted a decrease in fuel costs, and over $12,000 in savings on hydro. A big portion of those savings comes from the L.E.D. streetlights that Corey Klatt, the Manager of Community Development, installed throughout the township.

Treasurer Millar said, “It's proven to be a real positive thing for us to do. We're seeing a huge savings.” As well, there was revenue generated from the MicroFit program, which brought in over $5,000 of revenue from the solar panel array on the roof of the township office.

It was evident that the size, and remoteness, of the township creates a serious problem when budgeting. Animal Control, for instance, is projected to lose over $6,000 this year because the closest service provider has to come from Kingston. The large territory to be covered is part of the policing issue as well. The breadth of the county makes resource collaboration a challenge, which is reflected in inflated service fees.

Both Mayor Higgins and Councilor Inglis suggested that Council look to the county level when preparing their next budget, as both were impressed with how effectively Frontenac County presented their budget earlier this month.

Council “privy” to eco-tourism development

Council decided during Tuesday's budget draft approval to go ahead with the purchase of four accessible privies to be located throughout the township. The locations weren't yet confirmed but the idea is to place them in high-traffic areas where there are currently no available washroom facilities. Corey Klatt explained, “Most of these places are at the boat launches...our scenic routes. They come from three hours, four hours away and they don't have a place to go to the washroom so they go at the boat launch and we're constantly picking up toilet paper...”
Council also approved, on the budget draft, the purchase of a new tractor to be used for clearing snow and flooding the ice at the Plevna rink and clearing snow off the star-gazing pad. It could possibly also be used for other applications, such as dragging beaches. This will eliminate a current contract for rink maintenance.

Councilor Inglis worried about losing his shirt

Councilor Fred Perry made a suggestion to council that they look into purchasing jackets with the North Frontenac logo on them, to be worn when councilors are out representing the county at conferences, meetings, etc. He said “if you want to be professional you have to dress professional.”

Councilor Inglis was not impressed. “I'm not in school anymore,” said Inglis.

Councilor Bedard explained, “We're trying to sell our brand. We're trying to sell this municipality. What better way to do it? And it's cheap.”

Mayor Higgins agreed that it was a good way to promote the township. It was decided that money would be pulled from a marketing reserve to cover the costs of seven jackets, or shirts, which will feature the North Frontenac logo/name.