Frontenac County Council Feb 20/13

Jeff Green | Feb 27, 2013

Frontenac County levy increase at 1.2%, and falling

About an hour into a budget meeting last week (February 20), it was looking like Frontenac County Council would never finalise their 2013 budget.

In an attempt to go line by line through the budget, Council was mired on page 11 of a 118-page document and they were not making much headway.

It turned out, however, that once they were through with page 11, the $100,000 governance budget, Council moved pretty quickly through the Fairmount Home and Frontenac Paramedic Services budgets, which each sit at around $10 million.

At the start of their deliberations, Treasurer Marian VanBruinessen presented them with a revised budget that contained a $185,000 (2.26%) increase over 2012 in the requisition to the townships (who collect the money from their ratepayers as part of the municipal tax bill)

Without addressing any of the major issues in the budget, Council was able to cut about $85,000 from the budget last week.

They made most of those cuts by looking at budget lines such as the travel, training and conference fee budget on the governance page. The budget was set at $38,500, but in 2012 only $18,680 was spent under that heading, so Council cut the 2013 line to $20,000, trimming the overall budget by $18,500

A final budget meeting date has been set for Tuesday, March 12 at 9 am, and it is expected that the 2013 budget bylaw will be formally approved at the regular meeting of Council on March 20.

The expectation is that there will be a push to find another $100,000 in savings in order for the budget to come in with a 0% increase in the cost to local ratepayers for county services.

Warden catches flak for community projects

It did not take long for members of Frontenac County Council to find a way to express their enmity towards Warden Janet Gutowski at their meeting on Feb. 20.

They first held a long and contentious in camera meeting on the subject of labor relations, which ended with members shaking their heads as they left the meeting room for a break. South Frontenac Council member John McDougall said, “It is always good for people to be able to express strong opinions”

Once the open session started, what seemed like an innocuous report for information about small-scale sustainability projects that were funded by the County in 2012 brought some pointed comments.

“Too many of these projects were done in Central Frontenac. These things should be funded at the local level, not by the County. If Central Frontenac wants to spend their money in this way, good for them, but why should we all be paying for this?” said Frontenac Islands Mayor Dennis Doyle.

The projects in question, which were funded out of a $50,000 funding envelope that was taken from Federal Gas Tax rebate funds that the County receives, included the following: grants for lake plans to the local associations from Buck Lake (South Frontenac) Canonto Lake (North Frontenac) and Sharbot Lake (Central Frontenac); two grants to the Sharbot Lake Farmers Market (one for a local food project and for venue revitalisation), grants to the Central Frontenac Mature Living Complex, the Friends of Arden, and a grant to the Frontenac Stewardship Council.

Anne Marie Young, the County Manager of Economic Development, oversees the grant application process. She said, “We use an application process, which we have kept as simple and straightforward as possible for groups from across the County.”

“Well, some of the mayors are more active in promoting these things than others” said Dennis Doyle.

“I agree. I am pretty active in my township,” said Gutowski.

John McDougall pointed out that it might be the responsibility of the County itself to promote the small-scale sustainability grants. “I spent six years on the local grant team for the Trillium Foundation,” McDougall said, “and Trillium spends a lot of time promoting their programs to the public. This program may not be vetted as much as it should have been.”

In the end, County Council accepted the report on small-scale sustainability grants in 2012 for information.

Gas tax rebate going to townships

Frontenac County Council has finally made a definitive decision regarding the future of the Federal Gas tax rebate funds that it receives.

Ever since 2005, Frontenac County has been receiving Federal Gas tax rebate funds. Half of the funding, which is over $1.6 million in 2013, goes directly to the lower tier municipalities according to a formula that is based on the number of permanent residents. The other half has been flowing directly to Frontenac County for 8 years.

From the start, members of Frontenac County Council have been debating whether the County should simply transfer its half of the money directly to its member townships, based on the fact that all of the roads and bridges in the County are owned by the townships and not the County.

A series of steps were required before a decision on allocating the money could be made by Council, and this led to the development of the County Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP), and its related projects. In the interim the money has been steadily accumulating.

Over the past few years, the County has been spending some of the money on Community Improvement Plans in Verona and Sharbot Lake, on the K&P Trail, and on other projects. At the same time, County Council has begun to authorize the transfer of more and more of each year’s funds to the local townships.

A motion was put forward at the County meeting last week by Dennis Doyle of Frontenac Islands to transfer the remaining bank balance that the County holds, ($1.73 million) as well as the $817,000 it will be receiving in 2013, to the local townships according to a population-based formula. The motion also directed that all future gas tax rebate funds be transferred as well.

In response to the motion, Gary Davison from South Frontenac said, “I think the $1.73 million should be left to sustain the ICSB projects, which I have always said should be cut down to a few key areas, and all the new money should be transferred. I propose an amendment to that effect.”

“I’ll second that,” said Bud Clayton, the mayor of North Frontenac.”

“Our intent was just to stop the squirreling away of funds; this continued stockpiling of funds has got to stop, so the amendment is fine by me,” said David Jones.

“I should point out, in terms of the ‘squirreling away of funds', that last year $625,000 of the gas tax funds were transferred to the townships, and over $200,000 was also transferred for community improvement plans and over $10,000 went to North Frontenac and Frontenac Islands for trails,” said County Treasurer Marian VanBruinessen.

In a recorded vote, the motion to transfer 2013 and future gas tax rebate funds to the townships passed by a margin of 6-3 (Warden Gutowski, and Councilors John Inglis and John Purdon voted against it)

Community Para-medicine survives.

In spite of opposition from some quarters, a proposal to spend $1,500 to fund a pilot community para-medicine clinic on Wolfe Island received support from Council.

The clinic will be set up on a bi-monthly basis, making use of personnel who will already be in place at the paramedic station on the island. It will provide blood pressure and other medical testing for patients who require them.

While the members of Council from Frontenac Islands supported the idea, concerns were expressed by councilors from South Frontenac that paramedics could be duplicating services that are already available from family doctors, community support agencies, and others.

“There are programs out there that cover all this stuff. If we expand this to the rest of the County I think we are going to duplicate services,” said Gary Davison from South Frontenac.

“One of the ideas behind this is to identify those people who are not accessing those services, and point them in that direction,” said Emergency Services Chief Paul Charbonneau, “some people are calling 911 because they don’t know who else to call, not because they need to go to hospital. One of the outcomes of para-medicine is to get those people the community supports they need. The long term savings from this comes from a reduction in 911 calls.”

“I would say that if we don’t approve this and if we kill community para-medicine for $1,500 it would be the biggest travesty we have committed at this table,” said Bud Clayton.

The proposal was accepted.