Frontenac County Council - Jan. 26/11

Jeff Green | Jan 28, 2010

Another year, another request from Pine Meadow; same result

Bud Clayton, the Chair of the Management Committee for Pine Meadow Nursing Home, which is owned and operated by Land O'Lakes Community Services, made a presentation to Frontenac County last week (January 20)

Each year for several years, a board member from Pine Meadow has made the trip down to Glenburnie to ask for support from Frontenac County towards upgrades to the home.

The logic behind the request, as Clayton pointed out, is that although Pine Meadow is located in Lennox and Addington and is not part of the municipally-run long-term care sector, 21 of the 60 beds in the home are currently occupied by residents of Frontenac County.

“On behalf of those 21 folks in Frontenac County, I am here making a modest request to help us complete some of the necessary upgrades to the home. We would like to truly fulfill our partnership with Frontenac County,” said Clayton.

Clayton asked for a commitment of $25,000 per year for 10 years, the same amount that has been committed to the home by Lennox and Addington County.

Clayton pointed out that Pine Meadow is waiting to hear from the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care through the Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) about expansion and upgrade plans for the home, which would make it larger and bring it up to the provincial “A” standard for nursing homes.

Currently Pine Meadow has a number of four-bed, ward-style rooms, while the “A” standard calls for one and two-bedroom suites for residents.

Pine Meadow is also preparing to take a larger role in providing service to the general public by establishing dialysis and physiotherapy services for residents and the general public, all overseen by a nurse practitioner who has joined the Pine Meadow staff.

“There are three families in Ardoch that travel to KGH for dialysis treatments. This is inconvenient and costly. Our dialysis unit will be an asset to Frontenac County,” Clayton said.

“I think Council knows my feelings on this subject,” said North Frontenac Mayor Ron Maguire after Clayton's presentation. “The amount requested is the same amount I am requesting. I think given the vastness of Frontenac County we need to support a home that serves such a large portion of our population.

While none of the other members of the four-member county council said much after Bud Clayton's presentation, there was more of a response at a county budget meeting this past Monday, January 25 when Ron Maguire attempted to have the $25,000 request added to the Frontenac County budget.

Central Frontenac Mayor Janet Gutowski said she had “mixed feelings about the request. I recognise the emotions and the affection for the Pine Meadow. I hesitate, however. We are deciding whether people are being taxed for it. I know it is a not-for-profit but it is not a government facility. They hire a company to manage it, to do the books and the accounting. I don't have the same level of comfort for the facility that I do with Fairmount Home. I also have a concern that we really need additional facilities within our own county. We are looking at $250,000 over 10 years. If that money could be put towards a feasibility study to look at population and development statistics and demographics to see if we could attract a private investor for that kind of project.”

Frontenac Islands Mayor Jim Vanden Hoek said, “I’m not taking away from projects that people would like to support, but I’m concentrating my efforts on trying to decrease the county levy to the member municipalities. That would free up money for them to make investments in projects like this.”

County Warden Gary Davison said, “At this point I don't feel I can support this.”

County staff were not directed to add $25,000 for Pine Meadow to the 2010 budget, which will be the subject of a further meeting on February 1. 

Planned Public Health pull out from septic inspections questioned

Members of Frontenac County Council took advantage of a visit by Doctor Ian Gemmill, the medical officer of health for Frontenac and Lennox and Addington County to question the direction of the KFL&A Public Health in terms of septic inspections and approvals.

“I have concerns about septic inspection,” Frontenac Islands Mayor Jim Vanden Hoek told Ian Gemmill.

Frontenac Islands Council passed a resolution in December, which asked Public Health “to postpone any decision on vacating the septic approvals process until we assess any implications to [our] municipality”.

This resolution has since been supported by the other three Frontenac County townships.

As Dr. Gemmill pointed out, septic approvals have been done by Public Health for member municipalities on a contract basis ever since municipal amalgamation in 1998. “Before 1998 septic inspections were governed under the Ministry of the Environment and it was within the mandate of Public Health to do them, but in 1998 they became part of the building code. My predecessor was very clear that he wanted this program to continue to make sure septic inspections were done well,” Dr. Gemmill said. “We've done this with fees that are lower than the provincial average.”

But after 11 years Public Health is reconsidering its role. “We had a retirement last year, and our new manager wanted to have a look at this,” he said.

One of the issues that was looked at was cost. Although the inspections are a cost recovery program, “We were concerned that there is some subsidy of this program, and we like to see our budgets kept clean,” Gemmill said. He also pointed out that Public Health faces added responsibilities under the Safe Drinking Water Act and would like to focus their attention in that direction.

Of 34 public health organizations that have the option of offering septic inspections or not, only six offer the service, Gemmill said.

Ed Gardiner, a Public Health Manager, has approached the municipalities that use the service, and according to Dr. Gemmill, “The feedback was not to do this in too fast a way.”

A meeting with municipal officials was held a couple of weeks ago and according to Gemmill, “around the table all parties agreed that if this were phased out by the end of 2010 it would be satisfactory to them.”

He also said that local conservation authorities are prepared to offer the service for those municipalities that do not want to take the service in house.

“This is the most visible service that our residents see from your agency,” Vanden Hoek responded. “We have trouble maintaining a building inspector as it is. We do not believe Public Health has the authority to do this. This is going to take some time, more than 2010.”

Central Frontenac Mayor Janet Gutowski has represented Frontenac County on the Board of KFL&A Public Health for the past two years. She pointed out that while Public Health staff have been in communication with the townships about plans to pull out of the service, the Public Health board has received no formal report on it.

“There is a report in our agenda package for the meeting we have scheduled this week,” she said, “ I do not think it includes enough background. It does not refer to the correspondence that has come in from the municipalities on this, and the question of the municipal capacity is not considered either. If a resolution on this comes forward at this time, I certainly will not support it.

I'd also like to suggest that although some of the background to this touches on financials, I have never seen any financial detail attached to it.”

“Thank you very much for the vote of confidence about the job we've been doing on the inspections,” said Doctor Gemmill. “It's not that our agency wants to leave people high and dry. If this is not done in 2010, so be it.” 

County makes little progress on budget

The budget process at Frontenac County in recent years has been a matter of moving through the various departmental budgets, which are each on a separate page, flagging those that need to be debated and crossing off those pages where there are no problems.

In this way the budget debate ends up focusing in on narrower issues over time, leaving a couple of loose ends to be mulled over or argued over.

And then the budget is finalised.

It's been a different case this year.

Not only have there been questions about several of the planned expenditures, there has also been a preliminary question that has not been resolved. It has to do with $793,000, a windfall for the county that came from the provincial uploading of costs for the Ontario Disability Support Program.

The way the budget that had been presented to county council is set up, that money is noted, but it is offset by other expenditures. Included in those expenditures is a $350,000 payment to a reserve fund to offset money that was used to balance the 2008 budget.

The resulting budget calls for an increase in taxes of only 2%, but an increase in county spending of over 13%.

The problem, at least in the view of county councilors Jim Vanden Hoek from Frontenac Islands and Ron Maguire from North Frontenac, is they would like to have seen that $793,000 transferred to the local municipalities to be used on road and bridge projects. Vanden Hoek sits on the board of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. “I know that when AMO argued that the province should take back those ODSP costs, the money was to go to roads and bridges. Somehow in this discussion, that $793,000 has to go to roads and bridges, and that would have to be through a flow through to the lower-tier municipalities,” Vanden Hoek said.

North Frontenac Township had already requested, in the form of a resolution to county council, that the money be transferred to the townships.

In spite of Vanden Hoek's comments, no direction was given to county staff to make changes to the budget as the result of the ODSP savings.

Instead, several items in the budget were flagged for further debate. Those include a $40,000 increase in the budget for staff training, $100,000 that is earmarked for a comprehensive review of social services within the county, $25,000 for a “business continuity plan” for the Emergency Services department, and $25,000 for upgrades to the Frontenac Room, where council meetings are held.

A report recommending that county staff receive a 2% cost of living salary increase in 2010 was also deferred, pending budget debate.

County Council has one more budget debate scheduled, on February 1.

(See  Editorial – A lack of Political Direction)