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“Physician recruitment for this area is best left with the Lakeland Family Health Team,” said Reeve Henry Hogg in a letter to Lennox & Addington County tabled at Tuesday’s regular Addington Highlands Council meeting in Denbigh.

L & A County asked for feedback from its constituent municipalities at a meeting last November.

“The current financial incentive partnership with the Township of North Frontenac has significant value that we do not want to lose,” Hogg’s letter also said. “The County should continue to play its key role in promoting Addington Highlands and the three other lower tier municipalities as great places to live, work and play.

“This promotion is greatly appreciated and of significant value to our community.”

After the meeting, Hogg said that they’ve had a relationship with North Frontenac for more than 10 years and in consulting LFHT, the parties involved think they have put together a competitive package to attract a doctor to the area ($75,000 from each of the two townships over five years as well as the opportunity to receive an additional $92,160 per year because of the area’s Rurality Index for Ontario.

“I just don’t think we have much in common with the rest of the County when it comes to physician recruitment,” Hogg said.

 

• • •

One of the biggest things Council dealt with on Tuesday was naming islands in Weslemkoon Lake, Hogg said.

“There are 52 islands, most of which are unnamed,” he said. “They have to be named to be given civic addresses.”

He said the Township consulted with the Lake Weslemkoon Cottage Association and the received suggestions will be sent to the Ontario Geographic Naming Board, he said.

There were six islands for which no name suggestion was received.

 

• • •

Council told the Kaladar General Store that it had no objection to having the LCBO Agency store open on Family Day, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Civic Holiday, Labour Day, Thanksgiving and Boxing Day.

 

• • •

The Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks has sent the Township a letter containing several conditions it wants fulfilled before it would allow expansion at the Denbigh Waster Disposal Site, which has been ‘temporarily’ closed since June of 2007.

“Ah jeez,” Hogg said. “It’s been 13 years and we’ve done everything they’ve asked but they still won’t approve it.

“But, after all the money we’ve spent on it, I guess we have no choice but to continue on with what they require.”

Published in ADDINGTON HIGHLANDS
Wednesday, 05 February 2020 13:32

Regional Roads presentation fizzles

I hope readers will grant me this assumption – the idea of a virtual county roads system in Frontenac County, or anywhere else, is hard to understand. A real road goes somewhere, but a virtual one?

In fact, most of us never think about who owns the roads that we drive on every day. We know the difference between gravel roads and paved roads, two lane highways and four lane highways, but the fact that every road that we ride on is owned by someone rarely, if ever, crosses our minds.

For municipal politicians, however, road ownership is a big thing, and in Frontenac County it has been a major source of concern, and a major driver of tax increases, for over 20 years, ever since municipal amalgamation in 1998.

At that time, not only were the four current Frontenac townships created, but two other former Frontenac townships, Pittsburgh and Frontenac, became part of the City of Kingston. At the same time, the ownership of most of the major arterial roads in Frontenac County changed hands. The provincially owned Highway 38 became Road 38. The same thing happened to Hwy 506/509 in North and Central Frontenac.

The difference between a provincial road and a municipal road is all about who pays to maintain it. Roads 38, 509 and 506, as well the major roads on Howe and Wolfe Island, have been paid for through municipal taxes since 1998. Before then, they were paid for out of the provincial budget.

This scenario presents a problem. They are expensive roads to maintain and the area is sparsely populated. And when the roads need to be rebuilt every 25 years or so, local municipalities do not have the resources to pay for it.

Before Road 38 was downloaded, the section between the 401, and the border between South and Central Frontenac, was rebuilt by the province. The section between Central Frontenac and Highway 7, was not.

It took almost 8 years of relentless lobbying to obtain a provincial grant to rebuild Road 38 in Central Frontenac, and even then, the township had to take out a loan, and ratepayers in Central Frontenac are just now paying that loan off.

In the meantime, the section between the 401 and the Central Frontenac border is now almost 25 years old. It is by far the busiest stretch of road in Frontenac County and many, many Frontenac County residents use it every day to go to work in Kingston or Napanee or points east and west along the 401. It is the single most important piece of road infrastructure in the region and it is failing, in some spots it has already buckled.

South Frontenac is in a relatively strong financial position. Still, rebuilding Road 38 will require support from other levels of government, a large infrastructure grant to help cover a $10 million project, for the South Frontenac portion. Other key commuter roads in South Frontenac are also in need of rebuilding. Battersea Road ($6 million), Perth Road ($5 million), Sunbury road ($1.5 million) and Bedford Road ($1 million) are all listed for reconstruction within five years.

These cost estimates and the five-year time frame all come from a report by consultants KMPG, which was presented to a joint meeting of Frontenac County and the four Frontenac townships last Wednesday (January 29).

The KPMG report, which was presented by Bruce Peever, looked first at a previous study from 2013, by the Watson Group. The Watson Group concluded that financing the capital costs on a county-wide basis instead of township by township, would “smooth, and therefore minimise, future tax impacts to all county constituents,” and ultimately deliver “a better and more consistent level of service to all residents and businesses.”

The KPMG report then looked at how successful Frontenac County townships have been at obtaining road and bridge construction grants since 2014 as compared to its most immediate neighbours; Lennox and Addington, Hastings, Lanark and Leeds Grenville.

Frontenac County was in the middle of the pack for the first two years, but did very poorly between 2016 and 2018. According to the KPMG report, in 2018 alone, “Frontenac County received an average of $3 million less in grant funding than their comparator group.”

The chart that preceded that text in the report, does indeed show Frontenac County lagged far behind each of the comparators over the three year period. But the claim about receiving $3 million less in 2018 is not supported by the data. None of the comparators received $3 million in 2018, but Frontenac was about $2 million below the others.

As well, although the report only looks to the end of 2018, it was prepared in the 4th quarter of 2019, and in 2019 Central Frontenac alone received a $3 million dollar grant. Presumably then, if 2019 were included in the report, it would show a bounce back for Frontenac County.

In presenting the report, Bruce Peever pointed out that the future of granting programs under the current government is “uncertain, and it is difficult to project from the recent past into the near future as far as provincial granting programs are concerned.”

Nonetheless, the report concludes that if Frontenac County was able to apply for grants, in addition to the four Frontenac townships, the chances of success would be greater. All of the other comparators have county roads systems, that are eligible for grants, except for Hastings County, but Hastings County has fourteen local municipalities applying for grants and Frontenac County only has four. The basic logic of the argument for a virtual Frontenac County roads system is therefore that one more grant application can be sent in for every grant that is available and Frontenac would receive, over time, more in grants than otherwise.

As to how this should be set up, the KPMG report said it should be done the way Lennox and Addington does it. Local townships handle all maintenance and the county handles capital costs on county designated roads. The county has an engineer and crew on staff to handle the county roads, and the report says that Frontenac County should do the same, at a cost of $625,000 per year.

In responding to the report, North Frontenac Mayor Ron Higgins said “I understand the intent of all this, to get more grants, but I find the charts, and the report as a whole, confusing, and I don’t follow the conclusions.”

Frontenac Islands Mayor Dennis Doyle said “collectively we are leaving a lot of money on the table. $625,00 a year is a lot, but we spend a lot on engineering consultants and you can’t necessarily get a hold of them when you need them.”

South Frontenac Mayor Ron Vandewal, in line with the thinking of his own council, which discussed the report at their own council meeting the previous evening, said “we feel the need to work with the existing public works departments and staff. I don’t see why we would want to create another level of bureaucracy to do this. I’d like to see a model where we do this without creating a new department.”

The whole matter has been kicked back to KPMG to prepare an implementation report, taking into account what was said at the meeting and the direction that the provincial government is headed in, to the extent that it can be determined.

But given that each of the townships will have to agree before county roads, virtual or otherwise, can be established, it is not clear that the project will move forward in 2020, just as it languished after the Watson report in 2013.

What is clear, however, is that certain major roads need to be rebuilt, and soon, and it will take grants to get rebuild them.

Would county road status make that happen more easily? No one can guarantee that.

Frontenac County chief administrative officer Kelly Pender did not say much during the presentation and the subsequent question period. He did say one thing at the very end, however.

“Every other county in Ontario has received more in infrastructure grants over the last five years than Frontenac County has. Every one.”

Published in Editorials

Last week, the Province of Ontario confirmed the annual funding for infrastructure needs, that they provide to rural Ontario municipalities, in the run up to the annual Rural Ontario Municipal Association (ROMA) conference.

The Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund was established under the former Liberal government in 2014 to provide funding to small, rural and northern municipalities in order to help them “build and repair critical infrastructure”.

The funding was minimal in the first couple of years, but doubled in the run-up to the 2018 provincial election. After the election, which saw the vast majority of rural ridings elect Conservative MPP’s, the program has doubled once again.

In Frontenac County, most of the money goes directly to the townships, which have responsibility for just about all of the municipal infrastructure, which is dominated by roads and bridges.

South Frontenac, which has already passed its 2020 budget based on estimates, will receive $508,412 for 2020, up from $498,738 in 2019.

Central Frontenac will receive $361,718, down from $368.076 in 2019.

North Frontenac will receive 304,907, down from 310,472

Frontenac County received $50,000, the same as last year.

In Lennox and Addington (L&A), the county level of government has more infrastructure responsibilities than the local townships. L&A will receive 761,841 this year. In 2019 they received $758,478.

Addington Highlands Township will receive $54,461 this year. In 2019, they received $55,084.

Rural municipalities also receive funding each year under the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund (OMPF) based upon a formula that looks at population as well as fiscal circumstances. OMPF is crucial to the smallest municipalities.

For 2020 Addington Highlands will receive $2,053,400 ($743 per household) the same as 2019.

Central Frontenac will receive $2,148,900 ($520 per household) about the same as last year.

North Frontenac gets $1,705,200 ($499 per household) down about $700 from last year.

South Frontenac will receive $1,553,400 ($148 per household) also about the same as 2019.

Published in General Interest
Wednesday, 15 January 2020 10:29

Next Gen. 9-1-1 to build on existing system

In North and Central Frontenac, the 9-1-1 system was made possible through a volunteer effort. Volunteer crew chiefs were given sections of road to cover and volunteers drove the township with measuring guns to establish the civic addressing system upon which the system was based.

The system was officially up and running on December 8, 2004.

In South Frontenac the efforts were supervised by a contract worker, but volunteers were involved as well.

Even though the systems were established only 15 years ago, one of the assumptions that it was based one is no longer the case, that 9-1-1 emergency calls come from land-lines.

Kevin Farrell, manager of continuous improvement/GIS for Frontenac County, made a presentation to Frontenac County Council this week outlining how the Next Generation of the 9-1-1 system will be unfolding over the next few years. He pointed out that, using an urban example to illustrate his point, “Uber drivers are in possession of more accurate data about where people are located than paramedics are.”

That’s because the explosion of information being transmitted wirelessly at all times, is not being fully utilised by the 9-1-1 system. Next Gen. 9-1-1, as it has been dubbed, is all about making use of all the information that is available, in order to get to people in need faster, with less human effort.

For Frontenac County, most of the required changes fall into the general category of data management. Between the county, which runs the GIS (Global Information Systems) for the townships, and township employees on the ground, constantly updating information, the job will centre on ensuring that the existing data is in the form it needs to be in, when it is time to provide new data sets to the new system.

The civic addressing signs, which are located at the side of the road, are the locations that are provided to emergency personnel by the system. One of the changes in the new system will be to provide the location of the homes on those properties as well, which in some cases are located well off the roadway.

The phone numbers from land lines associated with each property are part of the current system, so when a call is made from a land line, dispatchers have that information and can dispatch crews, even if the caller does not remember their civic address in the heat of the moment.

This is not the case for cell phones, however, and as Farrell pointed out in his presentation, 70% of 9-1-1 calls now come from cell phones, 20% from land-lines and 10% from Internet based phone systems (aka Voice Over Internet Protocol - VOIP).

The current system has developed what his presentation described as “band-aide solutions to locate mobile phone users”. One of the main goals in developing Next-Gen 9-1-1, is to make full use of the information that is now available from multiple sources, including: text, images, video and data.

Preparing for it will not involve re-doing the work that was done by volunteers early in the century, however.

“This civic addressing data, which has been continually updated by township staff since the system came online, will remain” said Farrell in a phone interview before making his presentation to Council, “but it will be a challenge to provide updated information to the system, in the time-frame that they are now looking for.”

Township building and public works employees are always gathering new information when putting up new signs or overseeing new construction, and that information is provided to the system in batches. In the future that will have to be done within 72 hours, so a new way to easily get new entries into the system, needs to be developed.

The new 9-1-1 data system will have a national scope and will be under development for some time.

“This presentation provides a heads-up to Council about what is coming, and to let them know what our department and the townships are going to be working on,” Farrell said.

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY

The trial of Jessica Villas on 2 charges of fraud over $5,000 continued in Sharbot Lake on Monday, as part of the once a monthly court proceedings in the Kingston satellite court.

The first day of the trial took place in June, and  included testimony from the OPP Constable who investigated the case, Lori Lobiniwich, as well as  Penny Hill. David Hill, a property developer on Norcan Lake, which is located at the far northeast corner of the township of North Frontenac, near Calabogie, was the only witness to testify on this day.

Hill, who described himself as the President, but not the owner, of both the Canonto Lodge and the Canalodge corporation, met Gulio (aka Gipse) and Jessica Villas late in the summer or early in the fall of 2013. At that time, a dispute between Hill and some of the property owners in a subdivision he had developed, was an active issue before North Frontenac Council.

(There was a report on North Frontenac Council proceedings regarding Mr. Hill and his Norcan Lake developments in the Frontenac News on August 12, 2013 and other reports before and after that date)

According to Hill, Gipse and Jessica Villas arrived at his door un-announced, in an upscale vehicle. They proceeded to tell Hill and his wife that they were interested in purchasing a number of lots that Hill controlled on Norcan Lake.

“I told my wife that this could be the solution to all of our financial problems,” Hill told the court on Monday.

Thus began a saga that played out over three years, Hill told the court, resulting in payments by Hill to both Jessica and Gypsy Villas totaling over $60,000, in addition to $35,000 in free use of the Canonto Lodge, including a pontoon boat, gas, and other amenities.

Hill testified that the Villas’ regaled him with stories, using photos to back them up, concerning their connections to the Federal Liberal party and others, including pictures of Jessica posing with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Jessica Villas was employed as the special assistant to Newfoundland MP and cabinet Minister Judy Foote until Foote resigned her seat for family reasons in 2017, but has no other known associations with Trudeau or other senior Liberals.

Gypse Villas told David Hill that he was a senior member of CSIS (The Canadian Security Intelligence Service) and a law professor, and that because of his sensitive undercover work he was “basically a ghost who had no ID, no SIN number, no license, nothing”, Hill said.

Jessica Villas was fraudulently identified to him as a practicing lawyer in Ontario.

“Gulio said she was a ‘real bulldog’ and she smiled along,” Hill said.

Soon after they met, the Villas rented the prime waterfront house at Canonto Lodge for a fall weekend at the discounted price of $100 per night. They ended up staying three nights instead of the two they had originally booked, and Gulio Villas handed $200 in cash to Hill.

“I said, wait a minute, it was 3 nights. He paid me the extra $100, reluctantly.”

According to Hill, that was the first and last time he received payment from either Gulio or Jessica Villas.

And Gulio Villas borrowed the money back a few days later.

Soon after that, the Villas offered to represent Hill, for free, in a small claims suit over the grade of gravel he had used in some road work for property owners in one of the subdivisions that he managed.

“They ended up hitting me up for $6,500 in costs and when I got to court in Kingston they weren’t there. Then judge crucified me for not having a lawyer present, and I lost the $5,000. When we left the court, they were sitting on the bench outside, saying they were sorry they had arrived too late. Gulio went and talked to the judge in the parking and lot, and then went into the building and came out with a document that he said was the judgement. I didn’t know what to think”.

Nonetheless, with the promise of $1.5 million sale dangled in front of him, Hill allowed the Villas to use his lodge quite often, “and sometimes they arrived at our plave with limos and diplomats from around the world, or so they claimed.”

Hill remained convinced, against his better judgement, he told the court, that the Villas were both wealthy and well connected. This persisted in spite of an increasingly bizarre set of claims by Gypse over 3 years.

The Villas then said they would help Hill deal with a larger legal issue he was facing, his relationship with the IBI engineering group, who according to Hill’s testimony, was the source of all of the problems that led to a law suit against him from property owners within his subdivision over the construction of an access laneway to Norcan Lake.

Over time, in Hill’s testimony, backed up by a paper trail of transactions, bank records, and canceled checks, he paid Jessica Villas a total of $35,000 in checks, and Gulio $20,000 in cash, in addition to free lodging worth $35,000. These payments included the purchase of a $2,000 kayak for Jessica and golf clubs for Gypse.

By trusting the Villas to do legal work for him that was never done, he said he has lost well over $1 million, in addition to drastic damage to his immediate family through false promises of employment and other lies.

“They took everything from me, and my family,” Hill said.

Hill eventually realized what was going on contacted the Law Society of Upper Canada and CSIS, and both organizations had no record of a Jessica or Gulio (Gypse) Villas.

He eventually reported the matter to the OPP, who began the investigation that led to the charges.

The case against Jessica Villas was originally joined with that against Gypse, but due to cancer treatments he is reportedly undergoing, Gypse has been unable to stand trial, and therefore the cases have been separated

Judge Griffin, previously and on several occasions during Monday’s court proceedings, questioned the veracity of the claims about Gypse’s health.

“The documentation is here, but I would appreciate it if the police took it on themselves to confirm this,” he said. “It may all be true, but I’m not comfortable with it.”

Hill was cross examined by Jessica Villas’ lawyer, Sean May.

May first tried to establish that Hill was in a vulnerable state when he was first approached by the Villas’.

May asked Hill if he was facing legal difficulties with various parties, including the township of North Frontenac, when he met the Villas in September of 2013.

“I had no issues with North Frontenac Township back then,” Hill said, “only some issues with a few lot owners in a subdivision, that were all due to the IBI group’s faulty work.

May did not press Hill on many the details of his long, sometimes rambling, testimony. Instead, he focused mainly on distinguishing between the roles that Jessica and Gypse Villas played over the three years of interactions.

May asserted, repeatedly, that it was Gypse who made the false claims, and asked Hill to pay money on numerous occasions, and that Jessica was not necessarily directly involved.

Hill resisted, saying that Jessica and Gypsy played a “good cop, bad cop” role, and that most of the conversations between the three of them took place “around the table” between 3 and 5 years so “I can’t tell you who said what, but she was certainly part of it.”

Although May did establish that some of the payments made to both Gypse and Jessica had been based on conversations exclusively between Hill and Gipse, Hill was insistent that, in his words, “Jessica was the wing man.”

“Your wife testified that you and Gipse were like ‘peanut butter and jelly’, May said to Hill.

“I wouldn’t say that, it was more like a fly and fly paper, and I was the fly,” said Hill, “but Jessica was a part of it, all the way through.”

At one point, Jessica Villas signed a purchase agreement, at a price of $600,000, for a number of waterfront lots, but when Hill called the Ottawa Real Estate lawyer that the Villas’ said was acting for them on the matter, the lawyer said he knew nothing about the transaction or the Villas’.

No money was ever paid on the purchase.

The case for the defense will commence on September 23.

Gipsy Villas is also scheduled to appear in court on that date on his own charges, after an agent for his lawyer asked for a four month deferral back in April.

“We need to hear from Gipse at some point soon,” said Judge Griffin. “We need to see him or at least his lawyer here in person on that date.

Published in CENTRAL FRONTENAC

While many area high school students are scrambling this time of year to find a summer job, GREC Grade 11 student Ryleigh Rioux already has hers all lined up — and what a summer job it is.

Rioux, who recently received her drone pilot’s licence (via geography/biology teacher Wade Leonard’s innovative and unique program at GREC), will be mapping Malcolm and Ardoch Lakes from the air thanks to a grant North Frontenac Township and the lake association managed to secure specifically for the project.

“We’ll be using the drone to collect aerial imagery,” she said. “They’ll be putting down burlap on the milfoil beds and we’ll track the results.

“We’ll be creating a baseline data set which is exciting because there hasn’t been much work done in this area as yet.”

She said planning will perhaps be the biggest part of her job.

“Flying over water and collecting video data is difficult because of the reflection and refraction,” she said. “I’ll be controlling the take off and landing of the drone but the computer does much of in-flight deployment.”

Leonard said the actual mapping will be very dependent on weather.

“It will take time,” he said. “Cloud cover is obviously a big issue.

“We can deal with ripples and even some whitecaps but the atmosphere can present problems.”

So can the fact that water creates refraction and reflection issues but Leonard thinks they’ve come up with a solution for most of those.

“We’ll be using polarizing optics to refine the features,” he said. “That will take several flights to orient the drone properly.”

And the project has attracted the attention of Carleton University professor Jesse Vermaire.

“Our job is to provide the baseline data so we can show the year-to-year incremental growth of the milfoil,” he said. “We can get down 15-20 feet from the surface and provide 3D data which will link up with the Carleton information well.”

He said that they can get detail that scuba divers and boat-side sonar devices can’t.

“We can look at the health of the entire weed bed, and measure the results if under attack by weevils,” he said. “But we have to get out there and grab the data.”

He said they’ve already done some work and it’s led to observations that boats going through the beds can help spread the milfoil as “it spreads through fragmentation.”

He’s optimistic there will be solutions found but “those are things we’ll have collect all the data to know.”

For example, he said, the life cycle of the northern milfoil weevil, which eats milfoil, may provide some answers.

“The weevils may overwinter in shoreline duff (vegetative cover) as much as 18 feet from the water,” he said. “And the weevils are a favorite food of sunfish and others.”

For Rioux, the prospects are exciting. She said she’d like to pursue a career designing environmentally friendly and sustainable building but many of the techniques they’ll be pioneering could shape the future of lake ecology and data collection.

“The ability to shape a new course,” she said. “How can you pass that up?”

Published in CENTRAL FRONTENAC

Twice a year, the Community Foundation of Kingston and Area (CFKA) makes grant announcements for community groups and not-for-profits in Kingston. Most of the time, Frontenac County based groups receive grants as well.

There was an exception in late November of last year, when all of the grants went to Kingston. With its spring grant announcement, the CFKA has made it clear that those fall 2018 grants were not the beginning of a trend. This time around, fully one third of the grants, representing over 25% of the $160,000 that was divvied out went to programming for Frontenac County residents.

And the money is going to every corner of the vast county.

The six Frontenac recipients were: the Elbow Lake Environmental Centre (Perth Road area) $9,000, the Clarendon-Miller Archives (Plevna) $6550, Wintergreen Studios (Bedford) $3283, South Frontenac Community Services Corporation (Sydenham) $10,041.20, Rural Frontenac Community Services (Sharbot Lake) $5,500, and RKY Camp (Parham) $8946.06 – over $43,000 in all.

The Elbow Lake Environmental Centre grant is for the "Navigating the Landscape" program. The program will provide the opportunity for youth to actively experience their local environment while learning how to use GPS technology, with the money going towards equipment and bus subsidies to bring youth to the centre.

The Clarendon Miller Archives grant is going towards the "Unravelling History - One Tombstone at a Time" project and the creation of a worldwide searchable on-line database providing historical reference and research of the local cemeteries in North Frontenac, with images to link families with their ancestors and village settlements via a website.

The Wintergreen Studios grant is going to Project Bee. It will help establish an apiary at Wintergreen, which, coupled with year-round workshops, will educate the general public about maintaining healthy bee populations. Project Bee will also enable local schools to join the Bee City Canada school network. Students will have an opportunity to exchange knowledge with beekeepers in Saudi Arabia through a school in Riyadh.

The Southern Frontenac Community Services grant is going to enhance the agencies home making services program, to enable more physically and financially vulnerable seniors to remain living at home safely.

The Rural Frontenac Community Services grant will be used to help fund a ride sharing program, enabling more seniors to attend social events, medical appointments and shopping so more people can participate fully in the community.

The RKY camp grant is going towards the purchase of a new 36” flat top griddle with an oven and holding cabin, to help in the preparation of 600 nutritious and delicious meals to active RKY campers each and every day during the summer camp season.

“A common theme we saw this round in the applications were projects that aim to create a sense of belonging in our community,” says Community Foundation for Kingston & Area (CFKA) Executive Director Tina Bailey. “We know that providing opportunities for engagement, inclusion and participation are some of the strategies to decrease social isolation. This is particularly true for some of our neighbours, especially youth, newcomers, seniors and those with disabilities.”

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY
Wednesday, 29 May 2019 13:47

1% stake? Not so fast says CF

Central Frontenac Township deferred making a commitment on regional roads at its regular meeting Tuesday evening in Mountain Grove until it hears back from lawyer Tony Fleming as to what a “1 per cent ownership of regional roads and bridges” means in a proposal drafted up by Frontenac County and presented to the four member townships for ratification.

In a report to Central Frontenac Council, Dep. Clerk Cindy Deachman said: “staff have some reservations about the 1 per cent ownership model and how it would integrate with the jurisdiction sections of the Municipal Act.

Frontenac County currently owns no roads and/or bridges as part of the restructuring order at amalgamation. As such, it is not eligible for some grant money to be applied to roads such as 38 or 509/506. What the townships are concerned about is how much say the County would have in road repairs and how much of any grant money the County would administer.

For example, would a County staff member be the one to decide if a pothole on Road 38 got fixed? Or would the County have the right to hire staff to make such decisions?

North Frontenac Township passed a similar resolution at its meeting Monday in Plevna, wanting to know the same things Central does before making a decision on which of several proposals the County has made to support, if any.

South Frontenac has already endorsed a proposal that grants Frontenac County a 1 per cent ownership interest in agreed-upon regional roads and proposes contracting out for any engineering services required to apply for and/or administer grants.

Mayor Frances Smith said she was concerned that by deferring, they may miss out on some funding.

Hydro for Railway Heritage Park

Central Frontenac Council gave its consent to the Central Frontenac Railway Heritage Society to have Hydro One install a pole at Railway Heritage Park in order to get power to the tool shed and for things like security cameras and amplifiers/PA for concerts and other events.

Co-chair Gary Giller and Treasurer Wayne Moase told Council that they had the funds to have the services installed but asked for help with the monthly hydro fees.

They also asked if they could be put under the Township’s insurance for liability and damage to assets.

When Dep. Mayor Victor Heese wondered if the Society should become a Committee of Council to accommodate these requests, Mayor Frances Smith pointed out that if they ceased to be a private society, their opportunities for grants would become severely limited.

Council agreed to have staff look into the insurance aspects and also to examine a ‘donation’ to pay hydro and/or insurance as if has done with other groups in the Township.

RKY Hall

Mayor Frances Smith said that RKY Camp on Eagle Lake is building a 150-seat banquet hall that should be finished by 2020 at the latest.

“This will be an asset to the Township to be able to seat 150 people for dinner,” she said. “It could attract a lot of convention type business.”

Swiss Smith

On becoming a Swiss TV star (ie appearing in the Swiss TV show featuring two Frontenac paramedics switching places with two Swiss paramedics), Mayor Frances Smith seemed somewhat underwhelmed.

“Something that takes 20 minutes ended up taking two hours because we had to do it three times,” she said. “I guess that’s television.”

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY
Wednesday, 22 May 2019 12:18

One Small Town fizzles

It started out as a plan to build a self-sustaining community of environmentally sustainable homes made of used tires and other materials, called Talking Trees. It then expanded into an initiative called “One Small Town” that was based on the concept of contributionism, and the philosophy of Ubuntu, as espoused by Michael Tellinger, the South African founder of the Ubuntu liberation movement.

Members of the community could contribute their labour towards a variety of initiatives in return for some of the benefits of the project. A simple example was a proposed apiary. By taking on some of the labour, contributors would not only get as much honey as they required, they would also share in the profits when the excess honey was sold.

The project, which was championed by North Frontenac Mayor Ron Higgins, eventually included a renewable energy component using lake water, as well as the potential for a self-contained

North Frontenac Council expressed its, somewhat reluctant, support for the venture on a couple of occasions, making sure to stipulate that the township was making no financial commitment.

In November of 2017, a group came to a meeting of council to formally introduce the concept. A home in Plevna was purchased and the first project, an apiary, was to start up in the spring of 2018.

Meanwhile, Ron Higgins was talking up the project. He appeared in CBC interviews and other public forums on social media. He told the CBC that the project was going to progress quickly.

"In two or three years time, once this is all done, we will go into the bigger $20-million projects," he said in an interview on CBC Ottawa on January 28, 2018.

Later, it appeared that that David Craig, who had spearheaded the Talking Trees tire home building project, began working independently from the group that was based in Plevna.

The Talking Trees – North Frontenac website indicates that a property has been purchased for the project and that 144 lots have been marked out. Of those, 5 are marked sold, 2 1.5 acre lots at a listed price of $66,000, a one-acre lot at a listed price of $44,000, and 2 ½ acre lots at a listed price of $22,000.

The site says that the lots will be formally approved in 2020.

“​Once the Plan of Subdivision has been approved, lots will be available conventionally. (approval for Plan of Subdivision expected summer 2020)” it says on the site.

Late in 2018, Mayor Higgins said that a first nation from British Columbia was set to invest in the project.

There has been no further formal word until this week, when the agenda for the upcoming meeting of North Frontenac Council was released. The agenda includes an administrative report from Mayor Higgins under the heading “One Small Town”.

The very short report consists of the three council motions that have been passed regarding the project, and the following comment.

“Based on intensive research and analysis, since November 2017, of the proposed One Small Town program, I have concluded that the implementation of the proposed program was not going to be a viable option and have closed this proposed project.”

With that, it appears, the Mayor has, at the very least severed his involvement with “One Small Town” if he has not shut it down completely.

One North Frontenac Councillor, John Inglis, is not waiting until the council meeting next week before expressing his opinion about the demise of One Small Town.

“I am embarrassed for my township that we appear to have been so gullible. Even though Council backed away from the whole thing right at first introduction, and were questioned by the Mayor for being so negative, the public perception has always been that this was a township project. Unfortunately, this is the second promise of investment money from outside that has fallen through. The first was our Mayor’s promise that if we were able to keep wind turbines out of North Frontenac, investors were lined up to build hotel accommodation here. I actually believed that for a while. I’m sorry to say that I also believed there was a remote possibility that millions of dollars might come to this community as a result of the idealism of a group of urban visitors.” Inglis wrote on his personal blog on Tuesday afternoon (May 21).

The News called Ron Higgins late on Tuesday afternoon but he did not get back to us before our publication deadline at midnight on Tuesday night.

Higgins returned our call on Wednesday, but we did not speak until Thursday morning.

He said he had secured a contribution for the project but he found that the “organisation to get it kicked off just wasn’t going as planned. Conflicts were developing between different projects, and I could note get the kind of commonality I needed between the team leaders.”

By early March he said that he “had a nagging gut feeling that this isn’t right. We had a meeting with team members and I found out some things I had not known before. It was then that I pulled the plug.”

Higgins added that he is not connected with the Talking Trees project and does not know where it stands.

“I have maintained contact with the group behind the donation and I will be working on some individual projects that they may fund in the future, but I am no longer working on this as Mayor of North Frontenac, but as a private citizen.”

He added that the township never was asked to invest in the One Small Group project, but some staff time was spent developing a township position in relation to it.

(This article has been updated from the one that was included in the May 23 edition of the Frontenac News)

Published in NORTH FRONTENAC
Wednesday, 08 May 2019 16:14

AH tax levy increases by 5.6 per cent

Addington Highlands Township passed its 2019 budget at its regular meeting in Flinton Tuesday afternoon and the net result is that it will be asking its ratepayers for $2,937,616.22, in taxes an increase of 5.6 per cent over 2018’s 42,781,829.30.

Reeve Henry Hogg was quick to point out that the increase in the tax rate was 1.8 per cent.

Total expenditures for 2019 are expected to be $6,262,871.91 (as opposed to $5,574,53.37 in 2018).

Operating revenues are expected to be $1,451,499.57 ($1,021,850.07 in 2018) and its Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund allocation is up slightly to $2,053,400 from $2,040,300 in 2018.

One thing that didn’t get added to this year’s budget is the additional expenses accrued due to spring flooding, said Hogg.

“We decided not to amend the budget,” he said.

Clerk-Treasurer Christine Reed said that if expenses from flooding turn out to be more than $79,000, they’ll submit a disaster assistance application to the province. Another option is to take funds from reserves to pay for flooding.

“We’ll have to see if, at the end of the year Brett’s (Road & Waster Management Supervisor Reavie) budget is over that,” she said. “But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“If it isn’t flooded out,” said Hogg.

False alarm
Some recent fire calls were false alarms, Fire Chief Casey Cuddy told Council in response to a question from Reeve Henry Hogg.

“Next one they’ll be getting an invoice,” said Cuddy. “(And) we won’t be waiting around for an hour for a keyholder to show up.”

They can provide us with one or we’re going through the door.

“There’s something wrong with their system.”

“Five trucks sitting there for an hour is some pretty expensive equipment,” said Hogg.

Cuddy also said they’re will be changes proposed to the wildfire bylaw to cover things like flying lanterns.

Washouts
Road and Waste Supervisor’s comment on how busy his crews were with washouts: “There might have been a few guys got to have some time off on Easter Weekend.”

That prompted Dep. Reeve Tony Fritsch to move for an ad in the newspaper thanking the crews for their efforts above and beyond the call of duty.

Palliative Care program
Compassionate Care Program Co-ordinator Matt Walker has been making the rounds of local Councils (he was at North Frontenac last Friday) explaining the services his organization offers in the way of palliative care including visits from volunteers, consultation, bereavement counselling and equipment lending.

But, he said the number 1 thing he hears in his job is the need for affordable transportation.

To that end, Walker said he’s working on a plan whereby a bus could be used to travel the main roads to Kingston, Napanee and Belleville while the existing volunteer network could be used to ferry patients to the bus line.

Published in ADDINGTON HIGHLANDS
Page 1 of 10
With the participation of the Government of Canada