Henry Hogg has seen this all before.

In 2008, as Reeve of Addington Highlands and member of Lennox and Addington County Council, he had the job of convincing his colleagues on county council that it was important to maintain the ambulance services in Northbrook and Denbigh even though a consultant’s report suggested it was too expensive to operate two bases in the sparsely populated northern end of the county.

At that time, the county sided with Addington Highlands and kept the two bases in operation.

At the same time, a decision was made to integrate the entire L&A County ambulance service into the same professional model. Previously, the northern bases had been what are called ‘volunteer’ services, which pay paramedics at a lower rate. The L&A ambulance service is slated to be fully integrated by 2014, raising the projected costs of running the two northern bases.

The L&A ambulance service rents space for the Northbrook base, and they have been informed that the landlord has other plans for the building after the current lease expires at the end of this month, although the lease can be extended for a time.

To deal with this, an update to the 2008 consultant’s report was ordered, and that report was delivered to L&A County Council last week.

The update deals with a lot more issues than finding a new location for the Northbrook base. It notes that the northern bases are much more costly to operate than they were three years ago, and are even less frequently used.

“Station operating costs for both Northbrook and Denbigh have increased to $700,000 (from $465,000 in 2008) and are projected to increase to $1,033,000 by 2014. Call volumes have declined by about 10%. For Northbrook the cost per call has increased to $1,850 (from $1,100) and for Denbigh it has increased to $5,500 (from $3,100),” says the new report. “In our opinion, it is no longer necessary or financially justifiable to maintain ambulance service operations at both locations.”

The report recommends closing the Denbigh and Northbrook bases, and opening a new base in the Northbrook/Cloyne area. It also recommends building a new base to serve Loyalist Township, which is currently served mostly by Kingston ambulance bases operated by Frontenac County ambulance services. Ambulance calls to Loyalist are billed to L&A County, based on a cross-border agreement.

On a more positive note, the report recommends ending the policy of having northern ambulances go south to Tamworth on standby whenever the Napanee ambulance is called out, which happened twice a day, on average, last year. The report also recommends upgrading the capacity of the system to put Advanced Life Service paramedics in L&A ambulances in the coming years.

Henry Hogg, who has now been the Warden of Lennox and Addington for two years in addition to being Reeve of Addington Highlands, is less than convinced by all of the points raised in the new report.

“The report said that the new Family Health Teams in Northbrook and Denbigh have changed the service environment, but they have little to do with the kind of 24-hour emergency service that people are seeking when they call an ambulance. People call an ambulance to go to a hospital, and hospitals are an hour away from Addington Highlands,” he said.

Hogg said he is not sure that the members of county council will go along with the recommendations.

“I am not convinced that the cross-border service in Loyalist is hurting anyone, and the Denbigh base serves Renfrew and Frontenac County as well as Lennox and Addington. If that base were gone, there would be a large region that would be a long way from any ambulance base,” he said. “This is not a done deal. I’m not sure there is enough support on council for it to proceed,” he said

Ambulance talks “not fruitful”: Meanwhile back in Frontenac County, putting in a northern ambulance base continues to be on hold.

At a Frontenac County Council meeting in May, a proposal by North Frontenac to go ahead with construction of a joint ambulance base/fire hall in Ompah was deferred because details about how the costs will be divided up have not been agreed to. At the time, the direction from county council was for an agreement to be worked on at staff level.

However, talks at a staff level “have not been fruitful”, in the words of North Frontenac Mayor Bud Clayton. Staff have not met in person to work on an agreement.

According to North Frontenac CAO Cheryl Robson, County CAO Liz Savill has informed the township that she has not received specific direction from county council to alter a funding formula calling for two-thirds of the costs to be borne by North Frontenac. Since this change is what North Frontenac had requested in order to move the project forward, the matter must go back to county council, which will not be meeting until July 6.

Mayor Clayton said that he has asked County Warden Gary Davison to call an emergency meeting this month to deal with this, because the construction window for building a base in 2011 is rapidly closing, “but the warden refused to call a meeting,” Clayton said.

In the interim, the potential closing of the Denbigh base may change Frontenac County’s plans entirely, because Frontenac County depends on the Denbigh base to cover its northwest corner.

Paul Charbonneau, the Director of Emergency Services for Frontenac County, said on Tuesday, June 14 that he had just received the report about the future of the Lennox and Addington Service and will be reading it this week.

“It [the report] has not been a factor in anything we have done thus far, because I was not even aware of its existence,” he said, “but that does not mean it won’t become a factor.”

On Oct. 15, 40 Clarendon Central students from all grades attended the municipal office for Local Government Week activities. This was  a great opportunity for the kids and teachers to see what is involved with the day-to-day operations in North Frontenac Township.

The kids started their day at the CAO’s Office. CAO Cheryl Robinson explained what a municipality does, the role of Council and her role as the Chief Administrative Officer. She discussed how there are many different departments and managers and the importance of her job in bringing back directions from Council to ensure the various departments work together to make North Frontenac a happy, healthy and safe place to live.

At the building department, George Gorrie showed student plans for a home an explained the pupose of building permits, and the importance of building inspection, to ensure homes are being built safely.

Evan Sepa did a mapping exercise with them, having a large map for them to place pins in, to show the location where they live. This map will be going to the school for display. Evan also showed the kids the 911 signs and the road signs and explained how he makes them. The biggest thrill for the kids was seeing the great big printer that is in Evan’s Office. 

Jenny Duhamel explained her role as Clerk and talked about planning.  She also gave a brief explanation on zoning and showed the kids her zoning maps. The children enjoyed this and showed Jenny where they lived on her maps. In the tax department, Andrea, Angela, Kelly and Naomi explained the purpose of taxes, so that the munipality can provide a rink to play at, community halls and other services.

Corey Klatt explained about the Crown Land Stewardship Program, community halls, streetlights, trails. The kids were particularly interested in the maps with the campsites and the picture of the night sky from our recent star gazing party.

The children met Jim Phillips, who taught them about the roads, waste sites, recycling, etc. Then they toured the garage, where they had questions for Jeff the mechanic, who happened to be replacing brakes on one of the 550s. They were amazed at the equipment in the garage and how big it was. From there the kids went to the sand shed and sat in the loader, grader and dumptruck. The kids asked if all the sand in the shed would be used this winter, how the brine works and what it does, and were amazed by the computer in the dumptruck. They loved honking the horns in the loader and the dumptruck.

Paramedics (Donna and Michelle) from Frontenac County and the North Frontenac EFR  team brought along an ambulance. Students were put on a stretcher and a backboard and loaded into the ambulance and were also allowed to sit in the driver’s seat and go through the back to see all the equipment.  A highlight for the kids was having their blood pressure, oxygen level checked, assisted by the EFR team. Kids asked how the bed stays in the ambulance, how fast the ambulance could go, what the equipment does, what the straps are for on the backboards, how to talk on the radio.

Students learned about fire prevention, the importance of immediately getting out a burning house, learned proper technique to operate fire extinguishers, discharging a fire extinguisher with Eric Korhonen. Thes made bird houses from recycled pop bottles and javex jugs with Brenda & Judy to promote the importance of recycling by re-use of a material in North Frontenac Twp. Brenda  had given a recycling presentation  at the school last spring, she was impressed by how much the students remembered from her previous presentation.

Afterwards, members of the fire department barbecued hamburgers and hot dogs for the kids. It was a fantastic day and everyone worked together to make it a huge success. 

Unique boundary proposal would create Kingston-Frontenac L&A riding.

At the Frontenac County Council meeting on Oct. 17, CAO Liz Savill presented the submission she will be making to the electoral boundary commission for council's approval.

The submission makes a number of points that have been made by Hastings and Lennox and Addington County and others ever since the proposed boundaries were released in early September.

Among other features, those boundaries would split Frontenac County into three ridings.

As Savill’s submission acknowledges, all of the other proposals are similar to the current riding boundaries, in which Frontenac County is in a riding that includes Lanark County.

Arguing that Lanark County is more oriented to Ottawa and Frontenac County to Kingston, Savill proposes a Frontenac, Lennox and Addington riding that includes the former Kingston and Pittsburgh townships in rural Kingston. This would shrink the Kingston and the Islands riding but would create a riding anchored by the populations living within proximity to Highway 401, including the Town of Napanee and Loyalist Township, as well as parts of South Frontenac and Kingston.

In addition, it would create a riding of Hastings-Belleville and calls for a new riding of Lanark-Carleton, which would include the rural west end of Ottawa and all of Lanark County.

Savill points out that Frontenac County has only been coupled with Lanark for the past 10 years. Her proposal is similar to the way things were before that, with the exception of the alteration of Kingston and the Islands, which is an established riding, but one that has grown in population to the point that it is now 17.9% higher than the norm of 106,000. The proposed Kingston and the Islands riding would be closer to the norm, but the Kingston Frontenac riding would be well short of the quota at 90,000.

The presentation will form the Frontenac County submission to the public hearing on electoral boundaries on November 8 in Kingston. 

Members of Frontenac County Council took turns objecting to a number of late-year initiatives and relatively minor expenditures (relative to the $40 million county budget) at their penultimate regular meeting of 2012 on October 17.

These objections did not result in outright rejections of any proposed measures, with councillors opting only to defer considerations of the matters to future meetings.

Frontenac Islands Councilor David Jones started the ball rolling when he questioned a proposal from County Labour Relations Specialist Colleen Hickey that a Corporate Services Organisational review be undertaken at a cost of $40,000.

In a report, Hickey pointed out that there are now 21 corporate service positions at the county, serving both Council and its committees as well as the two front-line services offered by the County (Fairmount Home and Frontenac Paramedic Services).

Of those, seven were created after a 2006 organisational review of the county was completed. These positions include Hickey’s own position as well as an IT Specialist, Occupational Health Nurse (Fairmount), Manager of Sustainability Planning, GIS Specialist, Communications Specialist, and Community Planner.

Even with this increase, the report says that corporate services are facing “significant workload challenges and expectations placed on its services and activities. Primarily these increased challenges are attributable to increased provincial reporting and legislative requirements and to the six Council committees now fully operational.”

“I don’t understand why this is coming before us in the midst of a budget year. Why the rush?” asked Councilor David Jones.

County Chief Administrative Officer Liz Savill replied, “The urgency is that we have been living with problems for years. We want this done before the 2013 budget. That is the intent.”

Dennis Doyle, the Mayor of Frontenac Islands, suggested that the proposal be deferred until a strategic planning exercise is completed in November.

The motion to defer was passed.

Ambulance vehicle replacement

A report from Financial Services that touched on amortization of vehicles, funding models, replacement costs, the impact of emission standards and the lifespan of new gas-powered models as compared to diesel-powered models from the past, sparked another series of questions from Council.

Treasurer Marion Vanbruinessen recommended that ambulances be amortised over 4.5 years instead of 6 years, as they are currently. This, she said, would result in more provincial funding (the province pays for half the amortisation costs of vehicles) and better reflects that fact that newer ambulances, which are gas-powered, do not last as long as the old diesel models, which are out of production.

Members of Council wanted to know if the change would necessitate ambulances being replaced after 4.5 years, even if they are still running well.

Deputy Chief Gale Chevalier, sitting in at the meeting for the absent Chief of Paramedic Services, Paul Charbonneau, said, “Certainly if at the end of 4.5 years, the vehicle is running well, keeping it longer is something we could consider.”

“I think the way these things go, if we don’t spell out that the vehicles are not to be automatically replaced after four and a half years, that’s what will happen. I think we should put something in the motion about that,” said South Frontenac Mayor Gary Davison.

In the end, the matter was deferred to the County Finance committee for review.

Medical tiered response

A report regarding proposed changes to the kinds of ambulance calls that are extended to fire departments in both Kingston and Frontenac County received a brusque response from South Frontenac Mayor Gary Davison, as South Frontenac Fire Chief Rick Chesebrough looked on.

Davison referred to the fact that the report made use of a study completed in the Peterborough area which concluded that a number of non-urgent calls for ambulance service do not require fire fighters to provide first response,

“Most of our firefighters do more than first aid, they are trained first responders,” he said. “I would like to see more local information on this, not information from Peterborough.

A motion to receive the tiered response report was deferred until next month.

by Jeff Green

Frontenac County to contest electoral boundary proposals

In response to a report from Chief Administrative Officer Elizabeth Savill, Frontenac County Council has decided to seek standing at a public meeting dealing with proposed electoral boundaries that will take place in Kingston in November.

The boundary changes will bring 15 new ridings to Ontario in recognition of the fact that Ontario's population of 13.4 million people represents almost 39% of all Canadians.

The proposals also involve a reshuffling of seats in Eastern Ontario, which, if enacted, will split Frontenac County into three ridings.

Frontenac Islands will remain part of the Kingston and the Islands riding, as it is currently, whereas South Frontenac Township is slated to join the proposed Belleville-Napanee-Frontenac riding, and North and Central Frontenac, the proposed Lanark-Frontenac-Hastings riding.

“These proposals are not much different from what was initially proposed 10 years ago,” said Savill. “They do not respect our boundaries. South Frontenac is being cut out. There is also a concern with respect to manageable size in the case of the northern riding.”

The distance from Smiths Falls and Bancroft, the southeastern and northwestern extremes of the proposed Lanark-Frontenac-Hastings riding, is 203 km.

Savill also pointed out that when similar proposals were made 10 years ago, the last time riding redistribution took place, officials from the affected communities mounted a successful campaign to rejig the ridings in a more county- friendly manner.

Savill sees no reason that the same thing can't happen again in 2012.

The problem that the two-member riding redistribution commission faces is that changing a single riding can affect the boundaries of many other ridings, and there is an over-riding requirement that none of the ridings have too high or too low a population.

“If we can try to contain some of the ripple in our area to the two ridings, it will be much better received,” said Savill.

Savill has been in contact with municipal officials in Hastings County, and said they will also be seeking standing at one of the public meetings on redistribution, and may be presenting an alternative proposal that would maintain more cohesion for the three counties, Frontenac, Hastings, and Lennox and Addington, who are all being split into at least two ridings under the current proposals.

Frontenac County Warden Janet Gutowski said that she had received an email from current Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington MP Scott Reid about the proposed distribution, which encourages the municipalities involved to seek changes in order to maintain some integrity to their boundaries.

A proposal that has been floated would call for a riding that includes Lanark-Frontenac and all of Lennox and Addington with the exception of Napanee, and a second riding that encompasses all of Hastings County as well as Napanee.

After the public meetings in November, a further parliamentary review process will take place early in 2013 before the boundaries are finalised. They will come into effect in time for the 2015 federal election, and will also take effect for subsequent Ontario provincial elections.

Ambulance base at Road 509 and Ardoch Road intersection revisited

With the termination of the agreement between Frontenac County and North Frontenac Council to build a joint ambulance post/fire hall in Ompah, the county is considering a return to the original recommendation of a consultant’s report from 2009, which called for a new base to be built in the vicinity of Road 509 and Ardoch Road, to serve communities in North Frontenac as well as residents and motorists on Highway 7.

In a report to Council on Sept. 19, Frontenac County Chief of Paramedic Services, Paul Charbonneau, wrote - “From this proposed location [Ardoch Road and Road 509] an ambulance:

Will have better access to major roads serving North and Central Frontenac Townships, including Sharbot Lake and Highway 7;Will be able to respond more rapidly to calls that originate in both North and Central Frontenac Township areas, particularly communities situated in the easterly catchment areas of the Townships. Response time to Ompah and its immediate environs may increase slightly. In this regard it should be noted that Ompah and its immediate local environs generate relatively few calls.”

Charbonneau included mapping in his report that shows that a 30-minute response time will be achieved throughout all of the built up areas in North and Central Frontenac from the Ardoch Road base as well as a base run by Lennox and Addington in Northbrook.

Thirty minutes was an identified target for rural response in a study on rural ambulance delivery that was completed for Frontenac, Lennox and Addington and Hastings Counties in 2000.

The Northbrook service is a 24 hour a day service, while the current northern service in Frontenac County is only a 12 hour per day service, which places doubt that the 30-minute response time can be achieved on the Frontenac end of the region when the Frontenac ambulance is not available. Paul Charbonneau’s report to council did not refer to hours of service.

County Council gave Charbonneau direction to “investigate options in the recommended location area for a new ambulance station.”

Other items from Frontenac County

Still smarting over fishy cancellation – When the minutes from the July 24 meeting of Council came up for ratification, Frontenac Islands Councilor David Jones, who had missed that meeting, had a few words for his fellow councilors.

“I missed the meeting on July 24, after the date was changed, and it was only after the meeting that I found out the date was changed for a fishing trip. That information was not shared with me before the date was changed. So I ask the warden, ‘why the spin’? I draw your attention to the Municipal Act., It says, in section 237, that a quorum, a majority of all members of council, is necessary. It says nothing about where those members come from.”

Warden Gutowski responded to Jones by noting that “There was discussion at the meeting on the 24th with respect to rescheduling and members of Council had their say, as you have today. Traditionally we have re-scheduled meetings to ensure that all townships are represented. So we will move on from that.”

Donation to Thunder Bay – The County will donate $500 to flood relief in Thunder Bay.

Susan Beckel – Long-serving County Deputy Clerk Susan Beckel, whose duties ranged from organizing County Council agendas and mediating the county’s relationship with the City of Kingston regarding Social Services, among a long list of other duties, has taken a job as Clerk for the City of Napanee. Members of Council expressed their appreciation for Beckel’s work over the years, as did the CAO.

Editorial by Jeff Green

There was a time when Denbigh was a pilot project for volunteer ambulance service in Eastern Ontario and the province as a whole.

The distances were as great then as they are now, and it was recognised by the Ministry of Health that just like fire service, people in rural regions need an ambulance to arrive within a reasonable amount of time.

So, Ministry of Health officials trained community volunteers in a variety of First Response techniques, and then gave them a vehicle and off they went.

There have been many changes over the last 30 years in ambulance service.

Over time, the volunteers who ran the volunteer services became more like lower paid professional paramedics and the volunteer model fell into disrepute. The Denbigh service is now on the verge of being operated just like all the other professional services in Lennox and Addington County.

Another major change took place when land ambulance service became a municipal operation, after having previously been a core provincial service. The province still pays almost half the costs, but municipalities run the service and it is a major budget item in rural municipal budgets.

Just as it would not be viable for the model of urban fire departments to be imposed on rural reality - the cost would be just too high - running rural and urban ambulance service on the identical financial model is proving to be too expensive.

The Denbigh service that originally cost $12,000 per year to the Ontario Ministry of Health, now is projected to cost over $1 million per year, half of that coming from municipal taxes in Lennox and Addington.

It was all that Addinton Highlands politicians could do to salvage a half-time service in Denbigh when a county staff-driven initiative to move the resources from rural Denbigh to suburban Loyalist County took hold at L&A County Council earlier this year.

It is hard to imagine that the original Denbigh service, which involved a massive volunteer commitment, could have persisted in its original form into the modern world of paramedic services. Yet, it is also proving to be impossible to imagine a viable ambulance service providing timely service throughout a vast rural province on the population-based, municipally-funded model that is now in place in Ontario.

The current fiscal arrangement does not foster co-operation among municipal partners, as was evidenced when a plan to turn Denbigh into a new model for the future, that of a regional service serving four counties, failed to receive support from two of those counties.

Appeals to the province to re-engage in rural ambulance service have so far fallen on deaf ears.

So, in the end, a rural community that took a giant leap forward in 1982 by setting up a 24-hour ambulance, has now faced a steep fall backward.

There is a solution.

The Local Health Integration Network is responsible for ambulance service. Only a provincial body can step in and pull the county ambulance services together, and find some provincial dollars to augment municipal commitments to rural service.

Somebody, and it likely has to be somebody from the South East LHIN's office in Belleville or the Ministry of Health itself, needs to call a meeting.

At the 30th Anniversary celebration of the founding of the Denbigh service, there were a number of retired bureaucrats on hand, They were proud of the work they did, and the connections they forged with the local population, when the Denbigh service was set up.

If the bureaucrats at the new-look LHINs would like to be more than a layer of bureaucracy concerned with saving money and ensuring that everyone they fund has filled out the correct forms, they need to jump into this major public health issue, get their hands dirty, and make a difference.

Photo: Betty Walker, first president of the Denbigh Area Volunteer Ambulance Service, Beverly Snider, secretary, original mebers Bill Snider and Ruby Malcolm receiving a plaque from Blake Forsythe athe 30th anniversary celebration.

Many of the founders of the Denbigh Ambulance Service in 1982 gathered at the Denbigh Park last Sunday, July 8 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the service.

Among the speakers who graced the stage during the formal part of the celebration were a number of the local volunteers who had served on the initial local board that was responsible for the service, as well as officials and training officers who were working out of Renfrew and Ottawa at the time.

One of them was Blake Forsythe, who is now late in his career with the Ministry of Health, where he is a senior field manager for ambulance programs.

“Back in 1982 I had the pleasure of working with Frank Payette, who was based in Renfrew at the time, and with the volunteers who had been working for two years to complete course work in First Response and a number of other areas so they would be qualified paramedics. Denbigh was the first volunteer service in Eastern Ontario, so the group here were real pioneers. I can truly say that I never met a more dedicated group,” said Blake Forsythe.

Before the Denbigh service started up, the closest ambulance base to the region was 50 minutes away in Renfrew, and after that Napanee, Bancroft, or Parham.

When the service first started up, three volunteers went to each call, (that was soon cut to two) and the ambulance was parked at the home of whichever volunteer was on call at the time. In the winter, the car was housed in the Denbigh township garage.

Bev and Bill Snider of Ashby Lake were early volunteers.

“At first the professional paramedics ignored us when we went to the Renfrew hospital, but after a few months I think they realised we were trained to do the job, just like they were, and they began to respect us. We even started being sent out in Renfrew and other places if we were dropping off a patient and a call came in,” recalled Bill Snider.

The first year’s budget for the Denbigh Ambulance was $12,000.

The volunteers received no wages and no mileage, just the occasional lunch after a call or a training session. Eventually a wage structure was developed for the volunteer service, in the interest of maintaining the service over the long term.

The Denbigh service spawned others in time, including Northbrook, Deep River, and even Wolfe Island, and Blake Forsyth talked about a number of meetings that took place in the late 1980s among volunteer ambulance services throughout the region, including a large conference at the Congress Centre in Ottawa. Some of the volunteers from Denbigh were also hired to work in dispatch centres in Renfrew and Napanee, and over the years a number of professional paramedics got their start as Denbigh volunteers.

Ambulance service in Ontario has changed greatly over time, with one of the pivotal events being the downloading of the service to municipal management, which took place about 10 years ago.

In Lennox and Addington, the volunteer model that had held sway in both Denbigh and Northbrook is being phased out, and as reported in the News earlier this year, the Denbigh service is being curtailed from 24 hours to 12 hours in the coming weeks.

This was not ignored on Sunday.

Art White, the retired manager of the Renfrew ambulance and dispatch centre, was also one of the people who was involved 30 years ago.

“I am retired, so I can say what I want,” Art White said. “The Denbigh service was identified as a necessary service 30 years ago and nothing has changed. I have read about the problem with money and all the numbers that are behind the decision to gut the service, and all I can say is that the only numbers that count are the distances. And it is the distances that led to Denbigh being set up. Any decision that is made can be reversed and I encourage all those who are fighting to keep the service in Denbigh to keep up the fight.”

Ruby Malcolm, one of the original members of the Denbigh Ambulance Service, was also the MC of the celebration. She pointed out that while two MPPs, John Yakabuski from Renfrew, and Randy Hillier from Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington, were on hand, representatives from the L&A County Ambulance Service had sent their regrets.

Addington Highlands Reeve Henry Hogg was at the celebration, and Ruby Malcolm said that as warden and a member of county council, Hogg has been an ardent supporter of the service.

She also said that the Denbigh community is not about to give up on their 24-hour service.

“We are not finished with this,” she said, “we are just re-tooling.”

After the speeches were over, it was time for music. John Yakabuski joined a group of local musicians for a few numbers, but not before Joe Grant performed a song about the Denbigh ambulance that he had written for the occasion.

Nor surprisingly Joe's song paid tribute to the community effort that created and maintained the service over 30 years, and included a few jabs at the municipal politicians who are planning on curtailing it.

Sticker shock puts Ompah build on life support

$734,443.

With most, but not all of the costs for the fire station portion of a proposed fire station/ambulance base at Ompah factored in, that is what North Frontenac ratepayers will be saddled with paying if North Frontenac Council gives the go-ahead.

The project is being planned in conjunction with Frontenac County, which is responsible for the ambulance base portion. The base is slated to cost the county $380,085.

The total cost of the project sits at just over $1.14 million, and under an agreement the two parties will split costs according to the square footage of the portion of the building they will use. The ambulance portion is 1,500 square feet and the fire hall portion is 2,750 square feet and the township is thus committed to covering 65% of the overall cost of the construction.

North Frontenac Council has made a financial commitment of $550,000 for the project, and that includes borrowing $150,000 from township reserve funds as well as a $50,000 contribution from fundraising efforts by the Ompah firefighters themselves.

Frontenac County staff have been managing the project, and a project manager was hired to oversee everything from the request for proposal process through to final construction.

Four bids were received for the project, and a panel that included Fire Chief Steve Riddell and Chief Building Official George Gorrie from North Frontenac selected the second lowest one, from TaskForce Construction for $963,600.

The TaskForce bid was the easy winner on overall points, having a much higher ranking for the building design than the lowest bidder Bel-Con, whose bid came in at $918,880.

The overall cost swells to $1.14 million when project management ($59,972) and 5% contingency ($48,180) and other minor costs are added in.

And the $1.14 million price does not include hydro hook up or telecommunications infrastructure costs or the cost of the environmental assessment that is currently underway.

Cognisant of the fact that the bids were all well above the budget for the project, the Project Manager Patrick Thompson proposed a couple of scenarios that would lower costs.

These include cutting down the size of the building by 400 square feet, which would save North Frontenac about $39,000, and cutting the fire hall portion of the building to 2,500 square feet and the ambulance base to 1360 square feet.

A second possibility would be to eliminate all of the features of the building that are tied to living up to the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards. This would save $115,000 on the project as a whole and $69,000 for North Frontenac.

Building to LEED standards is a requirement that Frontenac County Council has endorsed for all building projects it undertakes. It is a commitment County Council made as part of its Integrated Community Sustainability Plan several years ago.

In her report to North Frontenac Council, township CAO Cheryl Robson put forward a scenario that incorporated the cuts that Patrick Thompson had put forward. She came to a proposed cost for the township of $604,543, which is only $54,543 over the $550,000 threshold that North Frontenac Council had approved.

“The county is not going to drop LEED,” said Councilor Wayne Good.

“I have no idea whether we can convince County Council to drop the LEED requirements,” said Mayor Clayton, “but if we go to the next county meeting and ask for that, at least we are moving the project forward. Or we could stop the project today.”

“My recommendation is that we stick with LEED; it brings lower maintenance costs in the long run. And we look at the $724,000 number and go with it or dump it,” said Councilor John Inglis.

“It’s hard to know what I can recommend,” said Cheryl Robson. “This information only came to us on Friday. County staff have not had a chance to look at it either.”

A motion was proposed that would have had North Frontenac Council ask Frontenac County Council to drop the LEED requirements for the new building and to have the county direct Patrick Thompson, and Chief of Paramedic Services Paul Charbonneau to attend the North Frontenac Council meeting on June 25 to talk about next steps for the project.

In a recorded vote, the motion was defeated. Mayor Clayton, and Councilors Hunter and Inglis (both of Palmerston ward) voted in favour, and Deputy Mayor Perry and Councilors Martin, Watkins, and Good voted against.

No one knew what to do next.

“Personally, I would like to wait a couple of weeks before killing it,” said John Inglis.

“We fought for years to get the ambulance service we have,” said Betty Hunter. “Because we are worrying so much about the fire hall, we are looking at losing the ambulance service.”

In the end council made a non-decision. They simply received the cost estimate report from Patrick Thompson for information.

When Frontenac County Council meets on June 20, the report will be included in the agenda package. Frontenac County Council has given their staff the go-ahead to proceed with the project, but it cannot proceed until North Frontenac Council gives its approval.

That could happen on June 25, but where four votes will come from on North Frontenac Council for a $734,443 fire hall in Ompah is anyone’s guess.

Gallivan makes County Official Plan road trip.

"I’ve been everywhere man, I’ve been everywhere, crossed the desert spare man, I’ve breathed the mountain air man, travel I’ve had my share man, I’ve been everywhere".

Joe Gallivan wasn’t quite singing this old Hank Snow tune this week, and I can safely say from my own considerable experience that attending council meetings does not bring quite the same amount of exhilaration as spare deserts, mountain air, or Winslow or Wichita for that matter.

Still, Mr. Gallivan traveled up to Harlowe on Monday to North Frontenac Council, headed to Sharbot Lake on Tuesday afternoon for Central Frontenac and ended his day in Sydenham at a South Frontenac meeting.

The reason? He was bringing a document that will form the basis for a Frontenac County Official Plan and he wanted to make sure that local councils were comfortable with the idea of a county-wide Official Plan as a complement to the already existing plans they all have in place.

“It should be the intention of a County Plan to set the context for planning in the county as a whole and to help provide direction for regional planning issues. It will not be the intention of a County Plan to interfere with those planning matters that are considered to be the responsibility of the townships,” Gallivan wrote in the document he presented to each of the councils.

One of the main arguments in favour of a County Official Plan is that once it is in place, township Official Plans will no longer require approval from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

Currently, North, Central and South Frontenac are in the midst of five-year renewal processes for their own Official Plans and in all three cases the ministry and the townships are at a standstill over the issue of whether new building lots can be created on private lanes.

While Gallivan said the private lane development issue will not be solved by a County Plan since it is already front and centre in the current stalemate between the townships and the ministry, but “once a County Plan is approved by the province, the county becomes the approval authority for its constituent municipalities … this is a significant step forward for Frontenac County as it will allow for planning decisions to be made locally with a clear understanding of the impacts of the decisions on the rural landscape of the Frontenacs.”

Gallivan asked the advice of each council he met with about the timing of public meetings, which are being set up in August.

While there was a polite reception to his basic document from the council members, a couple of members of North Frontenac Council made reference to the fact that there is a lack of trust between the township and the county. The way the county's integrated sustainability plan has been implemented has been the source of some of that mistrust, making them nervous about the impact of a County Official Plan.

“I can say this,” Gallivan said, “at least at the county you have two representatives at the table. With the Ministry of Municipal Affairs you have no say whatsoever. I know this because I used to work at the ministry myself.

The Frontenac County Official Plan is slated for completion in early 2014 for submission to the province, before the end of the current term of council.

For information, go to Frontenaccounty.ca and click on the Official Plan icon on the lower right hand side of the page.

n an effort to stem a continual increase in the cost of running the ambulance service, Frontenac County will be cutting a 12-hour ambulance in the City of Kingston. The cut will relegate four full-time paramedics to part-time status.

The cost of running the service went up by over 15% between 2009 and 2012.

Cutting a busy shift was not the county’s first choice as a method of stemming the increases in costs. On January 16, the County announced a new sick time strategy. Noting that replacing sick and injured workers was costing the service more and more each year, the decision was made to pull cars off the road during selected shifts when paramedics called in sick. The goal of that strategy was to save the cost of 5,000 hours in 2013.

However, early in March, OPSEU Local 462, which represents Frontenac County Paramedics, announced that it was going to launch a grievance against the County’s sick time strategy to the Ontario Labour Relations Board.

Instead of entering into a grievance process, County Council abandoned the sick time strategy and opted instead for a decisive course of action.

“Rather than engage in potentially protracted and expensive litigation regarding an initiative designed to reduce costs, County Council determined that cost reductions had to be found elsewhere. Council determined the savings would be achieved through the transition of four full-time paramedics to part-time positions and the reduction of service by one 12-hour per day vehicle located at Palace Road in Kingston. The strategy will come into effect on May 6, 2013,” said a County press release last week.

By cutting a 12-hour day shift from the busiest ambulance base in the City of Kingston, on Palace Road, the county will realise savings in equipment replacement costs, as well as over 6,800 hours of labour costs in 2013. Four full time paramedics will be relegated to part-time status and according to Dave Parkhill, Vice President of Local 462, “Those paramedics will, in reality, be laid off. There have been very few shifts for part-timers as it is, and adding four more to the list will only make times even leaner for all of them.”

The County expressed regret at taking the action.

“This was a very difficult decision. However, action was required to stem the escalating costs while at the same time maintaining effective service and this was the best option available to the County as permissible in accordance with the restrictions of the collective agreement,” said the county release.

In a telephone interview, Paul Charbonneau, the Chief of Paramedic Services for Frontenac County, said that cutting the shift will have an “impact on response times in the city during daytime hours, but we are confident that we can maintain the response time targets that were set by the County.”

Charbonneau also said that the cost increases faced by the ambulance service are not solely the result of increased sick time. “Sick time was only a contributing factor,” he said, “along with wage and benefit increases, and other costs.”

One of the anomalies of municipal governance is the fact that the ambulance service, which handles approximately 18,000 calls per year in Kingston, answers to Frontenac County Council, where about 3,000 calls per year are located.

Provincial funding covers 50% of ambulance costs; Kingston residents also pay about 40% of the cost of the ambulance service through their property taxes; while Frontenac County residents pay about 10%. But through a quirk of municipal jurisdiction, Frontenac land ambulance is managed entirely by Frontenac County.

“Yet, the impact of these new measures will be felt entirely by the residents of Kingston,” said Dave Parkhill.

Paul Charbonneau said that “The City has been informed of the measures that we are taking.” He also said that his office has had little direct contact with OPSEU Local 462 since October, when the Frontenac County Land Ambulance Service reported itself to the Ontario Labour Board amid concerns over the safety of some ambulance calls.

Parkhill said, “We had been talking with the County about the safety issue for months, and we thought we had developed a pretty strong relationship in working towards a solution. But then they self-reported to the Labour Board without our knowledge, and that strained our relations.”

This latest measure is sure to strain those relations further, and indicates that the county is likely to take a hard line in upcoming contract negotiations with the union. The collective agreement between Local 462 and the County expires at the end of 2013.

“I will not speculate about how this may or may not affect contract negotiations,” said Charbonneau. “They are still nine months away.”

North Frontenac to request community paramedicine

As part of a push to make more use of the skills of paramedics while they are between calls, North Frontenac Council is making a formal request to include community paramedicine as an added service at the new Robertsville base, which is slated to open next spring.

“We were specifically asked by the Frontenac Chief of Paramedic Services to make this request for community paramedicine,” said North Frontenac and Frontenac County Councilor John Inglis. “It could be particularly beneficial for some of our elderly residents in the northern part of the township."

Community paramedicine, an initiative that has been championed by Frontenac Paramedic Services, can take a number of forms. In some cases, such as at Wolfe Island, it involves setting up clinic hours, wherein paramedics can test blood pressure and offer other pro-active medical services. It can also involve pro-active visits by paramedics to patients recently released from hospital or to the infirm.

Although it is gaining some favour with government officials and politicians, community paramedicine is not funded by the Ministry of Health. While 50% of operating costs for ambulance service is paid by the ministry, paramedicine initiatives are funded entirely by the municipal ambulance service providers. This leads to some unusual costing calculations.

In the Wolfe Island case, for example, the paramedics, who hold clinic hours at the medical centre that is located next to their base, are paid entirely by Frontenac County when they are providing service in the clinic. While they are sitting in their base next door waiting for a call instead of holding the clinic, half of their salaries are covered by the Ministry of Health.

Easy may be not be as easy as hoped

A proposal that was designed to help North Frontenac access some small scale sustainability project grant money from Frontenac County seemed to get more complicated as it was being discussed at Council. The idea is to put in a dry hydrant for fire crews as well as a boat wash station at Grindstone and Canonto Lakes. The county grant would provide 1/3 of the money, the township 1/3, and the respective lake associations the remaining 1/3. But as it was discussed at Council, it first became clear that the boat wash equipment, which might need maintenance, should remain in the possession of the lake associations, making it ineligible for the county money. The hydrants would necessarily remain a township asset, managed by the fire department, but at least in the case of Grindstone Lake, the land where the dry hydrant would be located could be owned by the Ministry of Natural Resources. The entire matter will require more study. Meanwhile the County money is still sitting waiting for a suitable applicant to come forward.

Catch-22, big bucks, and jelly beans

A recent review of the rules by which townships dole out licenses for various raffles and draws has revealed that contests that require any kind of knowledge or skill in order for a prize to be won cannot be given a license.

This might have a severe impact on fishing derbies next summer, and it has put the upcoming Conservationists of Frontenac Addington (COFA) Big Buck contest in doubt.

“Giving a prize for the largest buck that is killed, or the largest fish that is caught, even for counting jelly beans in a jar, is not permitted under the rules that we are supposed to follow,” said Township CAO Cheryl Robson. “It has always been that way, but we didn’t know it. The draws that COFA draws along with their contest are fine, but we cannot sell a license to do the contest itself.”

“COFA is having trouble determining how to proceed this year," said Deputy Mayor Fred Perry, who is a COFA member as well.

COFA holds its Big Buck contest each year at Bishop Lake Outdoor Store on the east side of Highway 41, the border between North Frontenac and Addington Hig

Frontenac County Council agreed last week to proceed with a contract for the construction of an ambulance base in North Frontenac Township. The contract was awarded to Argue Construction for $503,650.

However additional costs, including professional costs of $81,363 and an item listed in a report by Chief of Paramedic Services Paul Charbonneau as “other costs” of $51,686 will bring the total cost to $670,000.

The County has $450,000 budgeted for the project, and agreed to take the extra $220,000 from reserve funds in order to complete the project in the first part of 2014.

Charbonneau told Council that the cost works out to $288 per square foot for the stand alone building, a steep increase from the cost incurred for the construction of the Sydenham ambulance base just three years ago, which came in at $172 per square foot.

“In retrospect, I would say we got a very good deal when we built the Sydenham base,” said Charbonneau.

Part of the overrun stems from the decision that Council made to upgrade the status of the Robertsville base to a stand-alone ambulance base rather than an ambulance post, as had been originally planned. This means that the paramedics who will be providing service out of the base from 6 am to 6 pm daily will start and end their 12-hour shift at Robertsville. If it was only a post at that location the shifts would start and end at the Parham base, which would cut the North Frontenac-based service by the travel time from Parham to Robertsville, which is as much as 90 minutes each day.

Charbonneau also cited land acquisition fees and the cost of environmental assessments as partial reasons for the cost overrun.

However, the purchase price of the lot where the base will be located, which was paid to a private landowner, was only $20,000. That is less than half the $42,000 that the County paid to South Frontenac Township to buy the one acre where the Sydenham base was located.

The Robertsville base was originally slated to be built in Ompah, as part of a joint project with North Frontenac to build an ambulance base/fire hall complex. However that project was abandoned last year because North Frontenac balked at the projected cost.