Councillor

Justin Gray – Olden always struggles for what it gets

This is Justin Gray's third run for Council and although he still sees problems in the way Central Frontenac operates, he is a bit less harsh in his criticism than he was eight and four years ago.

Aside from his interest in politics, Gray is also a 13-year member of the fire department and serves as the health and safety representative.

He thinks that Olden “has not really had its share” of capital work as compared to other parts or the township, but, “the township has been doing better than before. They are going after more grants out there. There has been an improvement in the roads.”

That does not extend to one of the roads in Mountain Grove, however.

“Mill Road is a disaster,” he said, “for a road that has a fire hall on it to be in that sort of condition is terrible. They really should take it back to gravel and start over again instead of patching it over and over again.”

It will be a struggle to get council to fix Mill Road, he said, just like “we had to beat the ground before we got our fire hall built and it has been a struggle with the ball-field as well.”

He also said that the township needs to get a grip on managing its public works employees.

“I drive by a road crew and see six people standing around and two working. Maybe there is a reason but with no one watching over, how do we know if there is one?” he said.

However, his main reason for running this time around is not to deal with public works issues, but to make the township more self-sufficient and more prosperous.

“I want to see the township as a whole prosper,” he said, “and I'm running to be a voice for those who can't make it out to the meetings to have their opinion heard. I'm running to see the township create more jobs, more opportunity. We need more tourism, more retirees coming in, and more young families.”

Trustee

Karen McGregor – A career tied to education

In her day-to-day job Karen McGregor deals with a substantial number of recent graduates of the Limestone District School Board.

As the coordinator of the St. Lawrence College Employment Centre in Sharbot Lake she regularly sees students after they have left Granite Ridge Education Centre.

"I see first hand the barriers that go up for students who don't complete their OSSD or they have their diploma but lack employability skills. It makes it that much more difficult for us to help them find employment," she said. “I understand the need for solid foundation skills that will springboard students successfully from high school to employment or further education.”

Before taking a job at the employment centre when it opened, McGregor was an educator herself.

She started off as a supply teacher at Sharbot Lake High School back when it was under the Frontenac Board of Education and ended up working in Special Education and Adult Education within the board and for other school boards.

She also has three children, who all went through the school system in Sharbot Lake, where she lives.

"I have seen the system from a number of angles, and I know what the rural realities are," she said. "One of my pet peeves is finding that a student is not able to take a basic chemistry or biology course in their own school because of the numbers of students. There must be a way to deliver that course without sending the student to another school. The technology exists, and with support they should be able to stay in their own school for something as basic as that."

She feels that rural schools also need to do some outreach to the local community.

"Sharbot Lake High School was known to the community; community events took place there all the time, but most people have never been into Granite Ridge since it opened. I would like the school to re-establish the community uses that the old school provided, so it takes a more central role than it has so far," she said.

She does not intend to be a divisive force as a trustee but she will ask a lot of questions on behalf of the students and their families.

"I'm not going to pretend that I know everything. I'm a ‘why’ person, I need to know what is happening, and why things are done the way they are done. And I know the parents and the students have a lot of questions, and they expect answers."

She said there were heated discussions over the name of Granite Ridge Education Centre and many people she talked to felt that their voices were not heard at the board level.

"That is now in the past, but it was a lost opportunity and puts pressure on the school and the board to demonstrate they are in tune with community needs and desires."

One of the issues that she feels strongly about is the threat to the independent bus operators that is posed by a new procurement process, which several courts have confirmed is discriminatory against locally owned bus operators.

"The Limestone Board is a 1/3 partner in the Tri-board Transportation Service, and as such the board needs to intervene on behalf of the local operators who have done a good job at a reasonable price for so many years. This community needs to support its local businesses and the students by pressuring Tri-board to back off on the procurement process and bring stability to those local operators and the students. I would fight for that."

Trustee

Dave Kendall – union rep to trustee

Dave Kendall has had a long career in education, both as a teacher and as a teachers’ federation employee.

He also has experience in governance. In 1994, he was elected as a trustee in the North York Board, and served a three-year term. However, provincial legislation, brought in by the Harris government, made it impossible for him to run again because his wife worked for the board as a school secretary.

He started his career as a elementary classroom teacher in 1970, and between 1982 and 1990 he was on the provincial executive of the teachers’ federation. This eventually resulted in him migrating from the classroom to the federation office and he spent the last 20 years of his career working in the federation office.

“I spent a lot of years providing assistance in rural Ontario, including Eastern Ontario. I am familiar with the funding formula. We argued with the government to change the formula, to provide more support for rural and remote schools - all that sort of thing.”

After retiring in 2010, Kendall moved to Kennebec Lake on a full time basis with his wife, to property they had purchased 10 years earlier. He has become involved with the local retired teachers’ branch, and after thinking about it for a while, decided to run for trustee just before the nomination deadline on September 12.

He brings a somewhat sceptical perspective about how school boards operate. For example, he said that school boards tend to keep their finances under wraps.

“They keep everything hush hush; they are always hiding money. We sometimes accuse them of being like Enron, burying money all over the place. A trustee needs to ask a lot of questions.”

He said he is concerned about what he hears about Clarendon Central School.

“We are far away from the board office out here and we get short changed a lot. When a community is successful in keeping a school like Clarendon Central open, it often gets treated the way Clarendon was. Now they have a ridiculous situation with one teacher teaching five grades. Those kids aren't getting any benefit out of that.”

He also said that there are a high number of special needs students in the area, “and we need to ensure that we are getting sufficient support. I want to see the formula and the budget to see where the money is flowing and if our fair share is flowing to us,” he said.

But as a single trustee he knows that he cannot make anything happen unless he can convince the other trustees to support his proposals.

“As an individual you don't have any power at all. You need to do your homework, make your arguments, support them with facts, and convince your colleagues to support the changes you want to see.

One thing that he does not support, and thinks the province wastes money on, is the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO), which conducts math and reading assessments for grade 3, 6, and 9 students throughout the province.

“The EQAO is just a public relations campaign, it does nothing to help our kids in this area. Schools are getting all tied up into teaching kids to take the test, which is also a waste of resources. The whole thing costs just about $100 million, and now they are looking at investing more. You could hire a number of Special Education teachers for that kind of money,” he said.

He said the board might not be happy about a trustee asking so many questions about budgets and where money is being spent because that is not something trustees normally do.

“But I can say I'm up to the challenge, and I'm ready to travel around the whole area to get the job done.”

Mayor

Frances Smith – former reeve and warden, seeking to be mayor

When the election results are announced on October 27 it will also be an anniversary of sorts, 20 years since the last time Frances Smith faced an election night in a bid to be elected head of Council.

In October, 1994 she was re-elected as reeve of Oso Township, and she was serving as warden of Frontenac County as the so-called “shot-gun wedding” that led to the formation of North, Central, and South Frontenac, Frontenac Islands, and the amalgamated City of Kingston took place.

Frances took a hiatus from municipal politics after amalgamation, but not a long one. When Mike Beattie, a councilor in what had become ward 3 (Oso) of Central Frontenac, resigned and moved away from Sharbot Lake in 2002, she was appointed to Council. She has since been elected ward 3 councilor on three consecutive occasions.

Frances Smith supervises the Madoc Ontario Works office for Hastings County, and now that she is nearing the end of her career as a social services supervisor, she has decided to take a run for mayor.

Before entering municipal politics in the early 1990s, she worked as the clerk of Oso Township in the early to mid- 1980s, and then ran a garden centre and landscaping business after that.

If elected mayor she said she would take a back seat on the Economic Development portfolio, but would be more active in providing oversight over township operations.

“I would not be the mover and shaker on the Economic Development Committee,” she said, “I would encourage them to continue, but I see the committee now more as an event planning group. The best economic development role a mayor can play is to ensure the township has a good reputation. When you are in Toronto, you get a chance to talk it up. We certainly have to sell the township when we get an opportunity, but the township does not create jobs or new businesses.”

As someone who has dealt with poverty issues in her professional life, and knows of some of the difficulties a number of Central Frontenac residents face making ends meet, she is concerned about making sure tax money is well spent,

“We are told that Council should not micro-manage staff, and that is true, but people are paying a lot of money in taxes, and we are responsible for making sure that money is well spent and that crews have the training they need and do the job they are paid to do. That's our prime responsibility.”

She also said she would like to see Council take a more active role.

“I would like to see council get involved in debating issues. Sometimes it takes a long time, particularly for new members, to feel comfortable, but it is important for every councilor to have their input. Everybody votes on everything, and we all have only one vote, so I need to listen to council, and councilors need to concern themselves with all the issues, not only the ones in their own area,” she said.

In terms of the mayor's role on Frontenac County Council, Smith thinks it is “important but not central. I need to concern myself with what is going on in my own area first, in Central Frontenac. The county has its role, of course, but sometimes it is removed from us. It runs Fairmount Home, and that is a county priority, but the reality is that Central Frontenac residents don't go there. They go to Pine Meadow, and I still don't see why Frontenac County wouldn't find a bit of money to support Pine Meadow's rebuilding project. $25,000 per year for five years from a county that has a $40 million annual budget wouldn't have broken us.”

She is also concerned about Central Frontenac using the county as a contract planner, because the county is also the approval agency for planning decisions made by the township.

“When the county Official Plan was being debated in public only South Frontenac had anything to say. The rest of us are contracting our planning from the office that was presenting the document that we will need to follow. That is a problem,” she said.

She also said that in her view the position of mayor is not a full-time position.

“The mayor needs to be available and with technology today, I won’t need to sit in an office. The job is a couple of days per week but lots of evening and weekend work. I would not have put my name on the ballot if I didn’t think I could do the job well. I will be flexible and available and will rearrange my work life as needed, which could include retirement and moving to part-time work.”

Mayor

Janet Gutowski – community champion

 If Janet Gutowski is able to win re-election for a third term as mayor of Central Frontenac, she hopes to complete some projects and initiatives that are already underway, and to continue to promote economic development by continuing to be the number one booster of Central Frontenac locally and throughout the region, and even the province.

At an orientation for all candidates in Frontenac County that was held a few weeks ago in Sharbot Lake, the consultant who conducted the session said something that Gutowski thought summed up the role of mayor.

“He described the mayor as a community champion, and that is the role that I see myself as playing,” Gutowski said. “Whether that means representing the township or the county in Kingston or Toronto or introducing potential investors in local business ventures to each other, the mayor needs to be present in the community to understand where the community is going and how to support all the efforts people are making.”

She has been involved in municipal politics in Central Frontenac almost from the day she moved to Central Frontenac with her husband James in the spring of 2003 from the City of Thorold, where she had been a member of council as well.

In August of that year, she put her name in as a candidate in ward 4 (Hinchinbrooke), and won the election even though she was a newcomer to the township. In 2006 she defeated the incumbent mayor, Bill MacDonald, and in 2010 she won re-election over Logan Murray.

Among the priorities Janet Gutowski is setting for the coming term of office are: “furthering housing issues, particularly seniors’ housing, and strengthening the environment though partnerships with lake associations, conservation authorities and others. I would like to see septic inspection move forward, and we have a fire hall issue to be resolved. I want to get good solid management in place at the township,” she said.

To that end she thinks it is time for a review of the staffing roles in the township office.

“The last time that was done was in 2008, and things have changed since then. I'd like to see a change in staffing roles to better serve our clients,” she said.

She has been a strong supporter of the role that Frontenac County can play in assisting Central Frontenac to further its own interests, and she feels that after a difficult period a new spirit is taking hold at Frontenac County Council.

“I see a more collaborative and cooperative council next time. There is new leadership at the County, a different set of skills, and more collective recognition from lower tiers of the value of co-operation. Everyone is aware of the waste management issue, seniors' issues, and planning issues. Four years ago when we had an eight-member council with only two people returning, it was a learning term for the council with a very steep learning curve. I think we will have a mix of returning and new people this next time.

“We now have a straightforward strategic plan and a long-term financial plan at the county, and that puts us on much more solid footing than before.”

Gutowski is confident that the completion of the K&P Trail will happen and that obstacles in the stretch between Tichborne and Sharbot Lake will be overcome.

“They managed to put a trail in along the Welland Canal, where hundreds of thousands of people live. Surely to goodness there is enough open space to put a trail in north of Tichborne,” she said.

She would like to see Central Frontenac purchase the property where the former Hinchinbrooke school is located from the Limestone District School Board as a location for a new fire hall, and thinks the deal might include transferring some township property near Land O'Lakes School in Mountain Grove to the school board for use in an upgrade to that facility.

As to the future of the Hinchinbrooke school building, she is less confident. “We need to see a strong business case for the building itself,” she said,

She is hopeful that if re-elected, she will receive the kind of mandate necessary to get full buy-in from Council for the direction she hopes to take the township in. She sees the mayor's role as a full time position, although she thinks a part of that position is volunteer.

“You need to be available at all times in this job, to hear from residents and to be available to show off the township to visitors, government officials, potential investors. I look forward to continuing to serve the community."

The most interesting aspect of the 2014 municipal election in Frontenac County and Addington Highlands thus far has been the races for Limestone School Board Trustee.

In the Township of South Frontenac, the election has become bitter and personal thanks to the arrival of Kingstonian Lindsay Davidson onto the campaign scene, where she is doing battle with incumbent Suzanne Ruttan.

(see candidate profiles and video at http://www.frontenacnews.ca/south-frontenac-municipal-election-2014)

Essentially, Davidson is calling Ruttan a puppet of the school board's senior administration. Ruttan voted to close two schools in Kingston and build a new school at an as yet undetermined location.

Davidson, whose son attends one of those schools, Kingston Collegiate (KCVI), sat on the committee that was set up to look at the future of secondary schools in downtown Kingston, and is now one of five people who are requesting a judicial review of the decision to close KCVI and Queen Elizabeth (QECVI) schools.

Suzanne Ruttan has struck back. On two occasions, Ruttan has asked why Davidson is seeking to become a trustee of an institution that she is suing.

Davidson's response that she is not suing the board, that she is merely seeking a judicial review of the process, doesn't seem to get much traction.

At an all-candidates meeting at the Sydenham Legion on Monday night, Oct. 6, all of the questioners during the school board segment of the meeting took dead aim at Davidson, asking why she was not running in North Kingston, where she lives.

Although she said she is running in South Frontenac because she is basically a rural gal at heart, and chose to live in rural Kingston, on Glenburnie Road, for that reason, some of the very public assertions that Davidson has made in recent months reveal a tendency to blame the rural schools for the troubles facing the urban Kingston high schools.

In an op-ed published in the Globe and Mail, Davidson compared the closing of PDCI in Peterborough with the plan to close KCVI In Kingston, and said this: “It was noted by observers in Peterborough’s school debate that rural trustees representing districts outside the city limits drove the final closure vote. The vote in Kingston exhibited the same rural-urban divide seen in Peterborough. Four of the five votes supporting KCVI closure came from trustees representing municipalities outside of Kingston.”

All things considered, voters in South Frontenac have grounds to be suspicious of Lindsay Davidson's commitment to their municipality, but the trustee election has given her a forum to launch a full on critique of the way the Limestone Board operates, and some of those criticisms are pretty effective.

That critique, coupled with lingering controversies about Granite Ridge Education Centre, has set the stage for the trustee election in North and Central Frontenac and Addington Highlands.

All three candidates in that election, (Dave Kendall, Steve Magee, and Karen McGregor) who are profiled on page 12 of this edition, are critical of the board in various ways.

The cumulative effect of what has been written and is now being voiced at all-candidates meetings, is to question just about everything about the way the board's administration operates. It is being called unresponsive, opaque, anti-rural (and perhaps anti-urban in Lindsay Davidson's case) among other things - and this is by the people who want to become its trustees.

The Limestone Board, like all institutions of its size and constraints, likes to present a carefully constructed, wholesome image for itself. Problems are downplayed as sunshine sketches are released for public consumption almost daily. Disgruntled staff, and there are many, voice their critiques quietly, in whispers, way off the record.

It is hard to say where all these critiques of the board's operations will go once the ballots are cast and everything gets back to normal.

But, at least for now, all the fissures and cracks have been revealed underneath that polished limestone.

Maybe the board should have been made of harsher, stronger rock - say pink granite.

Mayor

Ron Higgins – Consulting to leading

Ron Higgins and his wife Wendy became seasonal residents of North Frontenac 10 years go, and have been full-time residents for the past four years.

“A year after the last election, I decided I would run in this year's election, and I have increased the level of my community involvement since then,” he said.

He has been a board member, and board chair of the Frontenac Community Futures Development Corporation; president of the Malcolm and Ardoch Lake Association; a member of the township's economic development task force; and he formed the Alliance of North Frontenac Lake Associations as well.

Higgins took early retirement from Nortel in 2003 and began a management consulting business, the Wren Group, at that time.

The Wren Group, which Higgins runs with his wife, specializes in improving the performance and outcomes of private and public sector institutions using a “high degree of discipline to results-based planning, process management and performance measurement systems”, in the words of the company’s website.

He said that when he looks at an organization as a consultant he starts by doing a complete assessment of the operation “from top to bottom.” He also said, “I offered my services to the township free of charge a couple of years ago, but did not receive a response.”

He said that some elements of the township's operations are open for study, but if elected he would not lead any kind of assessment of operations.

“That would be inappropriate for a Council to lead, but I would seek the expertise elsewhere to do an assessment, using consultants that have an understanding of the challenges the township faces,” he said.

One thing that he would like a consultant to look at is staffing at the township office.

“Looking at it from an outsider's viewpoint I don't understand the rationale for some of the positions there. It

looks like we should be sharing resources with other townships and Frontenac County,” he said.

One new position Higgins said he might advocate for is an economic development officer for the township because his platform stresses economic development.

He is encouraged by some of the measures the township has taken, such as adopting a strategic plan, but said, “The strategic plan is a good thing but it needs to be improved upon. It requires some performance measures in order to be effective, otherwise it will not accomplish its objectives.”

One of his priorities, if elected, would be communications.

“Communications could be done better,” he said, “with more face to face interactions between council and the public. I would like to introduce quarterly meetings to let the public know what is being done and how it is being paid for,” he said.

A case in point is the Dark Skies initiative that has come under fire recently over its location and cost.

“I support the Dark Skies, and when I look at the opposition it has faced I look at its root cause, which in this case is a lack of communications with the public. The fact that no local tax dollars were spent on the project, how the project came about, all of that wasn't communicated very well.”

He does not think it wise for the township to be contemplating building a new township office, unless it turns out the current office is not workable, and he also said he does not like the ward system for electing councilors because it has kept the township divided.

As far as being successful as a mayor when he is a newcomer to council, he said, “My biggest challenge will be to create an atmosphere in which council can accept the leadership I offer. That will take a while.”

Councillor

John Inglis – unfinished business

John Inglis originally moved to a 700 acre property that was purchased as a co-op in the mid-1970s for the reasonable price of $28,000, or $40 per acre.

He intended to keep working for the Pickering nuclear plant designing training simulators from his homestead on River Road, but that did not work out. After building his own windows to save money as he was building his house, he started building them for neighbours and ended up running Lothlorien Woodworking, a business that is still running today.

In 2010 he ran for Council because he thought he had some insight to offer. Also, his business had been in a downturn from some time and he thought it would not recover.

As it turned out, business picked up and he has been busy keeping up with orders and living up to his council commitments, which include being the second township representative on Frontenac County Council along with the mayor.

He has been involved in community boards in the past, mostly in the sphere of business development. He was on the board of the Highway 7 Community Development Corporation in the 1990s, and more recently was one of the early board members of the Frontenac Community Futures Development Corporation.

Between those endeavors and his work on council, Inglis admits to being “puzzled about how to make things happen in North Frontenac as far as business development is concerned. I do think we should enhance our efforts in eco-tourism, using Frontenac Parklands as a base, maybe develop some hiking trails, and do some marketing. That is worth a try but it has been frustrating over the years.”

One of the reasons he is seeking a second term on Council is some unfinished businesses as regards the newly re-generated green energy task force.

“I think it might be viable now for the township to provide loans to residents for energy upgrades, to be paid back on the tax bill. We looked at this early in the term and it was way too complicated, but it seems the legislation is changing to make it something municipalities will be able to do without a lot of effort in the future,” he said.

In spite of the prospect of opposition when Council takes on or supports projects, he said he favours “more risk-taking” by Council.

“I support the Dark Skies project. There may be hurdles and maybe we made mistakes, but it is an effort to bring something new to the township, to bring people together, to build something. If Council shies away from risk, we will not get anywhere,” he said.

He feels the same way about being a member of Council, at the township and at the county.

“I have learned that when you ask a dumb question, it is not always dumb."

Councillor

Fred Fowler – painter, retired police officer turned politician

Fred Fowler spent 24 years working for the Toronto Police department, but he came from a small town in northern Ontario. He has painted all of his life.

When he retired from the Toronto police force he wanted to live in the countryside again, and purchased property near Snow Road just this side of the border with Lanark County. A few years later, he and his wife Sarah purchased an old creamery next to their property and they renovated it as their home and art studio. He worked for a number of years as a paralegal, helping people in traffic court deal with traffic tickets. When he retired from that business this summer he was freed up to seek political office.

“I decided to run for council because I care about our community and this area that I have grown to appreciate. I am told by the people of Snow Road and area that they want equal representation in council so that their concerns are addressed. I travelled all over Ward 3 and spoke to many people who want someone who will take the time to listen to them and be willing to take their issues to council. I think I am that person,” he said.

One of things that concerns him, and this goes back to his background, are the increases in policing costs.

“I know from the inside how policing works, how much money is involved, and what kind of service we get in North Frontenac. I also know from attending Council meetings that this is not going to be easy for the township to swallow. The costs are too high; the increase is too much.”

Among the things that he said he would push for on Council, are the interests of some of the most isolated residents in Ward 3, those who live on Norcan and other lakes in the vicinity of Calabogie.

“The township is negotiating with Madawaska Highlands to get fire and waste management services for those people and I would work to make that happen,” he said.

He has been talking to residents all summer and attending Council meetings and said he is generally impressed by how council operates.

But there are exceptions.

“I am concerned about some projects voted on by council with good intentions in mind that turn out terribly wrong and become wasted tax dollars simply because there was not enough time and thought taken to consider all the possible factors of the issue and the effects it may have in the future.”

However he said he does not intend to be a negative force on Council, if elected.

“I want to play a positive role in council and use my police and legal background to assist council in making positive decisions that will benefit the people of North Frontenac Township.”

Councillor

Denis Bedard – extension of community commitment

Since Denis and Rose Bedard bought Double S Sport and Marina 11 years ago and moved to Palmerston Lake from Mississippi Mills, where Denis had been working as a engineer for the town, they have been active in the local community.

“We have been involved with the fire department, the Christmas parade, ATV runs, a whole bunch of things,” Denis said.

As the deputy fire chief in Ompah, Denis has been involved with some of the seemingly endless debates about what should be done with the hall. This summer, by bringing up some issues in a public space, Denis was removed as a firefighter.

“I felt that the project was wasteful and will cost $300,000 in the end, more than it should cost. But I said some things in public and that is that,” he said.

His decision to run for Council is not related to the fire department, however.

“I've spent several years being frustrated about how money has been spent in this township, such as $47,000 for a star gazing pad, and a proposal to spend $2 million on a township complex, with no idea how we are going to pay for it. I think over the last term this administration has been allowed to get away with a few things. It's time they were held accountable,” he said.

He would like to see the economic development task force opened up and continue to develop.

“I would like to invite business-minded community user groups, artists, forestry groups, community groups, service groups, special interest groups such as ATV and snowmobile associations, to provide input into the future direction of the community business development plan,” he said.

He would like to see a new signage strategy in the short term, and for the committee to “key on the strengths of the township, tourism and forestry, and then expand to whatever new types of businesses we would like to add.”

One of the major concerns Denis Bedard has with the way council operates has to do with staff and council proposals to spend money.

“If a staff member comes to council with a proposal I want to know a few things. I want to know who is getting the money, what they are going to do, why we need to spend and where the money is coming from. As a community we deserve honest answers with respect to how our money is being spent,” he said.

He does not think that the township is poorly run, but that some tweaking is necessary, and he said that the multi-use complex that has been proposed is something that 90% of the people are dead set against.

He is, however, supportive of the fire departments and thinks keeping departments in Plevna, Ompah and Snow Road is “essential”, pointing out that each department has developed their own specialty.

And the township halls are described by him as “the heart and soul of the community”.