North Frontenac budget set for increase in 2% range

Jeff Green | Feb 25, 2016

Public meeting and budget adoption set for March 18

The budget process in North Frontenac has been underway for several months, with the township having passed their capital budget back in October.

Finally, a complete draft budget was presented to Council by staff last Friday, February 19, which included the operating and capital budgets.

Staff proposed to spend just under $13 million this year, including monies to be transferred to Frontenac County and the Ministry of Education.

Of those expenditures, Frontenac County ratepayers are on tap for $5,570,000, an increase of just over $100,000 or 1.87% over 2015.

In order to get to that number, staff had to basically keep all departmental spending at the same or less than in 2015 because the township is facing an increase of $173,209 in the cost of policing by the Ontario Provincial Police.

That amount is partially offset by a $76,400 increase in transfers this year from the Ontario government through the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund (OMPF), which is the vehicle for the province to support rural and remote townships in covering their financial obligations. The township will receive $1.2 million from the OMPF in 2016.

However, still facing a new $97,000 cost, it was up to staff to find ways to trim operating costs in order to keep the budget from increasing beyond the rate of inflation.

“We managed to find savings in operations without affecting service levels, while maintaining our reserve funds and keeping our commitment to our long term asset management plan,” said Treasurer Kelly Watkins when contacted by phone earlier this week.

In order to make this happen, costs for administration have been cut by $20,000; for protection and emergency services by $55,000; for waste disposal by $37,000; and for recycling by $27,000.

Some of these decreases are due to changes in the way administrative costs are being allocated to different services, and others come from projected costs based on actual costs from recent years.

When Council went over the budget last week, they made a few changes, and added some costs, bringing the overall increase to just over 2%.

One item that is not included in the 2016 budget is the cost of the renovation and upgrade to the township office, a project that has a very preliminary estimated cost of $900,000. Although there is $370,000 in reserves for the project, the remaining $530,000 is not included in the 2016 budget. Instead, a committee has been struck to look in detail at the project and report back later this year. The project will likely be funded through an infrastructure loan, and payments towards that loan will come out of budgets starting in 2017 at the earliest.

At this point it is projected that policing costs will increase by another $140,000 in 2017 as part of a five-year phase-in of a new OPP billing formula that has hit many local communities hard, but none as hard as North Frontenac.