North Frontenac Council - March 21/13

Jeff Green | Mar 21, 2013

Ompah fire hall savings to be diverted?

It was a proposal that did not sit too well with some of the Ompah residents attending Monday’s meeting of North Frontenac Council. Noting that the township has $250,000 put aside for a solution to the Ompah fire hall situation, and Council has already decided to spend no more that $180,000 renovating the existing hall, Councilor Wayne Good asked that the extra $70,000 be put towards buying a replacement tanker truck.

“I can’t see taking money from a building fund and applying it to a vehicle. They aren’t the same kind of asset,” said Councilor John Inglis. “I don’t think I can support that.

“We are facing a 10 or 12 per cent increase in our budget this year,” said Good, “that $70,000 would bring it down a point or two.”

“Since it is about the money, I think we should just defer this to the budget,” said Councilor Betty Hunter, a course that was followed.

At their last meeting, Council decided to take two tankers out of service and only replace one of them. This will leave the Ompah fire hall with no tanker. By cutting down the number of vehicles in the Ompah station, they were able to approve a renovation to the 1,500 square foot hall for $180,000 rather than building a new 3,000 square foot hall for $300,000.

As far as the building project for the renovated fire hall is concerned, the township is forming a new task force to oversee the project. Mayor Clayton suggested that if the township itself acts as the general contractor to the project they would be able to hire local contractors without circumventing their own procedural bylaw. CAO Cheryl Robson said she would look into it.

Waste Site Report – Guy Laporte from AECOM Consulting brought his annual report on the state of the township's waste sites and diversion efforts. He said the monitoring wells that AECOM has installed have shown that any groundwater impacts at the sites are being contained within the buffer lands that the township owns surrounding the dumping areas. The only exception is the Mississippi site, and the township is in the process of purchasing increased buffer lands to deal with that issue.

Recycling and waste diversion in the township have continued to grow, cutting into the volume of waste at the sites and continuing to add years to the projected life of township dumps.

“At this point we estimate you have about 50 years of dump life left,” he said.

In terms of recycling, Laporte pointed out that sometime in 2010 the number of bags of recycling moved ahead of the number of bags of waste going into the dumps each year, an event that coincided with the introduction of clear bags for waste.

In 2012 the most avid recyclers in the township were the users of the Plevna site, which saw 1.45 bags of recycling for every bag of waste. The lowest ratio, 1.05/1, was at the Ardoch site.

Also, for the first time, the township exceeded a 50% diversion rate. The rate was 54%, up from 33% last year. It is calculated by using a provincial estimate of 1.5 kg of waste generated per person per day, and then estimating the weight of all the waste that goes into the waste sites.

A star is born – Township recreation co-ordinator Cory Klatt went ice fishing on Sunday, but instead of using an ATV to get around, he buzzed from lake to lake in a helicopter as a local guide/co-host of the taping of an episode of “Captured”, the fishing and adventure show hosted by Ashley Rae of Napanee that is being filmed in the Land O’Lakes.

“It was quite an experience” said Klatt, “and the producers couldn’t believe how much ice there still is on our lakes.” The show will be aired sometime this fall.

"Declared surplus" does not mean closure of township halls

In discussing a letter from Ed Schlievert, which requested a public meeting to discuss the potential closure of a number of township halls, council agreed to bring the topic to the public as part of a public meeting in May when the topics of building a new municipal hall/township office complex and changing he composition of council will be discussed.

Council agreed to the request, but there were a number of comments about the letter.

“We have never said we are going to close the halls” said Councilor Hunter, “it is more of an accounting process by KPMG who prepared our service delivery report”

“There really are only three halls involved,” said Councillor Wayne Good. “The Barrie Hall is not included because it has a rental property and a library attached to it. It will not be surplus, and the Ompah Hall is being turned over to the fire department, so we are only talking about the Harlowe, Snow Road and the Clar-Mill halls.”

“I fail to understand why people can travel 50 kilometres to shop in Northbrook or Sharbot Lake but they can’t travel 20 km to a township hall,” said Mayor Clayton. “I will say this, ever since 1998 the biggest detriment to amalgamation in North Frontenac has been the community halls; they keep people from meeting together and working together as one township.”

Seniors of the Year – The township has decided to make Edith Beaulieu and Marie White its nominees for a provincial Senior of the Year award program.