North Frontenac Council

Jeff Green | Jan 14, 2015

Good news, not so good news, and a pending lawsuit – NF Council gets down to business.

Members of the new North Frontenac Council had already spent a fair bit of time together since New Year's before they met for their first business meeting of 2015. Last week, they spent two days looking at their strategic plan and strategic directions, topics that are well within the comfort zone of their new mayor, Ron Higgins, who is a consultant by trade.

At their regular meeting on Monday, January 12, a number of long-standing matters needed to be addressed.

The most pleasant task was to receive good news about the Ompah fire hall, which had been plagued by problems in the past. First there was an unsuccessful attempt to build a new fire hall in a newly purchased site across the road in conjunction with an ambulance base. This was followed at least two thwarted attempts to hire a contractor to fix up the existing fire hall, which is attached to a community and a local library.

Finally, a year ago council decided to trust in a community-run group to take a piece by piece approach to the job. The work was overseen by a community volunteer, Steve Sunderland, and at the time a cost of $300,000 was estimated for completion of all the small jobs, which when taken together would lead to a fully refurbished multi-use facility.

In a presentation that was delivered by Ompah resident Marily Seitz, it was reported that at this point the project is mostly complete and the estimated total cost upon completion will be $273,000 - 10% under budget. Seitz then presented a proposal to do some extra work to brighten up and modernize the inside of the community hall.

“We are delighted with the improvements to the exterior of the fire hall and community centre. The old hall was grimy, aged, and a bit ragged. Now it is a beautiful building on a clean, neat site. Inside, the community centre is in need of attention now and the committee has agreed on a number of improvements,” Marily Seitz said.

The proposals include the installation of new windows and skylights, replacing the ageing fluorescent lights with LED pot lights, constructing a closet and fixing up the front hallway.

In order to complete these improvements, which have been costed at about $22,000, the committee is asking that the township re-invest $10,000 of the savings that have been realized in the overall project towards the new work. The committee will provide about $4,000 in volunteer labour and will endeavour to fundraise for the rest, about $8,000.

Councilor John Inglis, who has long been a supporter of the project, said, “What happened here is a great success story. By all indications we got some real value out of this. I suggest we allocate $15,000 to the indoor improvements, and let the committee get on with finishing their work. That would leave us $10,000 to put towards some future project.”

Councilors Denis Bedard and Deputy Mayor Fred Perry expressed support for Inglis' proposal, but Councilor Wayne Good was reluctant. “With the increase in policing costs this year we know we are going to have to raise taxes. If we keep giving this money away we are going to have to raise taxes more,” he said, “maybe we can do the $10,000 but no more than that.”

“The request is $10,000; my recommendation is we stick to that,” agreed Mayor Ron Higgins.

Council did just that.

Voluntary septic inspection program falls short again

Out of a planned 100 inspections of septic and grey water systems on waterfront properties, only 37 were completed in 2014. The reason for the shortfall, according to Eric Kohlsmith of the Mississippi-Rideau Septic System Office, is that for the last two years the program has been focussing on inspecting properties whose owners have ignored inspection requests in the past.

After receiving a very poor response to a mailout in June, well under 10%, the township agreed to expand the program to include properties whose owners had never been approached. Even though it was late in the summer before those property owners were approached, the response was still better.

Of the 37 systems that were inspected, just under 50% required some remediation, mostly at only a minor cost, and two systems needed to replaced. The good news for the property owners is that the two that need replacing are not full blown septic systems, which can cost $10,000 in some cases; they were grey water systems for shower or sink water and the replacement cost is not nearly as high.

Council decided to contract Mississippi-Rideau to run a voluntary program again in 2015, approaching mostly property owners who have never been approached, in anticipation of a mandatory inspection system to be implemented in 2016. The mandatory system would force the 350 property owners on some of the larger lakes who have ignored requests in the past to undergo inspections.

To that end, the township will invite Councilor Mark Burnham from Tay Valley Township to discuss the mandatory program for waterfront properties in that township.

Norcan Lake Property owners present ultimatum to Council

A group of property owners from a controversial property development on Norcan Lake, which borders Greater Madawaska Township to the northeast of Ompah, came to Council. For the last three years the property owners have been asking council to force the developer, David Hill, to live up to the requirements of the plan of subdivision that was approved for the development.

This time the presentation was made by Paul Martin, one of the property owners. Martin said he did not want to go over ground that has already been covered, but he briefly pointed to a number of facts that have brought the property owners to a point of extreme frustration, not only with the developer but with the township as well.

The crux of the matter is that a road that the developer had committed to completing to provide water access to the property owners as part of the agreement has not been completed. The township held back a deposit as part of the agreement, pending completion of all the terms of the agreement, but released most of those funds before the road had been completed and approved by their public works department.

Last fall the township attempted one more time to engage the developer in the hopes that an acceptable roadway could be completed, to no avail, and decided to enforce the subdivision agreement.

One of the issues that Paul Martin raised was that the law firm that represents the township, Cunningham Swan, also represents David Hill, a situation that should never have occurred and one that the property owners are raising with the Law Society of Upper Canada.

The property owners sent a letter to the township on December 15. The letter outlines their grievances over the situation, and provides two options for resolving their concerns.

The first option is for the township to “complete the subdivision requirements as per the subdivision agreement 100%, using whatever means they feel necessary to do so.”

The second option would accept a proposal by the township for an alternative route to the water, but since the roadway would be less than what the property owners originally agreed to, they demand that they be released from their obligations under the subdivision agreement: “We the landowners are to be removed from any liability for and obligations” with respect to the agreement.

One of the many peculiarities about this particular subdivision agreement is that at the end of the day the township was never planning to assume responsibility for the road, as is normally the case with plans of subdivision in Ontario.

The letter concludes by saying that if the township does not agree to either proposal by January 15, the property owners will be seeking a legal remedy.

After Paul Martin had completed his statement to Council, Mayor Higgins said that he “must caution members of Council not to respond to what has just been said.”

He then read in a motion that he had prepared before the meeting. Among other things the motion instructs the public works manager to proceed to complete the road using the alternate route, but says nothing about whether the township will then release the landowners from their responsibilities under the subdivision agreement.

Anticipating that this may lead to court action by the property owners, the motion also imposes a gag order on members of council on the matter.

When interviewed outside the meeting, the angry group of property owners said they are not prepared to leave this alone.

“They have let the developer dictate the terms to them for long enough,” said property owner David Milloy. “We are completely fed up, and everything - I mean everything - that we have found out over three years will likely come out in court.”