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Members of Kingston City Council were disappointed last week when Frontenac County Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Pender did not show up to brief them on how much the city will be charged for the delivery of land ambulance service and Fairmount Home in 2020.

Both services are operated by Frontenac County, with funding support from the Province of Ontario, City of Kingston ratepayers and Frontenac County ratepayers.

At a budget meeting on November 26, city council member Wayne Hill is quoted in the Whig Standard article as saying “I don’t understand why they are not here tonight. It seems to me they don’t want to answer these questions in front of Council. It leaves us really blind.”

When contacted this week from his office at Frontenac County headquarters in Glenburnie, Pender said the real question in the matter is not whether he attended or not, but why his name was on the agenda in the first place.

“When we met with the mayor and other city officials at RULAC [Rural Urban Liaison Committee] on October 30th, I told them that I could give them a number for each of the services in 2020, but it would almost certainly be wrong. We won’t know until we find out how much the province is paying into those budgets next year, and we don’t know when they are going to tell us.”

Pender said that, even after informing the city that the budget numbers are not available, in early November he received an invitation to the November 26 city budget meeting.

“I informed them that I would not be attending the November 26 meeting, for reasons that I made clear to them once again. Apparently my name was not removed from the agenda and Council still expected someone to be there from Frontenac County.”

When Frontenac County Council met in October to work on their own 2020 budget, the amount paid by the province in 2019 to support Frontenac Paramedic Services (land ambulance) and Fairmount Home was plugged into the budget. Pender told his council the same thing he told City of Kingston officials, that the number was certainly wrong for 2020.

Pender said this week that he does not expect to have final numbers in time for the Frontenac County Council meeting on December 18, and Frontenac County will likely go into 2020 without an approved budget.

“The provincial numbers may not be available until provincial budget time in March,” Pender said over the phone on Tuesday (December 3).

“At some point we will need to approve our budget in order to set a tax rate for our member municipalities to plug in to their tax bills. But it won’t be on December 18.”

He added that once the province tells Frontenac County how much they will be contributing for 2020, he will bring that information to Frontenac County Council. Once Frontenac County Council finalises the budgets for Frontenac Paramedic Services and Fairmount Home, that information will be provided to the City of Kingston.

The City of Kingston has requested that all third-party agencies that they fund, keep any increases to 2.5%, the same request that they made in 2019.

In 2019, the bill to Kingston for Frontenac Paramedic Services was up by 7.7% over 2018 and the bill for Fairmount Home was up by 5.2%.

City staff managed to find money in reserves to cover most of the increase, which was not accounted for in the 2019 Kingston budget, but at a Kingston City Council meeting in September, the decision was taken to withhold the last $200,000 from amount levied to the city by Frontenac County for the services.

Frontenac County has not backed down, and the matter of the $200,000 payment is now the subject of mediation.

Under a separate agreement, the City of Kingston provides children’s services, Ontario Works and social housing services for Frontenac County, and levies funds to Frontenac County ratepayers to cover a portion of those costs. For 2020, the levy for children’s services and Ontario Works is up, by 6.6%, while the social housing levy is down, by 4.4%.

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY

Frontenac County senior administration began talking about the need for an improved administrative office suite several years ago. This has lead to the consideration of a number of options, the completion of a number of studies and a consultation process led by Rob Wood of 80/20Info.

An Administrative Building Design Taskforce was formed in 2016 and has met in fits and starts ever since. Between last summer and the spring of this year, the task force was looking at the idea of constructing a new building, located in South Frontenac, to house the administrations of South Frontenac Township, the Cararaqui Region Conservation Authority (CRCA), as well as Frontenac County.

But in April, South Frontenac informed the county that they were not proceeding with any relocation plans at this point, and will remain based at the township hall complex in Sydenham in addition to a supplementary office at the Keeley Road works yard just outside of Sydenham for the foreseeable future.

Three months later, the design task force met again, and this time considered a new proposal that is based on remaining in place at the existing “Old House” building that is co-located with the County owned Fairmount Home site. A new facility analysis has been prepared by architects Coulbourn and Kendell of Kingston, presenting two options, a renovated space for Frontenac County alone and a renovated space for Frontenac County and the CRCA. In both cases, the working assumption is that headquarters of Frontenac Paramedic Service will no longer be located in the building.

During the July 17 meeting of the Administrative Building Design Taskforce, Frontenac County Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Pender referred to the uncertainty about how paramedic services will be administered in Ontario after 2019. The Province of Ontario plans to reduce the number of paramedic service operators in Ontario from 56 to 10 within a year.

“We don’t know what will happen with Paramedic Services. If FPS goes away they will not need the space anymore, and if the service stays with us we will move it to a location in the City of Kingston,” he said.

Option 1 in the Coulbourn and Kendell facility analysis includes just under $1 million for renovations to make the existing building, which is still set up more like stately home than an office space, as well as a $452,000, fifteen hundred square foot extension at the east end of the building to create a new council chamber from an external entrance. The estimated total cost of option 1 is $1.84 million, $2.21 million if construction is done to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards, which has been Frontenac Counties practice

Under this scenario the suite of offices on the lower level of the building, currently occupied by Frontenac Paramedic Services, will be available for lease once they are vacated.

Option 2 is based on the assumption that the CRCA will occupy the FPS offices, which will require a 6,300 square foot addition to the building to the south in order to be large enough for their needs. The new council chamber would be be a shared space with the CRCA. The estimated cost of construction would be $3.7 million ($4.4 million if it is LEED certified) but the CRCA would pay a substantial occupancy cost, rendering option 2 the one that would most likely lead to lower costs for Frontenac County ratepayers.

The CRCA Board will make a determination shortly about their involvement in the project, but all along CAO Pender has indicated that the administrative needs for the CRCA are more acute than those of Frontenac County, because, he said, their current building it at the end of its useful life.

The task force passed a motion to proceed to the next stage of the project under option a or b, pending a decision about participation from the CRCA. The next phase would be to compete a detailed study of the space needs of both organisations to come up with a final floor plan, at which time the actual costs can be determined. The task force will reconvene at the call of the chair, likely in September or October.

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY

When you run a home for geriatric dogs, there are always expenses.

One way Sheba’s Haven Rescue has found to help defray costs is to set up a booth at craft fairs and shows. It helps them spread their message about providing a home for older animals and brings in a little money at the same time.

Last weekend, they set up a booth at Fantasy In The Forest, where Faye Wan was selling her daughter, Jennifer’s, spirit and healing dolls (Wandering Souls Art), with 50 per cent of the proceeds going directly to Sheba’s Haven.

“The dolls are a talisman against evil and negativity,” Wan said. “Jennifer is a (dog) foster mom herself and makes the dolls to raise funds.”

And that’s a good deal, said Bill McCormick, who along with his partner, Catherine Pokrywa, runs Sheba’s Haven.

“It’s dogs in, dogs out,” he said. “All the time and there’s always a need for funding.

“We have 19 dogs living with us and seven to foster.

“We don’t have a place to put another dog dish.”

But McCormick doesn’t mind.

“It’s all a labour of love,” he said. “They (the dogs) don’t complain when I come home.”

Sheba’s Haven is a three-acre fenced-in property on Sunbury Road in South Frontenac that rescues palliative dogs with life-limiting con-curative illnesses, allowing them to live out their lives in a well-balanced environment where they are part of the family.

It’s a non-profit organization that relies on public donations.

On Wednesday mornings, residents of Sheba’s Haven often visit the residents of Fairmount Home for a mutually beneficial exchange.

Published in SOUTH FRONTENAC

After a long gap, the Rural-Urban Liaison Committee (RULAC), a forum where members of Frontenac County and Kingston City Council have an opportunity to discuss issues related to their shared responsibilities, met on June 26.

The meeting was initiated by Frontenac County Warden Ron Higgins, after he had some conversations with Kingston Mayor Brian Patterson over the winter and spring. During those conversations, Patterson revealed that the city was unhappy about cost increases at the county owned Fairmount Home and the county run Frontenac Paramedic Services (FPS).

Both services have both a provincial, and a municipal funding component. The municipal funding responsibility is shared by the city and the county using a formula that is based on assessed property values within the two jurisdictions.

While Frontenac County Council decides on the budgets for FPS and Fairmount, the bulk of the municipal costs for them are paid out of City of Kingston coffers. This rarely leads to much consternation at city council so long as the levy to the city for Fairmount and FPS does not go up too much from year to year.

However, in December of 2018, representatives from Frontenac County came to a City of Kingston budget meeting with numbers that did not go down that well, an increase of 14.4% for Fairmount Home and 8.4% for Frontenac Paramedic Services.

While both the city and the county have long since passed their 2019 budgets, the city is asking Frontenac County to make some retroactive changes.

According to the minutes from the June 26 RULAC meeting, Kingston City Council is willing to cover their share of costs for a 7.7% increase for FPs and a 6.9% increase for Fairmount Home, and they want Frontenac County to cover the rest.

County officials pointed out that if the county went back and funded the difference by dipping into county reserve funds, it would only lead to an even greater upward pressure on the 2020 budget. County Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Pender and Treasurer Susan Brant both indicated they would not recommend that County Council open up the already approved 2019 budget to increase the county share of costs for Fairmount and FPS.

Pender acknowledged that the city could bring the matter to arbitration and even to court, but only the apportionment formula in the funding agreements is open to a court challenge, not the actual funding amounts.

According to the minutes from the meeting, Mayor Patterson indicated at the end of the exchange that the “city is prepared to go to court if the levy to the city is not reduced”.

A motion was forwarded from the RULAC meeting to Frontenac County Council to the effect that the “County of Frontenac reopen the 2019 budget for Frontenac Paramedic Service and Fairmount Home for budget levy.”

When contacted early this week, Frontenac County Warden Ron Higgins said that he does not expect Frontenac County Council will support this motion at its monthly meeting, which takes place this week, nor does he expect that any court action that the city decides to take will have any success.

“I had a look at the Municipal Act and it is pretty clear. I don’t see where they can really go with this,” he said.

He added that he believes that the friction between the county and the city can be resolved.

“I think this all came about because of a lack of communication. When we presented those budgets to Kingston City Council we were granted only ten minutes to explain the two budgets needed to increased, not enough time to explain, for example, that because of call volumes in the city a new shift was being implemented by FPS to serve Kingston and that was the main reason for the increase,” he said.

Higgins added that the root of the problem is that RULAC has not been meeting and the relationship between the county and the city has deteriorated as a result.

“I did not know what RULAC was all about. I think it only met once in my first term on council. My suggestion is that we meet more regularly so we can avoid any potential conflicts.”

This pending dispute over the 20-year-old funding models is taking place in the context of a climate of uncertainty, both in funding and governance, for both long term care and paramedic services.

The provincial government has stated its intention to change the delivery model for paramedic services radically within the next year, by merging paramedic service operators. There are currently 50 in Ontario and they intend to reduce that to 10. Under this scenario, it is highly likely that FPS will no longer exist in its current form.

Long Term Care Facilities, such as Fairmount Home, operate under a license and a provincial funding formula that is administered by Local Health Integration Networks, which are being eliminated as part of wide-ranging health care reform.

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY
Wednesday, 10 July 2019 13:46

It’s time for us re-jig Frontenac County

All has been quiet on the Queen’s Park front in recent weeks, at least as far as creating a new template for municipal governance in the province is concerned. A review of how regional governance is working in municipalities across southern Ontario is ongoing and that may lead to some changes. As to what the provincial government is planning for Eastern and Northern Ontario, particularly for small, rural municipalities, is not the least bit clear.

There have been hints, however. Changes in administration are still being planned for services such as Public Health, Paramedic Services, Libraries, and Child Care, which are all overseen by municipalities and partially funded with municipal dollars. And there is a clear direction from the government, they want to see larger and larger entities covering larger swathes of territory.

In March, there was one-time funding allotment for small, rural municipalities in the spring. It came with no strings attached but was earmarked to be used to find efficiencies in the delivery of municipal services, with no indication about what those inefficiencies might be. There is every reason to believe that rural municipalities will be the next sector that will be addressed, and the push for larger entities is the likely outcome.

The time frame during which such changes are likely to be initiated is now pretty narrow. If it is going happen before the next provincial election, we will likely know something about it before the end of the year, if not earlier.

In the context of change, there is another question that should be asked, at least in Frontenac County, and that is whether we are well served by the municipal arrangements that are currently in place.

When the current system was established in 1998, responsibility for the delivery of municipal services was split between the Frontenac Townships (roads and bridges, building and development, recreation, finance, waste, etc) and the City of Kingston (social services: child care, Ontario Works, Housing, etc) with ancillary institutions such as KFL&A Public Health, the Kingston Frontenac Public Library and others operating at arms length by boards appointed by the municipalities. The Frontenac Management Board (FMB), overseen by the four Frontenac Mayors, was set up in order to facilitate all of the relationships between the townships, the City of Kingston, and those boards. It also operated a long-term care facility, Fairmount Home, and later won the contract to provide Paramedic Services in Kingston and Frontenac.

The FMB then renamed itself Frontenac County and has taken on some of the land use planning and IT functions for the Frontenac Townships, and has established a small economic development department.

The fact that our municipalities do not deal in any direct way with services aimed at alleviating poverty, at keeping people housed and healthy, and supporting our aging population, makes us something less than a full-blown municipality.

We have been lucky enough in Frontenac County to have two community-based agencies, Rural Frontenac Community Services and Southern Frontenac Community Services, providing the kinds of supports that people rely upon, but each of these agencies is facing constraints from an increasingly fickle provincial government. In place of the moral support and minimal funding they receive from the municipalities they serve, a true partnership needs to emerge to ensure they can provide the kinds of services that we decide are necessary, instead of the services that the provincial government decides to fund.

In order to comply with the Policing Act, Frontenac County requires a Community Safety and Well-Being Plan. The Frontenac Townships are working together on this, and are setting up an advisory committee to develop the plan. This exercise could result in an empty shell of a plan, or one that starts to expand the scope of our municipal services.

Perhaps the Province of Ontario will decide how our municipal future will unfold, perhaps not.

But it is high time that we begin a conversation about developing a comprehensive political structure devoted to the needs of all Frontenac County residents. In my view, a single Frontenac Township is necessary to take on the needs of the 28,000 permanent residents and almost as many seasonal residents. By pooling all of our physical, administrative, and human resources, we can begin to serve the particular needs of our residents. If the opportunity arises, we would be in a position to make a case to the provincial government for the establishment of such a political body.

The status quo is not a solution any more, and if we do not make an effort to build our own future, based on our shared history and the land that we occupy, or someone from the outside is certain to do it for us.

 

Published in Editorials

After flirting with the idea of constructing a new Frontenac County Administrative building, Frontenac County Council is being asked to look once again at renovating its current building.

A little over a year ago, after considering its long-term office space needs for over two years, Frontenac County was approached by the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority about a shared accommodation solution. The idea of a brand new building was raised, and late last spring the idea gained more traction when South Frontenac Township expressed interest in a three-way partnership.

This led the county’s Administrative Building Design Task Force to look at the feasibility and cost estimates surrounding a new building for the three partners, located somewhere in South Frontenac, perhaps in Sydenham in order to save on water costs.

This process carried on through the fall of 2018, into the beginning of the new term of municipal council.

At a meeting in April, South Frontenac Mayor Ron Vandewal informed both the county and the conservation authority that South Frontenac Council had rejected the idea of a new building at their own meeting in early April.

In response, the task force decided to look again at using either the current Cataraqui Conservation Authority near Hwy. 401 or the current Frontenac County/Fairmount home site in Glenburnie for a joint office space.

“The lowest cost option would be to use the existing county site as all infrastructure and servicing is already in place,” said a report to Council prepared by Clerk Janette Amini and Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Pender.

Accordingly, the report recommends spending $10,000, to be taken from a provincial grant earmarked for modernisation, to look at renovating the existing county offices for use by the two entities.

If approved this week, the money will go towards, architectural analysis of the current county building, preliminary plans to meet partner needs, options for potential configuration of common areas, implications for parking, water & similar services; and initial budget-level estimates for comparison with a stand-alone option.

Strategic Plan to be presented

At that same meeting, Council will consider a draft strategic plan that was developed in association with 80/20 Consulting.

The previous plan, prepared in 2014, has become known for identifying four “wildly important goals” for Frontenac County. This new plan, by contrast, talks about three strategic priorities for this term of council.

Although the plan was prepared before the provincial government’s recent budget, which is already having an impact on municipal budgets, it is written with a sense of caution and a focus on maintaining programs and services that are already in place.

Here are the strategic priorities: 1 - Get behind plans that build community resilience and vitality in times of growth and change, 2 - Explore new funding sources and invest in critical long-term infrastructure using sound judgement, and 3 - Champion and coordinate collaborative efforts with partners to resolve complex problems otherwise beyond the reach of individual mandates and jurisdictions.

Within these priorities is everything from enhancing broadband coverage, securing the future of Fairmount Home, promoting economic development and improving planning processes across the county.

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY
Wednesday, 28 February 2018 12:32

Fairmount Home Strategic Plan

Lisa Hirvi, the Administrator of Fairmount Home, presented the broad outline of the strategic planning exercise that Fairmount staff has undertaken to a meeting of Frontenac County Council last week.

Fairmount Home, a 128 bed long term care facility, is located on the same property as the Frontenac County Offices in Glenburnie, in rural Kingston. The Home is owned and operated by Frontenac County. It is not only the largest and most valuable physical asset of Frontenac County, it is also one of the two largest services that the county offers. Upper tier municipalities in Ontario, such as Frontenac County, are required to operate or participate in funding a long term care facility and Fairmount satisfies that requirement for Frontenac County. Although access to long term care facilities is not effected by municipal borders, residents of the southeastern portion of Frontenac County have made Fairmount their home of choice, as it is for many residents of Kingston and other municipalities in the region.

Over ten years ago, Fairmount made a commitment to the Gentlecare philosophy, which the Home defines in the following way on their web page: “resident-focused care which empowers residents to make as many choices as possible. Staff knows each resident and responds to their social as well as psychological and physical needs. They put the resident first before the task at hand and acknowledge that risk is a normal part of life. Most importantly, they treat the residents as they would wish to be treated.”

The new Strategic Plan reasserts the commitment to Gentlecare, listing it as the key means of accomplishing the #1 goal identified in the Strat Plan: “to provide quality care and meet the diverse and unique needs of our residents”.

The other goals that were identified in the plan include: being the preferred place to work and volunteer in the local health care sector; expanding engagement with broader community and system partners, and; ensuring Fairmount operates efficiently while striving for continuous improvement.

Among the key goals identified in the plan is to identify the generational needs of staff and incorporate flexibility.

“This is something we have had to do recently,” Hirvi pointed out, “as the Administrator and Director of Care positions have turned over. We will deal with other challenges as we move forward, and making sure we are a good place to work is important in enabling us to recruit people.”

In receiving the report, one of the members of Frontenac County Council asked about the necessity to promote and market Fairmount, given that the home already has a long waiting list and has had one for years.

“We need to maintain and enhance our contacts with the community and with our funders, in the interest of patients. Fairmount is a community asset, we need to have a public profile,” Hirvi said.

After Hirvi’s presentation was received and the plan was adopted, Frontenac County Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Pender informed Council that the Province of Ontario had just put out a “Request for Expression of Interest” in creating new long term care beds.

Although Councilors expressed concern over potential increases in costs, Pender pointed out that if Fairmount were 50% larger, certain administration costs would not go up, leading to efficiencies and relative cost savings. “With 172 beds there is still only one Administrator, one Director of Care, one food service,” Pender said.

By responding to the call, the county would not be making any commitment.

“It will be up to council to decide whether to go ahead with anything, Pender said, also pointing out that the debenture for the most recent expansion of Fairmount will be paid off in 2022.

“We could build without having to make any change in our budget if it only meant continuing with a new debenture after 2022,” Pender said.

Council instructed Pender to prepare a submission to the Request for Expressions of Interest.

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY

Budget article update - Wednesday 6:00 pm

(At their meeting today, Frontenac County Council considered proposals which would have brought their 2018 budget levy down by up to $150,000, but in the end only managed to make the most superficial of cuts to the document.

But pity the poor foster kids!

A 6,000 expenditure to support a scholarship program for foster children in Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington, was cut from the budget. The impact of the cut was to lower the budget levy by 0.06%. The only other change to the budget that was made by council was to remove another $6,400 from taxation by cutting almost half of the budget for a parking lot restoration project at the county offiuce/Fairmount Home complex.

All in the levy to ratepayers has been reduced from $9.775 million to $9.763 million, a decrease of a little over a tenth of one per cent. The net increase in the levy to ratepayers has been set a 4.4%.

The other potential changes that would have had a greater impact did not have enough support from Council to come to fruition.

A motion to cut the $55,061 contribution to the University Hospital Foundation of Kingston, which was made by North Frontenac Mayor Ron Higgins, did not receive a seconder.

The only major dispute of the morning came when Warden Ron Vandewal proposed that the ambulance that is stationed on Wolfe Island could be replaced with a cheaper option using a single paramedic and a first response vehicle. The transport ambulance would come from Kingston off the soon to be upgraded ferry service. This would save about $100,000 per year, and a portion of those savings would go to Frontenac County ratepayers.

Chief of Paramedic Services Paiul Charbonneau said that the alternative service would be a good fit for Wolfe Islands and would serve the residents as well as the traditional ambulance that has been phased in.

That did not sit well with Frontenac Islands Mayor Dennis Doyle however.

“Just like we voted to support the K&P Trail and Economic Development, I would ask that the county support the residents of Wolfe Island by completing the phase-in of ambulance service that this council started in 2015.”

Council stood with Doyle.

The draft 2018 budget thus remained intact, with the only losers from today’s process being part of a parking lot and a foster child who will not get a scholarship.

Overall spending for Frontenac County, which stood at $41.3 milliom in the draft budget, remains at $41.3 million. The $26,000 decrease in total expenditures (0.06%) falls within the rounding error.

The following was published before the meeting on Wednesday morning, and is based on the content of the draft budget, which as explained above, has remained fundamentally intact in its final incarnation

 

Perhaps Kelly Pender sky dives on the weekends, but in his working life the Frontenac County Chief Administrative Officer is averse to risk and drama. As far as the annual Frontenac County budget is concerned, he has been preaching from the gospel of predictable, controlled budget increases over time.

This has taken a lot of the drama out of the annual Frontenac County budget process, which was never a riveting spectacle to witness even before Pender took the helm.

This year Frontenac County Council has moved away from the very general; approving the parameters of the budget in conceptual terms in September, to the very specific; looking at individual projects as add-ons to the budget in late October.

This week they received, for the first and likely the last time, a draft budget document. It contains few surprises.

The number that matters in 2018 will be $9,775,000, that’s how much will be levied to the four Frontenac Townships if Council accepts the budget as presented Wednesday morning (This article will be updated on Frontenacnews.ca at that time) The townships will then collect that money from Frontenac County properties.

This projected levy is over $400,000 higher than it was in 2017, an increase of 4.5%.

Most of that increase came about as the result of previous decisions by this Council.

They indicated at their meeting in September that they would like to see an operating budget, including service enhancements, come in at under 1.5%, the figure for the increase in the consumer price index (CPI) for the year as calculated in late August.

Treasurer Susan Brandt, working her first budget as the lead official (she was the Deputy Treasurer until replacing the retired Marion Vanbruinessen earlier this year) followed last year’s practice and added 0.6% to that target, based on figures for the projected increase in property assessment that was provided by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation.

By keeping the operating budget increase to 1.1% ($104,117), adding 0.89% ($83,550) for new projects, and using $88,000 from reserve funds, the result was a 2% increase. This increase includes a new overnight Personal Support Worker shift at Fairmount Home and a new Human Resources position, as well as $35,000 for the Economic Development Department.

Added to the 2% increase from this year’s process are increases resulting from commitments made earlier in the mandate of this council. The largest of those is 1.78% ($166,7782) for two service enhancements of the Frontenac Paramedic Services, which are being phased in. One is on Wolfe Island, which is now fully funded, and the other is the second of three increases for a new overnight ambulance in Kingston. Another 0.65% ($60,787) is devoted to increase the reserve fund for capital projects, which has been in place for three years now and will continue to effect future budgets.

All together, the increase rounds off to just about 4.5%

Because of the incremental process and the weight of prior commitments, there is little to be decided when the entire package is presented this week. All of the spending increases have been approved in principle at previous meetings, but Council is not bound by those prior decisions.

Based on the discussions that took place earlier, the only item that is at all likely to re-surface is the commitment to provide $55,000 each year for ten year to the University Hospital Foundation of Kingston. That was approved in a vote of 6-3 and may come up for a final vote before the budget is signed, sealed and delivered.

Whether approved with or without amendments, the enacting bylaw for the budget will not be before Council until their meeting on December 20th.

(Frontenac County’s overall spending budget for 2018 will be $41.3 million, up 3% ($1.2 million) from 2017. Most of the money required to deliver Frontenac County Services is provided by the Province of Ontario and the City of Kingston, which provide the lion’s share of funding for the two largest County operations (Fairmount Home and Frontenac Paramedic Services)

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY
Wednesday, 03 May 2017 10:28

Award winner

Just five months into her tenure as Fairmount Home’s permanent Administrator, Lisa Hirvi received the inaugural Donna Rubin Administrator Leadership Program Award at the AdvantAge Ontario annual convention in Toronto on April 21.

Hirvi received the award for earning top marks for her case study during last winter’s AdvantAge Ontario Administrator Leadership Program, which is structured to meet requirements for Long Term Care Home Administrators under the Long Term Care Homes Act, 2007. AdvantAge Ontario has delivered this program successfully for 21 years and boasts more than 1,400 participants.

Hirvi became the permanent Administrator at Fairmount Home in December 2016 after assuming the role of Interim Administrator in January of that same year.

The AdvantAge Ontario Leadership Program Award was established in honour of Donna Rubin, who was the organization’s CEO for more than 26 years. Rubin was a committed, accomplished and inspiring leader and champion of not-for-profit seniors’ care. AdvantAge Ontario represents and supports not-for-profit organizations that play a role in the provision of senior care in Ontario.

Fairmount Home is a not-for-profit long term care home, managed through the Gentlecaretm philosophy by the County of Frontenac and is accredited with Exemplary Standing, Accreditation Canada's highest designation. Fairmount Home was established in 1968 and is home to 128 residents.

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY
Wednesday, 18 January 2017 10:46

Canada 150 at Fairmount Home

Fairmount Home will offer residents a unique way to celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary this year thanks to a grant from the Community Foundation of Greater Kingston (CFKA).

20 - 30 residents at the home will enroll in an arts program called History Through Expression. The program involves hand drum making, drumming, indigenous singing, seated dancing, and storytelling. It will run 14 weeks starting in March and will culminate in a performance at Fairmount Home on June 30.

“We are so grateful to receive this CFKA grant, which will fund 3 aboriginal teachers, an arts educator, a dance teacher plus drum-making supplies,” said Lisa Hirvi, administrator at Fairmout Home. “The program will offer rich and meaningful activities for our residents, honour indigenous traditions and celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary.”

Fairmount Home is a not-for-profit long term care home, managed by Frontenac County. It has been in existence since 1968 and is home to 128 residents.

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY
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With the participation of the Government of Canada