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Wednesday, 05 February 2020 13:32

Regional Roads presentation fizzles

I hope readers will grant me this assumption – the idea of a virtual county roads system in Frontenac County, or anywhere else, is hard to understand. A real road goes somewhere, but a virtual one?

In fact, most of us never think about who owns the roads that we drive on every day. We know the difference between gravel roads and paved roads, two lane highways and four lane highways, but the fact that every road that we ride on is owned by someone rarely, if ever, crosses our minds.

For municipal politicians, however, road ownership is a big thing, and in Frontenac County it has been a major source of concern, and a major driver of tax increases, for over 20 years, ever since municipal amalgamation in 1998.

At that time, not only were the four current Frontenac townships created, but two other former Frontenac townships, Pittsburgh and Frontenac, became part of the City of Kingston. At the same time, the ownership of most of the major arterial roads in Frontenac County changed hands. The provincially owned Highway 38 became Road 38. The same thing happened to Hwy 506/509 in North and Central Frontenac.

The difference between a provincial road and a municipal road is all about who pays to maintain it. Roads 38, 509 and 506, as well the major roads on Howe and Wolfe Island, have been paid for through municipal taxes since 1998. Before then, they were paid for out of the provincial budget.

This scenario presents a problem. They are expensive roads to maintain and the area is sparsely populated. And when the roads need to be rebuilt every 25 years or so, local municipalities do not have the resources to pay for it.

Before Road 38 was downloaded, the section between the 401, and the border between South and Central Frontenac, was rebuilt by the province. The section between Central Frontenac and Highway 7, was not.

It took almost 8 years of relentless lobbying to obtain a provincial grant to rebuild Road 38 in Central Frontenac, and even then, the township had to take out a loan, and ratepayers in Central Frontenac are just now paying that loan off.

In the meantime, the section between the 401 and the Central Frontenac border is now almost 25 years old. It is by far the busiest stretch of road in Frontenac County and many, many Frontenac County residents use it every day to go to work in Kingston or Napanee or points east and west along the 401. It is the single most important piece of road infrastructure in the region and it is failing, in some spots it has already buckled.

South Frontenac is in a relatively strong financial position. Still, rebuilding Road 38 will require support from other levels of government, a large infrastructure grant to help cover a $10 million project, for the South Frontenac portion. Other key commuter roads in South Frontenac are also in need of rebuilding. Battersea Road ($6 million), Perth Road ($5 million), Sunbury road ($1.5 million) and Bedford Road ($1 million) are all listed for reconstruction within five years.

These cost estimates and the five-year time frame all come from a report by consultants KMPG, which was presented to a joint meeting of Frontenac County and the four Frontenac townships last Wednesday (January 29).

The KPMG report, which was presented by Bruce Peever, looked first at a previous study from 2013, by the Watson Group. The Watson Group concluded that financing the capital costs on a county-wide basis instead of township by township, would “smooth, and therefore minimise, future tax impacts to all county constituents,” and ultimately deliver “a better and more consistent level of service to all residents and businesses.”

The KPMG report then looked at how successful Frontenac County townships have been at obtaining road and bridge construction grants since 2014 as compared to its most immediate neighbours; Lennox and Addington, Hastings, Lanark and Leeds Grenville.

Frontenac County was in the middle of the pack for the first two years, but did very poorly between 2016 and 2018. According to the KPMG report, in 2018 alone, “Frontenac County received an average of $3 million less in grant funding than their comparator group.”

The chart that preceded that text in the report, does indeed show Frontenac County lagged far behind each of the comparators over the three year period. But the claim about receiving $3 million less in 2018 is not supported by the data. None of the comparators received $3 million in 2018, but Frontenac was about $2 million below the others.

As well, although the report only looks to the end of 2018, it was prepared in the 4th quarter of 2019, and in 2019 Central Frontenac alone received a $3 million dollar grant. Presumably then, if 2019 were included in the report, it would show a bounce back for Frontenac County.

In presenting the report, Bruce Peever pointed out that the future of granting programs under the current government is “uncertain, and it is difficult to project from the recent past into the near future as far as provincial granting programs are concerned.”

Nonetheless, the report concludes that if Frontenac County was able to apply for grants, in addition to the four Frontenac townships, the chances of success would be greater. All of the other comparators have county roads systems, that are eligible for grants, except for Hastings County, but Hastings County has fourteen local municipalities applying for grants and Frontenac County only has four. The basic logic of the argument for a virtual Frontenac County roads system is therefore that one more grant application can be sent in for every grant that is available and Frontenac would receive, over time, more in grants than otherwise.

As to how this should be set up, the KPMG report said it should be done the way Lennox and Addington does it. Local townships handle all maintenance and the county handles capital costs on county designated roads. The county has an engineer and crew on staff to handle the county roads, and the report says that Frontenac County should do the same, at a cost of $625,000 per year.

In responding to the report, North Frontenac Mayor Ron Higgins said “I understand the intent of all this, to get more grants, but I find the charts, and the report as a whole, confusing, and I don’t follow the conclusions.”

Frontenac Islands Mayor Dennis Doyle said “collectively we are leaving a lot of money on the table. $625,00 a year is a lot, but we spend a lot on engineering consultants and you can’t necessarily get a hold of them when you need them.”

South Frontenac Mayor Ron Vandewal, in line with the thinking of his own council, which discussed the report at their own council meeting the previous evening, said “we feel the need to work with the existing public works departments and staff. I don’t see why we would want to create another level of bureaucracy to do this. I’d like to see a model where we do this without creating a new department.”

The whole matter has been kicked back to KPMG to prepare an implementation report, taking into account what was said at the meeting and the direction that the provincial government is headed in, to the extent that it can be determined.

But given that each of the townships will have to agree before county roads, virtual or otherwise, can be established, it is not clear that the project will move forward in 2020, just as it languished after the Watson report in 2013.

What is clear, however, is that certain major roads need to be rebuilt, and soon, and it will take grants to get rebuild them.

Would county road status make that happen more easily? No one can guarantee that.

Frontenac County chief administrative officer Kelly Pender did not say much during the presentation and the subsequent question period. He did say one thing at the very end, however.

“Every other county in Ontario has received more in infrastructure grants over the last five years than Frontenac County has. Every one.”

Published in Editorials

Last week, the Province of Ontario confirmed the annual funding for infrastructure needs, that they provide to rural Ontario municipalities, in the run up to the annual Rural Ontario Municipal Association (ROMA) conference.

The Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund was established under the former Liberal government in 2014 to provide funding to small, rural and northern municipalities in order to help them “build and repair critical infrastructure”.

The funding was minimal in the first couple of years, but doubled in the run-up to the 2018 provincial election. After the election, which saw the vast majority of rural ridings elect Conservative MPP’s, the program has doubled once again.

In Frontenac County, most of the money goes directly to the townships, which have responsibility for just about all of the municipal infrastructure, which is dominated by roads and bridges.

South Frontenac, which has already passed its 2020 budget based on estimates, will receive $508,412 for 2020, up from $498,738 in 2019.

Central Frontenac will receive $361,718, down from $368.076 in 2019.

North Frontenac will receive 304,907, down from 310,472

Frontenac County received $50,000, the same as last year.

In Lennox and Addington (L&A), the county level of government has more infrastructure responsibilities than the local townships. L&A will receive 761,841 this year. In 2019 they received $758,478.

Addington Highlands Township will receive $54,461 this year. In 2019, they received $55,084.

Rural municipalities also receive funding each year under the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund (OMPF) based upon a formula that looks at population as well as fiscal circumstances. OMPF is crucial to the smallest municipalities.

For 2020 Addington Highlands will receive $2,053,400 ($743 per household) the same as 2019.

Central Frontenac will receive $2,148,900 ($520 per household) about the same as last year.

North Frontenac gets $1,705,200 ($499 per household) down about $700 from last year.

South Frontenac will receive $1,553,400 ($148 per household) also about the same as 2019.

Published in General Interest
Wednesday, 15 January 2020 10:29

Next Gen. 9-1-1 to build on existing system

In North and Central Frontenac, the 9-1-1 system was made possible through a volunteer effort. Volunteer crew chiefs were given sections of road to cover and volunteers drove the township with measuring guns to establish the civic addressing system upon which the system was based.

The system was officially up and running on December 8, 2004.

In South Frontenac the efforts were supervised by a contract worker, but volunteers were involved as well.

Even though the systems were established only 15 years ago, one of the assumptions that it was based one is no longer the case, that 9-1-1 emergency calls come from land-lines.

Kevin Farrell, manager of continuous improvement/GIS for Frontenac County, made a presentation to Frontenac County Council this week outlining how the Next Generation of the 9-1-1 system will be unfolding over the next few years. He pointed out that, using an urban example to illustrate his point, “Uber drivers are in possession of more accurate data about where people are located than paramedics are.”

That’s because the explosion of information being transmitted wirelessly at all times, is not being fully utilised by the 9-1-1 system. Next Gen. 9-1-1, as it has been dubbed, is all about making use of all the information that is available, in order to get to people in need faster, with less human effort.

For Frontenac County, most of the required changes fall into the general category of data management. Between the county, which runs the GIS (Global Information Systems) for the townships, and township employees on the ground, constantly updating information, the job will centre on ensuring that the existing data is in the form it needs to be in, when it is time to provide new data sets to the new system.

The civic addressing signs, which are located at the side of the road, are the locations that are provided to emergency personnel by the system. One of the changes in the new system will be to provide the location of the homes on those properties as well, which in some cases are located well off the roadway.

The phone numbers from land lines associated with each property are part of the current system, so when a call is made from a land line, dispatchers have that information and can dispatch crews, even if the caller does not remember their civic address in the heat of the moment.

This is not the case for cell phones, however, and as Farrell pointed out in his presentation, 70% of 9-1-1 calls now come from cell phones, 20% from land-lines and 10% from Internet based phone systems (aka Voice Over Internet Protocol - VOIP).

The current system has developed what his presentation described as “band-aide solutions to locate mobile phone users”. One of the main goals in developing Next-Gen 9-1-1, is to make full use of the information that is now available from multiple sources, including: text, images, video and data.

Preparing for it will not involve re-doing the work that was done by volunteers early in the century, however.

“This civic addressing data, which has been continually updated by township staff since the system came online, will remain” said Farrell in a phone interview before making his presentation to Council, “but it will be a challenge to provide updated information to the system, in the time-frame that they are now looking for.”

Township building and public works employees are always gathering new information when putting up new signs or overseeing new construction, and that information is provided to the system in batches. In the future that will have to be done within 72 hours, so a new way to easily get new entries into the system, needs to be developed.

The new 9-1-1 data system will have a national scope and will be under development for some time.

“This presentation provides a heads-up to Council about what is coming, and to let them know what our department and the townships are going to be working on,” Farrell said.

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY

The long and contentious approval process to create 15 new building lots at Johnston’s Point on Loughborough Lake (off North Shore Road) took another bizarre twist this month with the release of a new document.

Because of the presence of two endangered species on the site - Blandings Turtles and Gray (aka Black) rat snakes – the project developer was required to obtain a “Overall Benefit Permit” from the Ministry of Natural Resources as a condition of approval for the project.

The permit sets out the steps that must be taken to ensure that the net effect of the development will not cause any more stress on the populations of the two endangered species than existed when the property was in its natural state.

Frontenac County, as the approval authority that will ultimately give the go-ahead for the project, wanted to see the permit. The Ministry would not release the document and the county submitted a freedom of information request last winter to get access.

While the request was being considered, ministerial changes took place and responsibility to enforce the permit is now held by the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks. The document was finally released to Frontenac County on October 29, but as members of Frontenac County Council saw this week when the document was released to the public, it is a redacted version that was released.

The redactions were done by the ministry and a third party with an interest in the project. The ministries’ redactions, county planning staff have determined, were done so that the specific locations where the species are located within the site are not identified.

The redactions make parts of the permit very hard to understand.

The permit does say that paving should be avoided within the building project, and that a 30-metre vegetative buffer around the lake must be adhered to. It also places restrictions on the time of years when certain construction activities can take place.

For example, no vegetative clearing, driveway clearing or construction, building or septic field construction can take place between April 1 and October 31 unless a qualified professional is on site to monitoring all clearing and construction to make sure the species are not negatively impacted by the activity.

While construction will be restricted during the main building season of April 1 to October 30, any blasting that will take place will be restricted to April 1 – October 31 so it does not impact the snakes during hibernation.

Even once construction is complete, there are provisions for educating property owners on the site, and for annual reports concerning the wellbeing of the two species.

The stringent requirements about the project, the materials to be used in road construction, and the timing and limitations during the construction phase will all be enforced by the Ministry, the township of South Frontenac and the County of Frontenac have no jurisdiction concerning the stipulations contained in the benefit permit.

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY

The South Frontenac Planning Department receives a steady stream of inquiries from individuals and developers who are looking to do business in South Frontenac.

Given the nature of land use planning, especially in a rural area where each piece of property brings unique challenges with it, some of these inquiries go nowhere, and others can seem like a rabbit hole, leading to a years’ long, expensive, detailed process that is sometimes mired in controversy and often results in delays and added costs.

The township has ramped up its planning department to deal with the influx of complex applications, and developed a closer working relationship with Frontenac Count’s planning department, since applications for plans of subdivision and plans of land use condominium, which are the most complex and quite often controversial planning applications, are subject to approval by Frontenac County.

On top of everything, the fact that much of the demand in the marketplace is for year-round homes on water within a short drive from the city of Kingston, pitting development pressures against environmental concerns in many cases.

And now the building permits sales data is starting to indicate that the planning boom in South Frontenac may be resulting in an increase in construction activity. For a number of years, permit sales have hovered around the $30 million mark annually in the township.

The second quarter (April to June) is the busiest each year, but this year it was the busiest quarter in at least 4 years. The construction value was $14.8 million over the 90 day period, $1.8 million more than last year, $2 million more than the same period in 2017, and $3 million more than 2016. The total is about the same, in one quarter, as the three other Frontenac Township combined permit values for most years.

And it is new construction of single-family dwellings that is the main driver of the construction boom in the township. Permits for 39 new homes were issued in the 2nd quarter of this year, an increase over 26 in 2018 and 32 in the 2nd quarter of 2017.

If the pattern from previous years holds, more new home permits will be sold in the second half of the year than in the first half and the total for 2019 could very well reach 85 to 90, well up from 66 in 2018, and 71 in each of 2017 and 2016.

It all sets up a pretty interesting context for the township to be conducting both a Strategic and an Official Review just as the Chief Administrative Officer, Neil Carbone, assumes his role. There is a short survey posted on the township website for the Strategic Plan, and public meetings are set for Sunbury, Sydenham and Verona this month, all aimed at creating a document that may be referred to by council and staff if they are seeking direction when making decisions over the next few years. But while a strategic plan may, at best, reflect the intentions of the council and residents of the township and one or two over-arching goals, it has not real teeth.

The Official Plan, however, can create new opportunities for residents and developers alike, and can close off opportunities as well, all within the confines of a set of provincially mandated standards as expressed in the provincial policy statement and codified in the provincial planning act.

Claire Dodds, the Director of Development Services for South Frontenac, outlined a process for updating the township Official in a presentation to a Public Meeting as part of the August meeting of Council on Tuesday night.

As she worked through the process in her report, she made reference to an issue that defines an area of tension both within the township and between the township and the planning policy directives coming from the Province of Ontario.

Under the heading of growth management, one of the bullets in the report says: “Province permits limited growth in rural areas and direct majority of growth to settlement areas”.

While this logic makes sense as a general rule, it does not easily fit the reality in Frontenac County. For one thing, the demand is greater for lots in the countryside, and particularly near water, than within the hamlets. Secondly, among the hamlets only Sydenham has a municipal water system and none of the hamlets have a municipal sewage system, more density in hamlet is not necessarily advisable since that involves crowding septic systems together as well as stressing the water table.

As part of its Official Plan review, South Frontenac may look at changing the boundaries of its hamlets to create more opportunities, and it may also look at the possibility of creating smaller scale, privately held water and sewer systems within individual developments. This is something that the Frontenac County Development department has been looking, and in Claire Dodds report to council she refers to proposes changes in provincial policy that might create “flexibility by clarifying perceived barriers to sewage and water treatment policies in rural settlement areas.

There is another factor that will certainly become apparent as the Official Plan process gets underway in South Frontenac. There are a significant number of people in any rural township, and certainly in one experience growth pressure such as South Frontenac is facing, who will see only a downside to significant growth.

Rural landowners do not necessarily want to live too close to their neighbours, in fact they often don’t want to see their neighbours at all. And just about every proposal for a waterfront development will be opposed by neighbours on the lake, for good environmental reasons and for self interested reasons as well.

These are just some of the tensions that will be expressed through the Official Plan process in the township.

Managing growth, creating business opportunities in the retail sector, and creating employment through growth, will be major factors throughout this process, which is projected to take over 2 years to complete.

While only a small percentage of residents will take an interest in the Official Plan, those that do will be taking a keen, active interest, and many who don’t will still find, eventually, that the plan that emerges from this effort will one day have an impact on their living situation or their financial situation.

Published in Editorials

Magenta Corporation is the proponent for a vacant land plan of Condominium that is slated to create 18 waterfront and back-lots on a 91-acre parcel of land called Johnston’s Point on Loughborough Lake south of Perth Road Village. Thanks to a decision of Frontenac County Council last Wednesday (June 19) they will have at least one more year to clear all the conditions and obtain final approval for the development.

The project has been the subject of much opposition from neighouring property owners on the lake and others who are concerned that the project will impact wildlife within an adjacent Area of Natural and Scientific Interest (ANSI) and on some identified Species at Risk within the proposed development itself.

In 2016, it was approved by the Ontario Municipal Board, the final authority in Ontario for land use planning matters. That approval is good for three years, which runs out this month, hence the application for an extension.

Two delegations before Council on the morning of the decision urged them to reject the one-year extension, but Frontenac County Manager of Planning and Development Joe Gallivan said that the extension was warranted.

In his report to Council, Gallivan wrote: County planning staff along with the owner, project manager, [South Frontenac] township staff and commenting agencies completed a site visit of the subject property on Wednesday, May 29, 2019. At this site visit the commenting agencies and Township confirmed that the outstanding work required the extension to ensure that the required conditions are appropriately fulfilled and were supportive of the one-year extension. County Councillors also had the opportunity to attend the site.”

South Frontenac and Frontenac County Council member Alan Revill indicated he would not be supporting the extension, pointing to his concerns over species at risk within the proposed development lands.

The Planning department of South Frontenac also supported granting the extension, however South Frontenac Council rejected their own planning department decision, and voted down a staff motion at their June 4th meeting recommending the county grant the extension. Frontenac County is the approval authority for land use planning within its jurisdiction.

Joe Gallivan told County Council that he is not aware that an extension such as the one being requested in this case “has ever been rejected by a municipality in Ontario”.

In a recorded vote, the extension was approved, with Councillor Revill casting the only dissenting vote. Couth Frontenac Mayor Ron Vandewal, who had been one of only two South Frontenac Council member to support the extension at the June 4th South Frontenac Council meeting, supported it again at Frontenac County Council on June 19.

One-year extensions for two other projects in the same district of South Frontenac, Storrington, as Johnston’s Point, were approved without comment. They are the Cranberry Cove and Sands Road projects.

Also at the meeting Council adopted a strategic plan for the rest of this term of council. The plan includes 3 relatively broad priorities: 1. Get behind plans that build community vitality and resilience in times of growth and change 2. Explore new funding sources and invest wisely in critical long-term infrastructure, and 3. Champion and coordinate collaborative efforts with partners to resolve complex problems otherwise beyond the reach of individual mandates and jurisdictions.

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY

Twice a year, the Community Foundation of Kingston and Area (CFKA) makes grant announcements for community groups and not-for-profits in Kingston. Most of the time, Frontenac County based groups receive grants as well.

There was an exception in late November of last year, when all of the grants went to Kingston. With its spring grant announcement, the CFKA has made it clear that those fall 2018 grants were not the beginning of a trend. This time around, fully one third of the grants, representing over 25% of the $160,000 that was divvied out went to programming for Frontenac County residents.

And the money is going to every corner of the vast county.

The six Frontenac recipients were: the Elbow Lake Environmental Centre (Perth Road area) $9,000, the Clarendon-Miller Archives (Plevna) $6550, Wintergreen Studios (Bedford) $3283, South Frontenac Community Services Corporation (Sydenham) $10,041.20, Rural Frontenac Community Services (Sharbot Lake) $5,500, and RKY Camp (Parham) $8946.06 – over $43,000 in all.

The Elbow Lake Environmental Centre grant is for the "Navigating the Landscape" program. The program will provide the opportunity for youth to actively experience their local environment while learning how to use GPS technology, with the money going towards equipment and bus subsidies to bring youth to the centre.

The Clarendon Miller Archives grant is going towards the "Unravelling History - One Tombstone at a Time" project and the creation of a worldwide searchable on-line database providing historical reference and research of the local cemeteries in North Frontenac, with images to link families with their ancestors and village settlements via a website.

The Wintergreen Studios grant is going to Project Bee. It will help establish an apiary at Wintergreen, which, coupled with year-round workshops, will educate the general public about maintaining healthy bee populations. Project Bee will also enable local schools to join the Bee City Canada school network. Students will have an opportunity to exchange knowledge with beekeepers in Saudi Arabia through a school in Riyadh.

The Southern Frontenac Community Services grant is going to enhance the agencies home making services program, to enable more physically and financially vulnerable seniors to remain living at home safely.

The Rural Frontenac Community Services grant will be used to help fund a ride sharing program, enabling more seniors to attend social events, medical appointments and shopping so more people can participate fully in the community.

The RKY camp grant is going towards the purchase of a new 36” flat top griddle with an oven and holding cabin, to help in the preparation of 600 nutritious and delicious meals to active RKY campers each and every day during the summer camp season.

“A common theme we saw this round in the applications were projects that aim to create a sense of belonging in our community,” says Community Foundation for Kingston & Area (CFKA) Executive Director Tina Bailey. “We know that providing opportunities for engagement, inclusion and participation are some of the strategies to decrease social isolation. This is particularly true for some of our neighbours, especially youth, newcomers, seniors and those with disabilities.”

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY
Wednesday, 29 May 2019 13:47

1% stake? Not so fast says CF

Central Frontenac Township deferred making a commitment on regional roads at its regular meeting Tuesday evening in Mountain Grove until it hears back from lawyer Tony Fleming as to what a “1 per cent ownership of regional roads and bridges” means in a proposal drafted up by Frontenac County and presented to the four member townships for ratification.

In a report to Central Frontenac Council, Dep. Clerk Cindy Deachman said: “staff have some reservations about the 1 per cent ownership model and how it would integrate with the jurisdiction sections of the Municipal Act.

Frontenac County currently owns no roads and/or bridges as part of the restructuring order at amalgamation. As such, it is not eligible for some grant money to be applied to roads such as 38 or 509/506. What the townships are concerned about is how much say the County would have in road repairs and how much of any grant money the County would administer.

For example, would a County staff member be the one to decide if a pothole on Road 38 got fixed? Or would the County have the right to hire staff to make such decisions?

North Frontenac Township passed a similar resolution at its meeting Monday in Plevna, wanting to know the same things Central does before making a decision on which of several proposals the County has made to support, if any.

South Frontenac has already endorsed a proposal that grants Frontenac County a 1 per cent ownership interest in agreed-upon regional roads and proposes contracting out for any engineering services required to apply for and/or administer grants.

Mayor Frances Smith said she was concerned that by deferring, they may miss out on some funding.

Hydro for Railway Heritage Park

Central Frontenac Council gave its consent to the Central Frontenac Railway Heritage Society to have Hydro One install a pole at Railway Heritage Park in order to get power to the tool shed and for things like security cameras and amplifiers/PA for concerts and other events.

Co-chair Gary Giller and Treasurer Wayne Moase told Council that they had the funds to have the services installed but asked for help with the monthly hydro fees.

They also asked if they could be put under the Township’s insurance for liability and damage to assets.

When Dep. Mayor Victor Heese wondered if the Society should become a Committee of Council to accommodate these requests, Mayor Frances Smith pointed out that if they ceased to be a private society, their opportunities for grants would become severely limited.

Council agreed to have staff look into the insurance aspects and also to examine a ‘donation’ to pay hydro and/or insurance as if has done with other groups in the Township.

RKY Hall

Mayor Frances Smith said that RKY Camp on Eagle Lake is building a 150-seat banquet hall that should be finished by 2020 at the latest.

“This will be an asset to the Township to be able to seat 150 people for dinner,” she said. “It could attract a lot of convention type business.”

Swiss Smith

On becoming a Swiss TV star (ie appearing in the Swiss TV show featuring two Frontenac paramedics switching places with two Swiss paramedics), Mayor Frances Smith seemed somewhat underwhelmed.

“Something that takes 20 minutes ended up taking two hours because we had to do it three times,” she said. “I guess that’s television.”

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY

While the Ottawa area and the Muskokas have been battling floods all spring, mainland Frontenac County has pretty much escaped the worst of things.

All three townships have posted warnings on their websites but only North Frontenac has had to do much flood fighting of any note, and that hasn’t been bad, said Director of Emergency Services/Fire Chief Eric Korhonen.

“When they opened the dam on the Mazinaw, it created some flooding on Head Road,” he said. “We’ve had water over the road in Plevna, a little bit of flooding on Kash and in the Snow Road area, there have been five or six homes flooded along the Mississippi.

“We’ve given out about 3,000 sand bags and I’d really like to commend the citizen volunteers and firefighters who have risen to the occasion,” he said. “We’ve had seven culverts go and seven road washouts but the Public Works Department has really been on the ball.

“There’s no need to call an emergency.

“If residents have problems, they can call us and we’ll have firefighters run out there with pumps.”

In Central and South Frontenac Townships, flooding has been virtually non-existent.

“We’ve fared very well compared with others,” said Central Frontenac Emergency Management Coordinator/Fire Chief Greg Robinson. “We have had some road washouts and flooding but no houses have been flooded.”

Robinson said when Central has flooding issues, it’s commonly in the Depot Lakes area but this year they’ve been more concerned about the northern areas.

“The Salmon River is high,” he said. “We’ve been preparing for flooding and we do have a sandbag program but we haven’t had to implement it.”

“(South Frontenac) is in excellent shape, comparatively speaking,” said Fire Chief Darcy Knott. “We haven’t had any significant issues.”

Knott wanted to remind people that the Township is holding a Touch-the-Truck event May 9 from 5-8 p.m. at the Keeley Road Garages in conjunction with United Way, where people can see and touch the equipment emergency personnel use including police and paramedics.

Over in neighbouring Addington Highlands Township, things haven’t been quite as quiet, said Road and Waste Management Supervisor Brett Reavie.

“We’ve had a couple of washouts (including Hughes Landing Road where crews worked through the night to correct the situation) we’ve worked on,” Reavie said. “We’re busy for sure.

“Rose Hill Road is still down because we’re waiting on getting a culvert.”

He said area waters are still high, especially in the north.

“It’s been a little extreme because of the amount of snowfall we had all winter,” he said. “And in the north, it’s tending to stick around because it didn’t get the thaws that the south end of the Township got.

“The north didn’t get the melts the south got and so it’s tending to come all at once.”

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY

At their meeting this week (Mayu 21) Frontenac County is being asked to initiate expropriation proceedings to deal with three properties on the former K&P rail line. The owners of the three properties, one of which is located south of Oconto Road in South Frontenac, and two are located in Central Frontenac closer to Sharbot Lake. The owner of the properties have rebuffed attempts by the county to negotiate a land purchase of the former railway corridor.

The county has secured most of the privately held sections of the rail/trail line, and has completed construction at the north and south ends of the final section of trail between Tichborne and Sharbot Lake, but these outstanding pieces, along with the challenges posed by some of swampier sections that the trail passes through, are a challenge to be met as the trail is overdue for completion.

In a report to council, staff explained why they are seeking to use legal means after attempting a less confrontational approach.

“The County's efforts to purchase three sections of privately owned lands at market value for the purpose of connecting the Frontenac K&P Trail have been unsuccessful and staff have determined that it is now necessary and in the public interest to apply for approval to expropriate these private lands. The purpose of acquiring these three parcels of land is to link two sections of the Frontenac K&P Trail and thereby ensure its continued longterm viability as a public trail within the Frontenac County Trail System in accordance with the County of Frontenac Trails Master Plan,” said he rport, which was co-authored by Janette Amini (Manager of Legislative Services) and Kevin Farrell (Manager of Continuous Improvement/GIS)

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY
Page 1 of 10
With the participation of the Government of Canada