Lindsay Mills, longtime South Frontenac Planner, set to retire

Jeff Green | May 02, 2018

“15 years and 4 months, I’ve always kept track,” said Lindsay Mills when contacted at his office on the lower level of the South Frontenac Township early this week.

A couple of weeks ago, on a Friday afternoon, he gave notice to the township that he will be retiring from his position as planner/deputy clerk for South Frontenac Township at the end of June.

Mills took the job of township planner in 2003, moving over from a job as planner in Brighton. He was living in Kingston, where he still his, and saving the 1 hour and ten minute one way commute to Brighton, made the South Frontenac job pretty appealing.

The job has been a good one as well, although he said that planning has become a more complicated, and contentious, business over the last 15 years.

“Every application is harder now,” he said, “it seems that all the easy lots are gone.”

Aside from the more challenging lot configurations on many of the waterfront developments that are coming to his department, Mills said that more stringent regulations are being brought on every year by the Province of Ontario.

“Whether it is a 500 metre setback from a quarry or setbacks from water, or areas of natural or scientific interest, new legislation is always more restrictive,” he said.

He also mentioned that groups that oppose specific developments now mount organised political protests when they want to block development, turning it “into a debate among engineers in some cases”.

Aside from some of the frustrating files, Mills said that he has enjoyed being part of the growth of the township that has taken place during his tenure, under the values adopted by the township by its first official plan, and all the updates that have followed.

He said he is retiring now because he has reached the age where his pension plan is sufficient, and he wants to retire at the beginning of the summer for a smoother transition. He might do some planning work on a consulting basis at some time in the future but has no plans to start doing so right away.

“I’d like to get to some of my hobbies, such as working on cars,” he said.

Mills retirement, along with a vacancy in the position of Manager of Development Services, a position that was created a few years ago now, and has only been filled for a nine month period in 2016, has put the township into a challenging position.

Chief Administrative Officer, Wayne Orr, has prepared a report for Council that includes 5 different models for Council to consider.

The models include purchasing the services from Frontenac County, model 1, which is what the other three Frontenac townships have done.

Another, model 2, would be the status quo, hiring a planner/deputy clerk for planning services. Model 3 would be to hire a planner, and move the deputy clerk for planning function to Angela Maddox, who is the deputy clerk for everything else the township does.

Both models 2 and 3 anticipate either the hiring of a Director of Planning Services to oversee the department or deferring that hiring until the new planner is established in the role.

Model 4 is to contract out planning and maintain only an administrative role in the township office, which is what the township did before Mills was hired in 2003.

Model 5 would involve redesigning the department and creating the role of senior planner, junior planner, and planning assistant, and eliminating the role of Director of Planning.

In his report, Wayne Orr also pointed out that the township has mounted recruitment campaigns for the Director of Planning position 5 times and only found a suitable candidate once. Each posting cost the township $1,500. Another recruitment option would be to use a recruitment service at a cost of between 18% and 25% of one year’s salary for the position.

Wayne Orr’s recommendation to Council is to choose model 3, hiring a planner, adding more responsibility to Angela Maddox’s role, and hiring an executive assistant. He would like to defer the hiring of Director of Planning.

When asked, Lindsay Mills said model 5 is the one he would choose.

“If we had a planner, a junior planner and an assistant, that is all we would need,” he said.

He also said that the township should pursue taking on subdivision and plan of condominium approval for South Frontenac.

“It works very well elsewhere,” he said.

Wayne Orr said that Council, by motion, instructed staff to work towards becoming the approval authority and that has been a goal of township staff ever since.

Currently the plan of subdivision and plan of condominium approval authority for those plans rests with Frontenac County, and that process is now aided by a county council planning advisory committee.