South Frontenac Council - May 15/12

Wilma Kenny | May 17, 2012

Cost-cutting proposal founders under bickering

Mark Segsworth presented a recommen-dation from the Public Services Committee, that electronic waste be accepted only at the Keeley Road Hazardous Waste site. Currently, the Township pays $30,000 a year to dispose of E-waste left at the Port-land and Loughborough waste disposal sites, but Ontario Electronic Stewardship has agreed to take all E-waste left at Keeley Road free of charge. This change would lower 2012 waste disposal costs consider-ably. A side benefit would be that residents could dispose of their hazardous waste at the same time.

Councillor Robinson objected, say-ing that this would be a backward step, for “People don’t want to travel from Portland to Keeley Road to dispose of electronic waste.” Mayor Davison noted that “It’s a change, and people have to change with the times.” Councillor Vandewal said he agreed with using only the Keeley site. He reminded Coun-cil that until relatively recently, people had had to buy a $30 permit from the township offices, then take their e-waste to Kingston. Councillor Naish made a motion to defer a decision, until the township lawyer could be consulted on the definition of conflict of in-terest. Council voted 5-3 in favour of defer-ral. Councillor McPhail expressed frustration that council was disregarding the Public Ser-vices Committee’s work.

Hardwood Creek Repairs

Segsworth asked Council’s approval of a $620,858 bid from Doornekamp Construction, for the rehabilitation of Hardwood Creek bridge, at the southern edge of Verona on road 38. Segsworth said this is the most heavily-travelled road in the Township, with an average of 12,000 vehicles a day. Noting that the road will be narrowed to one lane for several weeks, Segsworth has recom-mended that the work be started in Septem-ber, after the summer holiday season. The work will include installing a much-needed pedestrian sidewalk along the west side of the bridge. $260,000 of the funding will be drawn from the County’s Federal gas tax allocation..

Township Growth Study Approved

Township Planner Lindsay Mills presented a list of proposed changes to the Official  Plan as part of the required five-year review. As well, he asked permission to issue an RFP for a consultant to prepare a Growth Study of the Township. Purpose of this study is “to help the public and the decision-makers to have a more complete understanding of the implica-tions of population growth and to determine the most appropriate locations for growth and the conditions under which growth can occur.” At present the Province is not in favour of severances along private roads, and is in-sisting all future development should occur only within the established settlement areas. This ignores the fact that with the exception of Sydenham water, none of the Township hamlets have the facilities to support heavy in-fill (none have sewage treatment plants), and many residents move into the Township  because they want to live in a rural setting. A Growth Study may help provide the province a clearer picture of rural development issues faced by South Frontenac.

Mayors’ Coalition Seeks Transparency Re Policing Costs:

On Mayor Davison’s recommendation, Council agreed to contrib-ute $1,000 to a newly-formed group of Ontario Mayors who are seeking a review of OPP costs, formulas and deployment models. It is hoped that information on costs assigned to municipalities and applicable deployment models will be made available to municipali-ties “in a timely manner.”

New Roof Needed for former Township Offices and Library

Rather than accept architects Shoalts and Zaback’s estimated cost of roof replace-ment ($108,000 plus 10% for architectural services), Council put the project out to tender. The  lowest bid that met all require-ments, including references and insurance, was Wemp and Smith.  Their bid, with all ex-penses included, was $76,700.

Thanks…

Councillor Vandewal mentioned that the flowerpot at the foot of the “Sydenham” sign east of the village has been planted: soil was donated by Mike Gossage, and plants by Darryl Silver.