Addington Highlands moves into digital age with online budget/council meetings

Special to The News | Apr 08, 2020

Addington Highlands Council moved firmly into the 21st Century Tuesday holding its first two meetings over electronic media in order to conform with social distancing guidelines amid the Covid-19 crisis.

The first meeting was to approve (not pass) the 2020 budget. CAO/Clerk-Treasurer Christine Reed said that according to the Township procedural bylaw, the budget is passed at the first meeting in May. As such, this one was a ‘draft’ budget.

As far as the budget itself goes, Reed said this budget is “significantly reduced” from an earlier version circulated to Council.

“Given the current climate, we didn’t think it was reasonable and responsible to present the budget we had originally created,” she said. “I give credit to Casey (Fire Chief Cuddy), Brett (public works supervisor Reavie) and David (CBO Twiddy) for coming up with ways we could streamline the document.

“Not diminishing the requirements that we need but we’ll revisit them next year.”

She said they’ve reduced the penalty and interest on taxes, taking $40,000 out of the budget but added that the municipality does have a “very healthy general surplus.”

Total expenditures this year are predicted to be $6,167,730.87, down a bit from $6,262,871.91 in 2019. However last year’s budget included an Ontario Modernization Grant of about $486,000.

So this year, they need to collect $3,093,657 in taxation up from $2,977,316 in 2019, an increase of 116,000 or 3.9%. Property assessment increases offset some of that, leaving a 1.69 per cent increase to the tax rate.

This increase represents about a $10 increase in taxes per $100,000 of assessment.

The addition to the Flinton Township Hall is on hold as Premier Doug Ford restricted what construction can continue but it’s still in the budget ($750,000 from an Infrastructure Ontario loan and $320,000 from reserves).

“We had some cost overruns on the addition,” Reed said. “There’s an $8,300 price tag for a firefighting water tank that we couldn’t dig as deep as we wanted to because of the water table, some septic tank overruns as well as some extra Hydro costs coming to the ball diamonds.”

She said that they’re proposing that all capital projects be funded from reserves this year with the exception of the dry hydrants project which will be funded from deferred revenue, where it was put last year.

Dep. Reeve Tony Fritsch asked about the “growing needs” of the Health Centre over the next 10 years but conceded that might be a question for a later time.

“Things are so uncertain now, I don’t know if anybody can make a prediction about that,” said Reeve Henry Hogg.

Generally, Fritsch said he was pleased with the budget.

“No matter what else is going on, we still have a Township to run,” Fritsch said. “I don’t have any issues with this budget.”

“I think it’s very reasonable,” said Coun. David Miles. “It’s just hard to put any increase on in an economic climate like the one we’re faced with now.”

“Yes, it’s kind of an unforeseen situation,” said Hogg. “But we still have a lot of business to do and keep our employees busy.

“A big part of this budget is the wage increase.”

Teaching an experienced Reeve some new tricks

Reeve Henry Hogg on using the new technology for an electronic meeting: “It was strange.

“We have a few different pieces of equipment and I have three in front of me.

“I had to get a new laptop from the chief building official for the Zoom because I could only see four people on my old screen.

“But given the circumstances, I think it worked OK. We still have business to do and bills to pay.”

Disaster relief

And they did have a fair amount of business to take care of.

Reeve Henry Hogg told Public Works Supervisor Brett Reavie that last spring’s request for disaster relief was approved.

“I don’t know if you’ve got the cheque yet but it was approved,” Hogg said. “We’ll put that in reserves.”

Closure of parks and policing distancing violations

Chief Building Official David Twiddy reported that the signs advising of the closure of parks/recreational facilities have been posted.

Twiddy said that he has weekly meetings with the KFLA Health Unit and OPP and they’re still deciding how to respond to reports of social distancing violations.

“The OPP indicated that they don’t mind responding to group situations because they have experience breaking up groups,” he said. “They said they have the time because traffic incidents are down.

“However domestic violence is up and they’d rather municipal enforcement handle businesses not observing the new rules.”

Building permits

As far as building permits being issued, Twiddy noted that larger cities like Belleville and Kingston have been issuing permits but he’s held off.

“There are quite a few building permit requests on my desk but our lower tier municipalities got together and decided not to issue them yet,” he said. “The cities give out permits with the Covid-19 information that they can’t start building yet but our concern is that when people pay for their permit, they may take that as they’ve got the go-ahead to start their project.”

New time for next meeting

CAO/Clerk-Treasurer Christine Reed recommended Council reschedule the April 21 meeting which was to be held in Denbigh at 7 p.m. to an online meeting at 1 p.m.

“At this time, I wouldn’t encourage Council to hold a closed meeting over this forum,” she said. “And delegations should be emergency only.

“People can still apply to be a delegation the same way as always but instead of appearing in person, they’ll be invited to join this forum.”

Fire call

Fire Chief Casey Cuddy said a fire call Monday morning went well.

“We managed to save the house and out buildings,” he said. “Although there probably wasn’t just one person per truck.

“But when we got back, the cabs of all the cabs were wiped down and sterilized.

“And, we’re only responding to emergency calls.”