Addington Highlands Council - Oct. 7/13

Jeff Green | Oct 10, 2013

Clean audit

In the room in the basement of the Flinton Recreation Centre where the Addington Highlands Council meeting was held on Monday, two men in pin-striped suits were seated at the table facing members of Council.

They were the auditors from Seckler Ross and Perry. The message they brought to Council as they presented the audited financial statements for 2012 was that everything seemed in order and the financial position of the township is substantially unchanged from the 2011 audit.

In addition, they reported that the 2012 audit is considered a “clean audit” in the sense that whatever information they required for the audit had been forthcoming from township financial staff.

A surplus of $564,000 led to an increase in reserve funds and in the working fund reserve.

Some help, but road will remain un-maintained

Council agreed to provide two loads of gravel to the Gardiner family on Beatty’s Curve road to help keep the road in a passable state, provided the Gardiners kick in half of the $1,000 cost.

In a letter to Council, Sue Gardiner, who lives on the road, asked for about $3,000 to $5,000 worth of work as an interim measure “until such time as the township can address the road issue properly.”

“We need to be clear,” said Reeve Henry Hogg, “that we are not about to assume the maintenance on Beatty’s Curve Road. We can help in a minor way, with a similar commitment from the ratepayer, but that road is not on our list of maintained roadways.”

Although Beatty’s Curve is technically not a private laneway, it is what the township calls an ‘un-maintained township road’, and it seems, Council is committed to it remaining that way.

Fire hall site plan almost complete, meeting set for Nov. 17.

The long-awaited Northbrook fire hall may take a step forward next month. A meeting has been set as a prelude to a Request for Proposal process being initiated for the project.

Fire hall funding will not come from provincial granting program. The deadline is November 1 for applications to the latest instalment of the Provincial Municipal Infrastructure Investment Initiative (MIII). The criteria for projects that was included in the announcement about the fund included roads and bridges, but not fire halls or other new buildings.

The township is likely to submit an application for roadwork on Bridge Street in Denbigh.

“The engineering work was all done for that project for another grant that we did not get, so it is the only one that we have that is really ready to go,” said Public Works Manager, Royce Rosenblath, who added that the Bridge Street project is priced at around $600,000.

“It’ a shame that road wasn’t fixed 30 years ago,” said Reeve Hogg, “I’ve had to drive over those bumps twice a day for all that time.”

Flinton Recreation Club pulls away from rink.

The township received a letter from the Flinton Recreation Club, announcing that they are no longer interested in doing the hiring of a rink attendant for the Flinton rink, which is located on the recreation centre grounds. The township will now do the hiring themselves, as they do for the Denbigh rink.