It was business as usual at a meeting of North Frontenac Council on Monday afternoon, but earlier in the day the accounting firm of KPMG presented a report that put hard numbers to the cost of running the township.

In a presentation about an ongoing services review of township operations, Bruce Peever and Vickie Leakey from KPMG talked about the costs associated with maintaining a roads crew, a municipal office, four municipal halls, four fire halls, and six dump sites/transfer stations in a sparsely populated township.

In a comparison between North Frontenac and other similar sized townships, the expenditures per household on both road maintenance and fire services in North Frontenac are at or near the top.

As well, in canvassing members of council about winter road maintenance, paving programs, waste management and fire services, members of council either said the levels should stay the same or should be decreased. None of them foresee an increase in levels of service in any of the areas.

The services review will carry on in January when council will consider the tax implications of increasing service, maintaining the status quo, or reducing or privatizing services.

Ompah Fire Station Task Force – Councilor Gerry Martin presented the terms of reference for the task force.

The three items on the task force mandate, in chronological order, are: a) to review the needs of the Township of North Frontenac Fire Department and provide options for Council’s consideration, within budget; b) to determine the size of the fire hall with the dollars available; and c) to design and cost out a proposed new Ompah Fire Hall at 3,000 sq. ft.

Councilor Martin made the point that the mandate will proceed in order.

The task force will begin its work in earnest on December 20, when representatives from all the fire stations, as well as the Ontario Fire Marshall's Office will meet at the Ompah Community Centre to outline the functions provided at each station.

On January 17, the task force will meet “To discuss the data collected at the December 2012 meeting, on the present services and level of service provided by the existing North Frontenac Fire Department to determine the actual needs first” in the words of the report. On January 30, George Gorrie, the township's chief building official, will meet with the task force to clarify what a fire station requires under the building and fire codes.

Tentative meetings are scheduled for February 7 and 14 to finalize the report, which is due to be presented to Council on February 25. Task force members include: Councilors Martin (chair – ward 2), Councilor John Inglis (ward 1), and community representatives Russell Gray (ward 1), Carl Tooley (ward 2), Roger Lyons (ward 2), Steve Sunderland (ward 3), and Mike Cleland (ward 3).

Long-term service awards – Presentations were made to a number of staff and volunteer firefighters for long-term service. They included Ken Gould, Ellen Good, Jen Dunham and Cheryl Robson, who all have been with the township for 10 years. Randy Schonauer has been with the township for 20 years. Judy Tooley's service has spanned 3 decades. She started working for Clarendon and Miller Township in 1982 and is still working in the North Frontenac Township office today.

“She started here when she was seven years old,” said Mayor Clayton.

Meeting date change – A council meeting scheduled for February 25 has been changed to February 28, a Thursday, to accommodate councilors Perry and Good’s attendance at the Rural Ontario Municipal Association (ROMA)/Ontario Good Roads Conference in Toronto.

Schlievert nominated – On the urging of Councilor Martin, Council has nominated Ward 2 resident Ed Schlievert for a provincial award for volunteers in recognition of his years of service to the township.

Council will meet next on January 14, 2013 at 9 am.

Editorial by Jeff Green

From a distance it has been a lot of fun watching the trials and tribulations of the City of Toronto and its outlandish Mayor Rob Ford.

In the first instance, there was the outrage of the Toronto Star, whose editors still can't believe that the citizenry of Toronto refused to heed their unrelenting warnings by electing Ford in the first place. After that, courtesy of some of my old friends, who, judging from their Facebook posts, have become obsessed with every nuance of Mr. Ford's personality and political program, I have come to see the whole Rob Ford thing as a kind of small-town mayor issue set in a large city.

The reaction to Ford is personal; it's as if everyone knows him, as they would a very annoying neighbour who gets drunk on Saturday nights and walks up and down the sidewalk singing Danny Boy off-key.

The decision by a Superior Court judge to remove Mr. Ford from office is particularly interesting from a small municipality point of view. Although Toronto's budget is thousands of times larger than our local municipalities, and there are probably more people working for the City of Toronto than live in Frontenac or L&A Counties, conflict of interest rules for mayors and members of council everywhere are exactly the same, and it doesn’t matter how much money, or little, is involved.

What Rob Ford did would raise the same objections here as it did in Toronto.

Although Mr. Ford and his supporters blame his downfall on a left-wing conspiracy, and while the decision by a Toronto resident to bring the conflict of interest charge to court may have been politically motivated, the truth is that Mr. Ford's actions gave the judge no choice but to rule as he did.

The issue in front of the judge was not whether it was fair to make Rob Ford pay back the $3,000 he raised for his football team's charitable foundation by sending request letters out on city letterhead. The issue in front of the judge was much more simple than that.

A motion was made at council to excuse Rob Ford from paying $3,000. Mr. Ford spoke to the motion, and he voted on the motion. Municipal politicians in Ontario must excuse themselves from any decision that has a direct effect on their own financial interest. It could not be clearer than that. All Ford had to do was say, "I have a conflict of interest in this case", pull his chair back from the table, and stay quiet until the vote was taken.

Whatever else Rob Ford has done or not done as mayor of Toronto, he has breached the conflict of interest act and has thus been removed from office.

He will appeal, and another judge may try to bring some nuance to the situation, some lesser penalty, but the judge in the first instance certainly acted properly.

Ford broke the most basic rule of municipal politics, and he can't blame any of his political opponents for the consequences he faces as the result.

What happened to him should give some local politicians pause. From time to time, we have made note of apparent, even indirect, conflicts by members of some of the local councils, as the press in Toronto did in the Rob Ford case. The difference was that someone took it a step further and brought the case to court, and that is what has, presumably, cost Ford his job.

It is rather unlikely that someone would take the trouble of taking a municipal councilor or mayor to court over a conflict, but the possibility exists.

The irony is that it is actually very difficult to remove someone from office in an Ontario municipality, as the Council from the City of London is finding out.

Their mayor, Joe Fontana, is facing criminal charges for fraud, but the council can only ask, they cannot force him to step aside until the charges are dealt with.

A council does not have the power to remove the person who has been elected to head it - be they elected by the public, as a Mayor or Reeve is, or even elected by the council itself, as a Warden is.

The Council of the City of London, might well try to make Joe Fontana’s life miserable by thwarting his efforts and blocking his policies, but until he has his day in court there is nothing stopping him from thumbing his nose at his council and hanging onto the chain of office for dear life.

Editorial by Jeff Green

From a distance it has been a lot of fun watching the trials and tribulations of the City of Toronto and its outlandish Mayor Rob Ford.

In the first instance, there was the outrage of the Toronto Star, whose editors still can't believe that the citizenry of Toronto refused to heed their unrelenting warnings by electing Ford in the first place. After that, courtesy of some of my old friends, who, judging from their Facebook posts, have become obsessed with every nuance of Mr. Ford's personality and political program, I have come to see the whole Rob Ford thing as a kind of small-town mayor issue set in a large city.

The reaction to Ford is personal; it's as if everyone knows him, as they would a very annoying neighbour who gets drunk on Saturday nights and walks up and down the sidewalk singing Danny Boy off-key.

The decision by a Superior Court judge to remove Mr. Ford from office is particularly interesting from a small municipality point of view. Although Toronto's budget is thousands of times larger than our local municipalities, and there are probably more people working for the City of Toronto than live in Frontenac or L&A Counties, conflict of interest rules for mayors and members of council everywhere are exactly the same, and it doesn’t matter how much money, or little, is involved.

What Rob Ford did would raise the same objections here as it did in Toronto.

Although Mr. Ford and his supporters blame his downfall on a left-wing conspiracy, and while the decision by a Toronto resident to bring the conflict of interest charge to court may have been politically motivated, the truth is that Mr. Ford's actions gave the judge no choice but to rule as he did.

The issue in front of the judge was not whether it was fair to make Rob Ford pay back the $3,000 he raised for his football team's charitable foundation by sending request letters out on city letterhead. The issue in front of the judge was much more simple than that.

A motion was made at council to excuse Rob Ford from paying $3,000. Mr. Ford spoke to the motion, and he voted on the motion. Municipal politicians in Ontario must excuse themselves from any decision that has a direct effect on their own financial interest. It could not be clearer than that. All Ford had to do was say, "I have a conflict of interest in this case", pull his chair back from the table, and stay quiet until the vote was taken.

Whatever else Rob Ford has done or not done as mayor of Toronto, he has breached the conflict of interest act and has thus been removed from office.

He will appeal, and another judge may try to bring some nuance to the situation, some lesser penalty, but the judge in the first instance certainly acted properly.

Ford broke the most basic rule of municipal politics, and he can't blame any of his political opponents for the consequences he faces as the result.

What happened to him should give some local politicians pause. From time to time, we have made note of apparent, even indirect, conflicts by members of some of the local councils, as the press in Toronto did in the Rob Ford case. The difference was that someone took it a step further and brought the case to court, and that is what has, presumably, cost Ford his job.

It is rather unlikely that someone would take the trouble of taking a municipal councilor or mayor to court over a conflict, but the possibility exists.

The irony is that it is actually very difficult to remove someone from office in an Ontario municipality, as the Council from the City of London is finding out.

Their mayor, Joe Fontana, is facing criminal charges for fraud, but the council can only ask, they cannot force him to step aside until the charges are dealt with.

A council does not have the power to remove the person who has been elected to head it - be they elected by the public, as a Mayor or Reeve is, or even elected by the council itself, as a Warden is.

The Council of the City of London, might well try to make Joe Fontana’s life miserable by thwarting his efforts and blocking his policies, but until he has his day in court there is nothing stopping him from thumbing his nose at his council and hanging onto the chain of office for dear life.

Next Steps for Sydenham Subdivision

In November 2010, council approved draft plan conditions for the Valleyview Estates subdivision in Sydenham (south off Rutledge road.) Since this approval the developer, Rob Morgan, has been working toward meeting the required conditions for final approval of the development.

One of the requirements is the conveyance of up to five percent of the land to the municipality for parkland: the municipality has the option to ask for cash in lieu of land. Morgan has proposed to pay cash-in-lieu to satisfy this condition. Accordingly, he came to Council with two appraisals of the land, for which he originally paid $295,000. Since then, the house on the property has been severed and sold. One value estimate was $100,000, the other $404,000. Council reached consensus that they would settle on a present value of $250,000. Five percent of that amount ($12,500) will be charged as parkland fee.

Mills brought a 35 page draft of the proposed Subdivision Agreement for Council’s information: the draft requires a few final revisions before it can be brought to Council for them to pass a by-law formalizing the agreement. The proposed 35-acre subdivision will include 20 residential building lots, one lot for ‘future adult lifestyle development’, and an environmental protection area along the creek.

Drinking Water Source Protection: Following the Walkerton tragedy where contamination of drinking water caused illness and death, the province established the Clean Water Act in 2006. This has led to the development of “Source Water Protection Plans” throughout the province. Locally, such a plan is in the process of being developed for the twelve municipal water systems in the Cataraqui Source protection Area (Sydenham is the only municipal system in South Frontenac), and for the vulnerable aquifers and groundwater recharge areas in the townships. The plan must be completed for submission to the MOE by August 2012. The Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority has requested Council to review the present, revised document and make comments as soon as possible. The whole document may be viewed on the CRCA’s website at: www.cleanwatercataraqui.ca. Council’s main concern is the potential expense of administering the plan, once it becomes a provincial requirement.

Sydenham Water Request for Exemption: Mike and Shelly Lacelle came to Council requesting they be exempted from hooking up municipal water to their proposed severance on Rutledge road, just east of the end of the present water system. (Connection to municipal water is a condition of severance approval.) The Lacelles say that the cost of bringing water to the lot would exceed $25,000. Council has asked for more information from the public works department about what will be involved in extending the water service, before making a decision.

Of Municipal Roofs, Rot and Raccoons

CAO Orr asked Council’s permission to go to tender for a new metal roof over the former library and administrative offices, on the grounds that the present roof, installed in the mid-‘80s, is leaking in a number of places where the steel roof has corroded around the roof fasteners. Rotted soffits have allowed vermin (raccoons?) to nest above the former library. Council agreed to roof replacement.

North Frontenac discusses septic inspections

Dave Cook and Ed Gardener of KFL&A Public Health attended the meeting to discuss discretionary sewage system maintenance inspections. The difference between mandatory and discretionary is that mandatory inspections are only required where there is a municipal water system, and there are none in North Frontenac.

However, the Ontario Building Code also provides the framework and process for a municipality to develop discretionary septic inspection programs, for which they can pass by-laws "with some teeth", in the words of Dave Cook. He said the township can designate systems in certain areas or over a certain age to be part of the program.

Councilor Fred Perry asked if, since many cottages take their water from lakes, those lakes would be considered a municipal water system.

Dave Cook replied that they would not be, since the health unit recognizes that lakes are subject to contamination from more than human sources - e.g. from animals, etc. and people drawing water from lakes simply have to treat their water.

Perry also asked if anything could be done about cottages that have privies or that discharge grey water into lakes.

Cook replied that privies are not dangerous, as the waste is solid. He said that grey water contains mostly organic matter and some chemicals and should go into a leaching pit, but it is also not as big a concern as water-borne sewage.

He said the health unit finds that a lot of the problems with older cottages are being caught now because people are doing renovations and upgrades. However, he cautioned that council would have to be very careful and very specific about starting a program - once they start they have to continue. North Frontenac has about 4000 septic systems and it would be hard to tackle them all. The inspections have to be funded in some way.

Mayor Clayton asked if the township could put some legislation in place now to cover the possibility that one of its hamlets might put in a municipal water system in the future.

Ed Gardener replied that such a system would have to be inspected after it went in, so putting legislation in place now would be redundant.

Cook and Gardener said people don't realize that it's possible to put in a system that is legal, but still pollutes because of problems with bedrock, etc.

The township will facilitate a meeting between Public Health and Mississippi Valley Conservation, who presently does the township's septic re-inspections.

Better late than never: A belated retirement gift was presented to Courtland Kelford by Mayor Bud Clayton. Mr. Kelford was the road superintendent for Palmerston, North and South Canonto prior to amalgamation and retired in 1998. However, he was not recognized for his service back then and Mayor Clayton has wanted to rectify that for some time.

Addington Highlands request to use NF Hazardous Waste depot: Council approved in principle a request from Addington Highlands Township to let its residents use North Frontenac's Household Hazardous Waste depot. Several councilors expressing the feeling that neighboring municipalities should work together to help each other. However, North Frontenac would require an amendment to its Certificate of Approval, which could cost around $4,700 and they would also have to calculated the cost of hiring additional staff.

Firefighters' fundraising: Fire Chief Steve Riddell had sent an email to council updating them on the Clar-Mill firefighters' upcoming fundraising activities. The proceeds would go towards a set of tracks for the Clar-Mill ATV and towards new self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA).

Mayor Clayton pointed out that if council agrees to the activities it is also agreeing to the tracks and SCBA, as the money has to be spent on what it was raised for. He said that since the township has not yet passed its core services bylaw, it is not known whether core services would include ATVs, or ATVs with tracks.

Councilor John Inglis said that the core services bylaw is catch-up legislation; that the departments have been buying trucks and equipment all the time without it. After some debate about the merits and safety of tracked ATVs, council deleted the mention of tracks and approved the fundraisers.

Tipping fees are going up: to $15 for box springs or mattresses, $20 for sofa beds, and $5-$25 for carpets depending on the size. TVs and other electronic waste will be free after the township gets its e-waste bins in place in the near future. The bylaw approving the change will be passed at the next council meeting.

Canada Day celebrations: Paul Thiel, a member of the audience, reported that he had attended a meeting on organizing township-wide celebrations for Canada Day. The idea is to have celebrations in different places - Snow Road, Plevna, etc. The meeting was organized by resident Amber Lemke for March 9, but attendance was low because of bad weather. However, Thiel said that many good ideas were brought up nevertheless - dances, games for children, contests, fireworks, etc. Another meeting will be called soon.

Changes to fishing regulations: Several members of council expressed their intention to attend a public open house on changes to fishing regulations, which will be held on Monday March 19, 6-9pm at the Northbrook Lions Hall. The proposed changes will be for walleye and bass.

Concerns for pedestrian safety: After the meeting, members of the audience were asked for comments, and Russell Gray brought up concerns about pedestrian and bicycle traffic on the roads. He was concerned about people walking in the same direction as the traffic with earphones on. The township will mention the concern to the local lodges and resorts.

The first results of the 2011 census don't paint the rosiest of pictures for future growth in Frontenac County.

All three landlocked Frontenac County townships saw a decrease in population over the five years since the 2006 census, while Frontenac Islands saw the slimmest of increases, just 2 people or 0.1%. The most dramatic decrease was in North Frontenac, where the population dropped by 2.6%, from 1904 in 2006 to 1842 in 2011. Central Frontenac did not fare much better, a drop of 2.3%, from 5,665 in '06 to 5,556 in '011. Even South Frontenac, which saw robust growth between 2001 and 2006, lost 0.6% of its population, from 18,227 in '06 to 18,113 in 2007. All in all, 283 less people lived year round in Frontenac County in 2011 than in 2006, a decrease of 1.1%.

The trends in Frontenac County were consistent with those in neighbouring municipalities. Addington Highlands saw a marginal increase of 20 people or 0.8%, from 2512 in 2006 to 2532 in 2011. Lanark Highlands did not fare as well, seeing a decrease of of 1%, from 5180 in '06 to 5128 in '011. Tay Valley saw a decrease of 1.1%, from 5634 in '06 to 5180 in '011.

The town of Perth also saw a 1.1% population decrease.

The City of Kingston, however, has had a healthy increase in population over the last 5 years, with growth of over 5%.

Census information does not include the seasonal population in any of these districts, which can range from about 40% of the population in South Frontenac to almost 80% in North Frontenac.

While the trends may be disappointing for townships such as North and Central Frontenac and Lanark Highlands, they are not far off from some of the projections that have been used by municipal planners for those townships over the last few years.

For South Frontenac, the projections have all assumed continued modest to robust population growth, so the census information will come as shock. For example, one of the concerns expressed in the South Frontenac strategic plan that was completed just months ago, was about managing growth, and keeping increases in the demand for services from outstripping the townships infrastructure. Suddenly, those good new problems seem like yesterdays news.

The information about the age of populations throughout the country was not released in this first data-call from the 2011 census. That information will be released on May 29, and could give municipal politicians and planners even more food for thought as they look forward to a less populated future.

There are many reasons why a property standards bylaw is a bad idea for Central Frontenac Township, which is in the process of preparing one, or for any rural township, for that matter.

The fundamental reason is that these bylaws do the opposite of what they are intended to do.

Like all bylaws, a property standards bylaw is intended to make the township a better place to live in. The reasoning is that if the township is nicer to look at as people drive through, they are more likely to stay around, creating opportunities for different kinds of commerce, employment, etc. The people who have been proposing the bylaw in Central Frontenac see it as part of an economic development initiative that is intended to bring benefits to all the citizenry, rich and poor, long-time residents and newcomers alike.

The township staff see these bylaws in another light as well. They cover the township against different kinds of liability, and we do pay our municipal officials to worry about municipal liability so we don't have to worry about it.

The problem with a property standards bylaw is that they create two classes of citizens: good ones that keep their lawns clean, keep all their sundry junk hidden away, and paint their houses every three years; and a second class that is made up of the rest of us.

Secondly, and this is the worst of it, I think, it gives people a hammer to beat their neighbors over the head with.

There will be no clean police in Central Frontenac once this bylaw comes through; it will use complaints-based enforcement.

The bylaw officer will visit if a complaint is lodged, so what can and does happen in places where these bylaws are in place, is that neighbors who get into disputes for any reason just have to pull out a copy of the bylaw and find something on their neighbor's property that is not permitted, be it a weed, a shed, a dead car – whatever - and the township will investigate and levy a fine.

Thus, instead of working to build a more cohesive, tolerant community, the township enables its citizens to turn on each other.

One of the things I like about rural communities is the fact that we all have to get along, no matter what our income, social status, religious affiliation, or interests are. When we go to the Santa Claus parades, every one, from local businesses of all sizes to the daycare to the food bank to the fire department and on and on, is in the parade. Aside from the reporters taking pictures, there are hardly any people watching the parade because so many have jumped in and gotten involved.

Some of those people have properties that don't fit the standards.

With a property standards bylaw in mind, I drove some of the major roads this week, and it became very easy to see which properties the people who favour this bylaw would like to target. They are the properties that show the traveling public that this corner of Eastern Ontario is not prime cottage area like Muskoka, Haliburton or the Kawarthas.

Here is a little secret. Many of us who moved here over the years did so because the area is not that fancy; because we could buy a rural property for a reasonable price; and because we figured we could do what we wanted to do without worrying too much about what everyone else thinks.

And it works. We do get along pretty well, thank you very much, and when we have disputes between neighbours we work them out between ourselves.

We do have a higher share of poverty and a variety of related health and social problems than the provincial average, and as a community we deal with that. If the township decided to work with us over those issues instead of deferring entirely to more remote levels of government, that would be nice.

But pitting us against each other in order to attract some mythical investor who will bring more money into the region is not nice at all.

If the activities we engage in on our own properties have a direct environmental impact on our neighbors or the township as a whole, because of faulty septics or hazardous waste that can get into the groundwater, or if there is another health or safety concern, by all means the township should step in.

A number of neighbouring municipalities have property standards bylaws in place and for the most part they are rarely invoked, but that does not make them a good idea.

Ultimately, if it just comes down to the fact that some people don't like the look of their neighbor's property and think it is having an effect on the monetary value of their own property, I would say they should just live with it.

In the words of our illustrious MPP - "Back off government, get off our land". 

Editorial by Jeff Green

A couple of weeks ago I had occasion to visit both Montreal and Toronto within a 24 hour period, and spent time driving through traffic jams in both cities. Aside from the fact that at ay given moment I could gaze at more different people and vehicles than I see in a year driving around Frontenac, Lanark and Lennox and Addington Counties as I do my job, I noticed something else.

The roads, particularly the city streets, were horrendous; full of ruts and potholes. In Montreal, where the bridges are literally falling down, my car hit bottom twice on city streets. In Toronto, there are streetcar ruts on main streets, and the sides of the roads were crumbling. The cities were fun to visit but my car couldn't wait to get back to my own little gravel road in Central Frontenac, which thanks to a dry summer, is a pretty smooth ride, thank you very much.

All of our local townships devote more money, and attention, to roads than to anything else. The eat up 50% of local budgets. They are to our municipal councils what healthcare is to the Province of Ontario, an essential service whose cost escalates each year, pushing up taxes and taking money from other services.

Municipal Council's always a slave to provincial policy, have been changing thier budgeting processes in recent years in line with a provincially mandated capital asset management process. What that means is all tangible municipal assets, such as parks, buildings, equipment, and yes, roads and bridges, need to be inventoried and given a value. The depreciation of those assets as they age must then be calculated and the replacement cost and date must be accounted for in each budget.

What this exercise does is create a huge cash requirement down the road because in the 2012 budget the fact that a township must put money away to replace a truck they just bought but will need replacing in 10 or 15 years.

This is all very good long term planning, designed to minimize budget increases over years. But it also means that the millions of dollars it would cost to bring all the roads in a township to a provincial standard must be always on the mind of Council members.

South and North Frontenac Councils have taken this Capital Asset Management project very seriously. In South Frontenac the 2012 budget includes a pla to spend millions on roads and millions each year afterwards on roads and road equipment.

While this is prudent, it does mean that South Frontenac will remain fixated on roads. This will limit their ability to look at other community needs, such as recreation and social needs.

People are always complaining that we do not get much for our taxes in rural municipalities as compared to urban ratepayers. To a certain extent this is not true, as our municipal taxes do pay for policing, social welfare, library and other costs that are delivered by outside agencies. Still, there is something to a local council taking the welfare of its citizen's into its budget debate directly, rather than simply transferring moey elsewhere ad trusting ti will be sufficient.

The fixation with roads, which has only intensified under capital asset management, does take the focus ofg of everything else.

In the City of Toronto, while the roads are crumbling, the budget debate is over public transit, library service, social housing, recreation, etc.

Our Councils will talk only about roads and bridges and waste sites.

I would not suggest that a township such as South Frontenac ignore their road needs, but with roads that are better than urban roads today, more attention could be paid to the very real social needs of its citizenry.

Editorial by Jeff Green

Reading through the coverage of the provincial election that will end its dreary run today, one of the sideshows has been a number of articles in both the Ottawa Citizen and the Globe and Mail about LFL&A incumbent Randy Hillier.

The Globe and Mail even dispatched a columnist, John Ibbitson, to interview Hillier supporters in Carleton Place and Hopetown. The resulting article “Meet Hudak's booming - but minimized - voice of rural Ontario” poses and then rejects the idea that a comparison can be drawn between Randy Hillier and Lanark Landowner supporters and the Tea Party movement in the United States.

Here is an excerpt from that article that caught my attention.

“The truth is, there is no discernible Tea Party within Ontario politics. There is only a dwindling rural population 'who have been bypassed by the urbanization of Ontario,' observes Jonathan Malloy, a political scientist at Ottawa’s Carleton University.

“Some within it embrace a 'rural populism' that is 'suspicious of the urban experts who know what’s best for us,' he believes.”

A retired couple from Hopetown and a sawmill owner in Lanark Highlands were interviewed as well, and they dutifully said that Mr. Hillier “tells it like it is” unlike the “citiots” who are migrating to Eastern Ontario from places like Ottawa and Ontario.

The column also talks about Randy Hillier's disdain for “the excesses of environmentalism, multiculturalism, publicly-funded health care and the like”.

As long as Hillier sticks to talking about urban indifference to rural reality and mindless bureaucratic interference in rural life, he represents a large constituency in Eastern Ontario. It is when he sways into ideological territory that he loses a number of us.

Back in 2005, the ideological side of Mr. Hillier and the Lanark Landowners movement was identified in this newspaper.

At that time the founding statement of the Landowners was posted on their website, and included the following - “Using taxpayers’ dollars, our governments support and promote Quebec, Native, Arts, Homosexual, Urban and Multi cultures. However when it comes to the independent, peaceful rural culture in Canada, government support is stifling, suffocating and controlling.”

All of this, and Randy Hillier's subsequent actions, have formed a major part of Liberal candidate Bill MacDonald’s campaign message, which is only fair since just about everything Randy Hillier does is on the public record. MacDonald has called Hillier an “embarrassment”.

But Bill Macdonald is a political opponent of Randy Hillier’s and is trying to win an election.

Mr. Ibbitson is a commentator however, and by focusing on Hillier and his supporters’ ideological bent and ignoring completely any consideration of the real issues that are faced in Eastern Ontario, he effectively writes off the people who continually struggle to keep their families fed and their communities alive in this region.

And there are real issues in this region that are worth fighting for.

The Municipal Property Assessment Corporation did indeed decide that sugar shacks should be taxed as industrial operations.

It is in the interest of urban Ontario that farms and forests thrive, but it is the rural ratepayers who foot the entire bill to keep farm and managed forest tax rates low.

Based on the Provincial Policy Statement, which favours an urban model of housing development, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs is forcing restrictions on new housing developments in rural municipalities that will further erode the potential for growth.

The OPP has been permitted to continually downgrade its services to our regions while increasing costs, and ambulance service remains a touchy issue.

Whoever wins the provincial election tonight will inherit a set of grievances in rural Ontario.

The urbanization of Ontario was not created by any government; it is a fact of life. But governments have indeed placed bureaucratic restrictions in place over the past 10 to 15 years that have hit smaller and poorer communities hard. Many of these have been motivated not by any plan that is geared to fostering strong rural development, but by institutional thinking and fear of financial liability. The Safe Drinking Water Act is a prime example of this kind of legislation.

Whether people arrived in eastern Ontario 10 years ago, or 20, or come from families that have lived in rural Ontario for 100 or 1,000 years, we all have a real interest in the future of our region and we look to government and to our urban neighbours for support and respect.

We will find out tonight if Randy Hillier will continue to be the one who is charged with bringing our concerns to Queen's Park.

Whether he is or not, we need governments to take those concerns seriously, because we will not simply fade away, as some urban newspaper columnists are predicting.

County Tackles Public Health:

During her four-year term as the Frontenac County representative to the board of directors of Kingston Frontenac Lennox and Addington (KFL&A) Public Health, Central Frontenac Mayor Janet Gutowski often expressed her frustration over what she saw as a lack of transparency in the way the organization does its budgeting.

She is no longer the County rep to the Board, having been replaced by North Frontenac Mayor Bud Clayton for the current term of council, but she has briefed Clayton about her concerns.

She has also proposed, and Frontenac County Council has approved, a motion asking that KFL&A Public Health transfer some of the savings that have been realised as the Province of Ontario has increased its contribution for some shared provincial/municipal programs from 63% to 75%, back to the municipalities.

The motion also asks the KFL&A Public Health not use municipal money “to subsidise 100% funded municipal programs.”

Finally, the motion reads that, “The County of Frontenac is asking that the KFL&A Public Health Board’s budget process be fully transparent and that all use of municipal funds be identified throughout the process.”

“I don’t know if I’ll survive the Public Health board meeting next week or not,” said Bud Clayton after the motion was passed.

“Doctor Gemmill [the head of the KFL&A Public Health] will be attending our own meeting next month,” said CAO Liz Savill.

When interviewed after the meeting, Janet Gutowski said that “80% of Public Health boards across the province have decreased their municipal ask in recent years after the province uploaded some costs, and most of the other 20% are located in regions that have had large increases in population. The population is stable in this region, and yet we have paid increases of 2% every year. That’s why I brought this motion forward.”