Saves_Fairmount

Feature Article August 14

Feature Article August 14, 2002

LAND O' LAKES NewsWeb Home

Deal saves Fairmount expansion projectby Jeff GreenA months-long dispute between the Frontenac Management Board (FMB) and the City of Kingston ended last week after two days of mediation. The agreement will allow construction to start on an expansion project for the Fairmount Seniors Home near Glenburnie that will see the home increase in size from 96 to 128 beds.

The FMB has been managing the home since the municipal amalgamation agreement of 1997, and how this came to be is bound in with the history of Frontenac County. Before amalgamation, the Fairmount Seniors home was located in Frontenac County. When county council morphed into the FMB, managing Fairmount was ceded to the FMB, even though the township where Fairmount is located opted to join the city of Kingston. As a result, the FMB manages a seniors home that is actually located in the city of Kingston. Furthermore, most of the residents in the home also come from Kingston, and 74% of the operating costs are paid by the City. Managing Fairmount has never been a great privilege, since the home has always lost money, according to FMB chair Phil Leonard. Still, the Frontenac townships, and all townships in Ontario, are bound to pay for beds in nursing homes by the terms of the municipal act, so the mayors that make up the FMB argue it is better to have some control over how the money is spent by managing Fairmount, rather than buying beds in a home that is managed by someone else.

The expansion of the Fairmount Seniors Home has been in the works for some time under a directive of the provincial government. Kingston City Council agreed to pay for 74% of the construction. However, the project ran into a snag when the estimated cost rose from $16 million to $18.2 million in May. Staff at the city of Kingston prepared a report which questioned some of the assumptions about the long-term funding of Fairmount, and raised doubts about whether the city should be involved in the project. The report also raised the possibility of reopening the amalgamation agreement, and so drew the ire of the mayors who make up the FMB.

While it was reported in the Kingston Whig Standard last Thursday that the City of Kingston will limit their contribution to the expansion project to $11.7 million, leaving the FMB on the hook for 100% of the extra $1.8 million in the updated costing estimates, FMB Chair Phil Leonard reports, there is no fixed limit to what the City has agreed to pay. The Whig Standard got it wrong. What the city pays will still be determined by what the project costs, and we will all be very careful to avoid any over-runs.

According to Central Frontenac Mayor Bill Macdonald, the FMB has agreed to increase its share of the cost of the renovations to 32%, with the City of Kingston lowering their share to 68% from 74%. "This will not cost municipal taxpayers anything," he claims, because, aside from $1 million, which we are committed to raising through fundraising, the provincial government has agreed to pay back the investment over a 20-year period. So the money will come from the bank and be paid back to the bank through provincial grants."

At the mediation talks, the city was asking that a new committee of the city and the FMB be set up to oversee the project, according to Leonard, "but instead of that, we convinced them to let the existing Rural Urban Liaison Committee (RULAC) meet every two weeks to look over the ongoing project.

Apparently, this was enough to persuade the city to sign on. The agreement was put in place in time for the expansion project to start immediately, and Mayor Phil Leonard says, There will be equipment on site by Thursday of this week to start building, and the project should be completed by December of 2003.

All the Frontenac mayors are on record as saying that this project will make Fairmount Home more efficient; it will receive better funding from the province, and will save taxpayers money, both in Kingston and the Frontenac Townships, over the next 20 years.The nagging doubt that underlies all this sunny weather talk has to do with that City of Kingston staff report, which questioned whether the project will actually deliver the fiscal benefits the FMB and the Fairmount Home seem so confident about. That, however, is not a subject that is occupying the mayors attention at the moment, as they celebrate saving the Fairmount expansion project and look forward to moving on to other issues.

Meanwhile, there will be a major fundraising campaign undertaken by the FMB in the near future to raise $1 million towards the renovation project.