Too petty to contemplate (web only)

Jeff Green | Sep 06, 2019

The City of Kingston has decided to withhold a payment of $200,000 from Frontenac County for Frontenac Paramedic Services and Fairmount Home. City Council feels they were over-billed for the services without adequate consultation.

The City does not question the way costs are divided between City and County ratepayers. They know they are asking County ratepayers to pay more for the services than City ratepayers do for these services by asking the County to cover these costs. They don’t like that the county took the money from them without explaining why the needed it.

For the sake of argument, let’s say they are right, but is the response reasonable. The shortfall for them represents about 0.04% of the $440 million that the City collected last year from ratepayers. It’s not a huge impact, more like a rounding error.

Their in-house solicitor says it will not cost them anything in legal fees to bring this to mediation and arbitration and perhaps even court, because, it seems, City of Kingston lawyers are unlike any other lawyers on the planet – they work for free during lunch hours and weekends.

Could they not just pay the levy for 2019 and make sure the county engages them more fully for 2010.  The numbers do not warrant the action they are taking except

It can’t be that the City wants to establish that they are more powerful than their country cousins?

That would be too petty to even contemplate.