Single tier discussion for Frontenac County ends before it starts

Jeff Green | Jan 06, 2021

Saying he was “ticked off” when his submissions to a municipal modernisation review process in the summer of 2020 were not reflected in the final report, North Frontenac Mayor Ron Higgins presented some of his ideas in the form of a councilor report to the final Frontenac County meeting of 2020 on December 16th.

He said there are many challenges when independent bodies such as the four Frontenac Townships and Frontenac County try to work toward shared services.

“I also believe that we are providing services at higher than required costs. By taking the action to reduce Council members, moving to a single tier system and restructuring operations we will reduce current costs by an estimated $750K per year over time,” he said in his report

But before going any further, Higgins acknowledged that he was already aware of the “reluctance of this Council to consider a Single Tier municipality” and said that in considering how to modernise service delivery, council should consider creating a municipal services corporation in order to implement changes.

Later in the report, he provided a very high level outline of a new look Frontenac County that would effect not only Frontenac County, but the City of Kingston, the County of Lennox and Addington and Renfrew County.

The six point outline includes the annexation of Frontenac Islands township by the City of Kingston, and the annexation of those parts of Kingston located north of Highway 401 by Frontenac County. It called for the elimination of the County level of government and the establishment of a single township made up of South, Central and North Frontenac. It also sees a portion of North Frontenac being annexed into Renfrew County (The Norcan Lake area) because it cannot be serviced by North Frontenac staff, and the annexation of the west half of Cloyne by Frontenac County.

When the report came to council for discussion, it was indeed the single-tier proposal that members of Council talked about.

Councillor Revill from South Frontenac said “there are a lot of ideas here, For me at first look the material needs more clarity about some of the assumptions, and the boundary suggestions would present concerns in those areas. Nor sure if today is the best day to look into it, but I am willing ot look at it.

Central Frontenac Mayor Frances Smith said “I am not willing to look at a single tier. There are very few single-tier municipalities across the Province and I think there is a reason for that.”

“I would not entertain restructuring at this point,” said Councillor Bill MacDonald, also from Central Frontenac. I was involved last time and it wasn't a very pleasant experience.”

Newly minted County Warden Ron Vandewal said “Could we put this off. We don't have a lot of time today. Maybe we can defer it until sometime in the first quarter of next year.”

Frontenac Islands Mayor Dennis Doyle moved for a deferral, but before that could be voted on, Ron Higgins said that the “reason I brought this forward was that my input was not included in the modernization review ... I was going to call for an investigation at the time, but that would not have served any purpose. I realise that everybody is against single tier and I respect that, but if the current government is re-elected they are going to act on municipal reform, and I want to make sure that everything we do comes from a single tier municipal perspective because it might be coming ... We do not have to create a municipal services corporation as long as we agree to look at everything we do from that perspective.”

Higgins then said that he did not think it necessary to defer the discussion, and offered to rescind his original motion.

Warden Vandewal said to Higgins, “I think you made an assumption when you said that everybody is opposed to at least discussing single-tier”

“I'm ok with that because as I said I am beating my head against the wall,” said Higgins.

The motion that “county council open discussions on the correspondence received from Councillor Higgins regarding working towards a Single Tier municipality for Frontenac,” was then withdrawn by the mover, Higgins himself.