Jeff Green | May 05, 2021


Joe Gallivan, the Manager of Planning Services for Frontenac County, recalled a recent call that was received at a township office in the county recently. An urban refugee who had just bought a lakefront property phoned to find out how to arrange for the township to turn on the water and hook up their property to the municipal sewage system.

This story not only illustrates that city dwellers take municipal servicing for granted, it also explains why it is so complicated to develop new housing in Frontenac County hamlets.

“It costs millions of dollars to build municipal water and sewer systems. Municipalities don’t have that kind of money available. It is a total dead end for development,” said Joe Gallivan.

That means, even with the option of plans of subdivision and plans of land use condominium being available to developers, each lot that is created must be large enough to accommodate a well and septic system, limiting development to single family dwellings on 1 hectare lots  (2.5 acres).

In the latest version of the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS), which was approved last year, the Province of Ontario said that “communal servicing” is the preferred option for rural development.

“Communal servicing” refers to a single water and sewer system providing service for a number of properties within a development, which would allow for commercial development and multi-family units, as well as single family dwellings, to be constructed within a single development, all serviced by one water and septic system.

The one thing that is preventing these kinds of developments from being proposed within Frontenac County, and elsewhere in the province, is liability.

If a developer makes this kind of proposal right now, the local municipality has to be concerned about the possibility that the water or sewer system may fail, and the developer of the condominium corporation, that owned the asset, may end up dissolving, leaving the municipality and its ratepayers with the cost of repairing or replacing the system. In order to cover themselves against that potential liability, municipalities need to demand a deposit from the developer to cover that liability, and those costs are so high that communal servicing is not a viable option for developers.

“If the municipal liability issue was solved, developers would be eager to invest in rural communities. That’s what they have been telling me for years,” said Joe Gallivan.

For over 4 years, Gallivan has been working to find a solution to this impasse. And over the past year a committee made up of the Frontenac County Mayors, as well as four Frontenac County residents with expertise in finance, development, planning, and politics, have been meeting and working with a consulting firm to develop a workable solution to the problem.

Last week, the final report from the consulting group, WSP Canada, was presented to the April meeting of Frontenac County Council. It was approved by Council and will be presented in May, to the four Frontenac Townships. 

The report recommends that a Municipal Services Corporation be established. The corporation would be owned by the municipalities that decide to sign up for the plan, but would operate separately from the municipalities. It would enter into contracts with developers to manage water and sewer systems, and would take on the responsibility to make sure the systems are maintained over time.

The job of operating utilities would be “contracted out to existing operating utilities in the initial stages of establishment” said the WSP report.

“This is similar to what is already taking place in Sydenham. Utilities Kingston operates the water system under contract with the township and Sydenham residents pay a utilities bill,” said Gallivan. In other parts of Frontenac County, the Perth Utilities Corporation might be approached to run the communal systems.”

The details about how participating Frontenac municipalities will share the upfront cost of setting up the corporation, which is estimated by WSP to be $700,000. plus contingencies, will have to be worked out.  Most funding relationships between the townships are done on the basis of the relative property assessment values,, and that is one of the options that WSP is putting forward.

“It is important to point out that it will be up to each township, their own Official Plan processes, to determine where in their township they think communal servicing, and the resulting density of development, is most appropriate. They can identify areas for growth, such as hamlets,” said Gallivan.

South Frontenac is now in the process of developing a new Official Plan. Gallivan said that considerations about where and how it wants to allow for communal servicing will be a part of that process, if they sign on to the Municipal Services Corporation.

He said that communal servicing is also contemplated in the Central Frontenac Official Plan, which will be approved in the coming months, and that Frontenac Islands has been studying communal servicing for Marysville, in anticipation of significant growth potential, once a new ferry to the City of Kingston is up and running.

WSP will be making presentations to each of the townships in May, with the expectation that the local councils will decide whether to participate, or not, in short order, so that when Frontenac County meets in June, or July at the latest, they can begin the process of putting a final business plan together.

By the summer of 2022, the corporation can be in place.

“If this happens, it will send a message to developers that Frontenac County has this in place. It will give them the certainty they need, and the clarity they need, to put together developments that meet their objectives and the objectives of the local townships,” said Gallivan. “It could make a big difference over the next 30 years.”

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