'Let Wayne give it a try' County Council says in delaying expropriations over K&P Trail in NF

Jeff Green | Feb 23, 2022

Frontenac County Council has decided to defer a proposal to proceed with expropriating portions of three properties in the Snow Road area in order to complete construction of the K&P trail through North Frontenac.

But they won't wait too long.

“The county's efforts to purchase three sections of privately owned lands at market value, for the purpose of connecting the Frontenac K&P Trail, have been unsuccessful and staff have determined that it is now necessary, and in the public interest, to apply for approval to expropriate these private lands,” said a staff report to council, at their meeting last week (February 16). 

But a number of members of council remembered that when they had a number of pieces of property to purchase in Central Frontenac, they enlisted the services of Wayne Robinson, of Sharbot Lake, to talk to the property owners to try and convince them to sell their property willingly, without the need to expropriate the land. In most cases, Robinson was successful, but there were still two expropriations that were necessary in Central Frontenac.

Councillor Bill Macdonald (Central Frontenac) was the first to suggest that Robinson be approached to see if he would be willing to sit down with the property owners to see if a deal can be worked out.

Councillor Alan Revill, agreed, saying “In my view, expropriation should only be used as a last resort. It leaves a bad taste in people's mouths.”

Frontenac County Chief Administrator Kelly Pender pointed out that the property owners in question used to allow snowmobile traffic through their property, but in response to the county approaching them to purchase their land, for a year round trail, they have put up barricades, cutting off access to snowmobilers.

“If we don't start the process now, the trail will be closed for another winter, which is not fair to North Frontenac,” he said.

“At least let's give Wayne a month to have that conversation, if he is willing to take it on, to meet people in person and see if there is a way around this. If there isn't, we can start the process in March,” said South Frontenac Mayor Ron Vandewal.

North Frontenac Mayor Ron Higgins said that he had already asked Robinson if he was willing to get involved once again and he “said he was willing. I think it would be respectful of the people involved if we had Wayne go in and have a sit down with them before we do this.”

The motion to commence expropriation proceedings was deferred.

Other items from Frontenac County

Council accepted a staff proposal to hire a summer student to help work on the first steps towards a Frontenac County climate change action plan. Part of the function of the student will be to help develop an ongoing state of the county report/dashboard to aid in the effort to bring the county's operations to carbon neutrality by 2050.

“I like that staff did not use the phrase 'climate emergency' like some other municipalities have,'' said Ron Vandewal.

“Will this person provide any support to the townships to work on our own climate change plans?” asked Central Frontenac Mayor Frances Smith.”

“No, but the dashboard could be altered for use by the townships, once it is built,” said Kelly Pender.

Office expansion project to go to tender

The need for improvements to the county administration offices was identified in reports going back to 2013, and now the project is finally set to go to tender.

“It appears that pricing is all over the map, so we will see. It is likely that the pricing will be higher than we have budgeted, and we will have to come back to Council to talk about it,” said Kelly Pender.

Pender said he expects that a  meeting of the council committee, dealing with the matter, will be called to a meeting in “6 to 8 weeks”