Frontenac County Council Set To Up Their Levy By 8.9%

Jeff Green | Feb 15, 2023

Assessment Growth mitigates impact to 7.6%.

Frontenac County Warden Ron Vandewal has made 2% his mantra throughout his 8 years as Mayor of South Frontenac.

To that end, he has voted against all but one of the Frontenac County Budgets since joining Frontenac County Council in 2016. That was the only time the county budget increase came in at under 2%.

This year, the increase is almost 9%, with Council making only marginal changes to the draft that was presented to them last week.

Nonetheless, Vandewal indicated that when the budget comes up for approval at the February meeting of Frontenac County Council this week, he will be supporting it.

He even stood firm against a proposal to defer spending on land purchases for the K&P trail, which may have lowered the levy by a few tenths of a percentage.

“As we saw earlier today, the things that got kicked down the road end up coming back to haunt you later on, and this is where we are. And this is an absolutely brutal budget, it really is. So whether we say 8.95% or 8.59%, it is still over 8% and it is still going to be a big number and we are still going to hear about it back in our own communities. But we have to live with it.”

Deputy Warden and Central Frontenac Mayor Frances Smith, the only other long serving member of the council, which has seen a dramatic turnover after last fall's election, concurred with Vandewal, particularly as regards the spending on the K&P Trail land purchases.

“The stuff that we don’t do this year, is going to hit us again in a year or two. The process is in the middle and we are going to have to pay for this later on,” she said.

The largest share of the budget increase this year came from inflationary impacts.

As Treasurer/ Director of Corporate Services, Alex Lemieux, explained at the beginning of the budget meeting, which ended up running almost 9 hours, over two days, the budget was doomed to be well above the standard annual increase of 3-4% from the start.

The budget target for Lemieux is set by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in August each year, and this year the CPI was 6.9%.

“We've seen the impact of inflation everywhere in the budget: fuel, employee benefits, insurance, WSIB payments, it’s been across the board,” he said. “The inflationary impact on our status quo budget came in just under the CPI, at 6.72%,” he said.

Long-term spending plans made by previous councils, including .65% increases each for ambulance service and capital replacement costs, .28% for rural transportation and .36% for K&P Trail expansion, brought the increase to over 8.6%.

That left only a few minor items for Council to look at, and they decided to cut a $25,000 contribution to a reserve fund for rent subsidies, but to place $22,000 in the budget to support doctor recruitment. (See County support for local docs)

In addition to accepting the budget document in principle with a increase of 8.94%, and sending it to this week's regular council meeting for a final debate and approval, Council also made a decision about the future of ambulance service which did not have an impact on the 2023 budget but will make a difference in 2024. (See County Adds 12 Hour Shift to Paramedic Service)