Frontenac County Council trims budget increase to 2.8%

Jeff Green | Nov 01, 2023

Economic Development Department new hire proposal turned down.

After listening to department heads for 7 hours over two days, Frontenac County Council spent less than 1/2 an hour making decisions about how much money to requisition from Frontenac County ratepayers.

The proposed increase in taxation was set by County staff at 3.77%, just under the target of 3.8% that they had been working towards in preparing the 2024 budget over the past couple of months. That target, which was set by the budget policy adopted by the previous council, was to keep increases at or lower than the Consumer Price Index (CPI) at the end of September each year.

But the previous council was dealing with a stable inflationary time frame when CPI remained in a narrow range at about 2% year after year.

The first budget approved by the current council, which was done in February of this year, had an increase of almost 5%, which was lower than the CPI.

The 2024 budget scenario was less severe in terms of inflationary impact, partly because the higher interest rate policy pursued. by the Bank of Canada to lower inflation has also resulted in an unexpected increase in investment income for Frontenac County to the tune of $440,000. A portion of that extra income was used to moderate tax increases, and another portion was used to replenish County reserve funds, which were depleted in the last budget cycle in order to keep the increase under 5%.

The easiest way to bring the 2024 tax requisition increase to under 3% was to pull a proposed new Community Development Officer position which at a cost of $116,000, or 094% of the 12.9million that the county will need from Frontenac County ratepayers in 2024.

Frontenac County spends over $60million each year, but collects much of that from the Province of Ontario and the City of Kingston who pay most of the costs to run Fairmount Home and Frontenac Paramedic Services, the two largest county-run services.

Planning and Economic Development, Information Technology and Corporate Services are exclusively funded by Frontenac ratepayers, so any increases in those services are more expensive pills to swallow for council.

At decision time, council first accepted the general thrust of the budget, that in order to maintain the same level of service that all of the departments delivered in 2023, replenish depleted reserve funds and honour previous commitments to increase reserve funds for depreciation of county assets, taxation would have to go up by just over 2%.

That left $207,000 (1.67%) in project proposals. They approved a $22,000 (.18%) investment in physician recruitment, 15,000 (.12%) for a paramedic study, $14,500 (.11%0 for the county share of a new maintenance worker at Fairmount Home, and some other smaller projects.

That left the new Community Development Officer in the Economic Development Department, which would have increased the department from two to three members.

On that item only one member of Council, Frontenac Island's Mayor Judy Greenwood Spears, spoke out.

“I think we need to try this for three years and see if it works out. The focus on tourism is important, and this was supported strongly by the Planning and Economic Development Advisory Committee, which includes members of our council and members of the public,” she said.

There was not enough support for the new hire from the rest of Council, and it was defeated.

The net result is a draft budget of 2.8%.

County Treasurer Alex Lemieux will bring back a revised budget, likely to the November meeting of Council, with a view towards finalising the budget and approving it in early December.

Council will have further opportunities to amend the budget at those meetings, as the meetings last week were held as Committee of the Whole meetings, and will be forwarded to a formal council meeting for final approval.