Frontenac County ED Department Loses Out

Jeff Green | Nov 08, 2023

The proposal for a new community development officer in the Frontenac County economic development department came to Frontenac County Council with significant advanced notice.

The new hire was integral to the 5-year work plan that was presented to Council in both 2023 and 2024, which was discussed in detail at the committee level as recently as last month.

In 2022, consultants working on a destination development study, funded by Frontenac County and the two Regional Tourism Organisations (RTOs) that cover Frontenac County, recommended the implementation of a destination development plan, whose first component was a new staff resource at the county level, to promote tourism.

That destination development plan was approved by Frontenac County Council in the summer of 2022, and Richard Allen, the Manager for Economic Development, developed a proposal for the initiation of the plan and a new county-run tourism website to support it, on the basis of a new hire. He was going to bring the new position forward in the 2023 budget, but the impact of inflation on the budget made him put that off, so it was proposed for 2024.

Frontenac County took on tourism marketing after the demise of the Land O’Lakes Tourist Association in late 2017. At the time, the tourism initiative dovetailed with a branding initiative that was initiated in 2016, when a second member was added to what had been a one person department, a hire that was facilitated by a provincial Rural Economic Development grant.

In 2019, faced with a set of competing demands on the time of the two-member team, the department changed course, and pulled back from direct engagement with local businesses and took on more of an administrative role.

The department has also borne most of the responsibility for the development of the K&P Trail, a project that began in 2009 and is still being built out, some 15 years later.

When Richard Allen made his presentation to Frontenac County Council on May 25 in support of the creation of a new position, he said that increasing the capacity of the department is a key factor in the development of a tourism website, and in supporting physician recruitment, both projects that Council has endorsed.

At the end of his presentation, there were a number of questions from members of council.

North Frontenac Mayor Gerry Lichty asked about making it a contract position instead of a full-time hire.

Allen said that “ultimately the nature of a contract piece makes it very hard to keep somebody. People tend to like that security, especially in the current labour market.”

Warden Ron Vandewal prefaced his question by saying, “don’t take this personal” before saying “I have not had one person say to me, that’s why I came here, because of the county's help. Maybe it is because they promote it better, but people say they were helped by Frontenac Business Services, but not the county. Of the three or four major projects in South Frontenac, not one of them mentioned the county. I really struggle with adding this position.” he said.

As reported on page 1, Council rejected the new position on October 26, at the end of the two day budget deliberation exercise.

In a telephone interview a few days later, Richard Allen said “I have to respect Council’s direction, and I will sit down with Debbi [Miller] and Joe [Gallivan], and we will determine proposed plans of action around deferring some projects and proceeding with others. We will bring those proposals to Council, probably in December.”

Debbi Miller is a Community Development Officer and the other member of Allen’s team, and Joe Gallivan is the Director of Planning and Economic Development Services, and he oversees the economic development department.

Allen said he would certainly have preferred to see Council endorse the new position, pointing out that he “had put a lot of effort into ensuring that the ask in the budget was not a surprise to them.”

He noted that it is generally more difficult for his department to expand its scope because, unlike most of the larger departments, all of the economic development costs are paid for by local taxation.

“Certainly our ask in the budget was the largest project enhancement they were looking at.”

He said that he thinks that developing a county-wide Community Improvement Plan will likely remain a short term priority for the department, and destination development may be deferred for a time.

“But until we have that meeting, or a couple of meetings, I can’t say for sure what our new plans will be. Just like all businesses in Frontenac County, we will have to adapt to this change and find a way around it, to get where we need to go.”