County Budget In Limbo After Defeat

Jeff Green | Mar 28, 2013

Frontenac County Council met for over five hours on March 8 to work through their 2013 budget, and they devoted most of their regularly scheduled meeting on March 20 to the same topic.

Finally, after cutting another position, a part-time finance clerk ($24,000), and making a number of other cuts, it seemed like it was time to vote. Overall county spending was slated to be up by 5%, to over $40 million from $38 million in 2012, but because most of those costs are covered by payments from the Province of Ontario and the City of Kingston for ambulance and long term care services the county provides to Kingston residents, the amount to be paid by county taxpayers (about $8.25 million) was actually down marginally from 2012, - 0.34% Nonetheless, when the votes were all counted, the budget was defeated by 6 votes to 3.

For the record the draft budget was supported by both representatives from Central Frontenac, Mayor Janet Gutowski and John Purdon, as well as John Inglis from North Frontenac, and No votes came from North Frontenac Mayor Bud Clayton, David Jones and Mayor Dennis Doyle from Frontenac Islands, and John McDougall and Mayor Gary Davison from South Frontenac (Davison has 2 votes because he is the mayor of the largest township)

In one of the few other items on the agenda, Council disbanded their finance committee and approved the establishment of a Committee of the Whole, although how and when the Committee of the Whole will meet has not been established.

Although it was not clear until the vote took place that the budget was not going to pass, there were indications earlier in the meeting that certain members of the council were not happy with the direction the budget was taking.

“We see actual spending from last year and then we see that staff are asking for more than that, so we say cut the budget. And every time we do that we are told we can't do it. Are they saying we should just sign the check and be quiet?” said Gary Davison early in the meeting.

“We ran a surplus last year of $250,000 and now we can't drop the budget. That's nonsense,” said David Jones.

For her part, Warden Gutowski wondered what council was really after.

“Council asked for a line by line budget instead of giving clear direction to staff. And now some of you don't like the numbers you are seeing,” she said.

Although the budget document as a whole was rejected, three items received pre-approval: the $2 million re-build of the Frontenac Auditorium at the Fairmount Home/County offices complex in Glenburnie; the building of a new ambulance base in North/Central Frontenac; and cutting a 12-hour shift from the Palace Road ambulance base in Kingston.

When contacted later, Warden Gutowski said she did not know what the six members of Council who voted against the budget are looking for.

“Before the vote I asked if anyone wanted to look further at any part of the budget, and no one put up their hand. So I called the vote, and it went down. I can see no direction coming from that vote, so we’ll just have to see what happens at our next meeting. I have no plans to call any additional meetings.”

County Council meets on April 17.