| Aug 19, 2010


Davison/Vanden Hoek on County Roads – Don’t ask for money from townships.

In July members of Frontenac County Council put a stop to a comprehensive transportation plan, at a cost of over $100,000, which was proposed by County Sustainability Planner Joe Gallivan.

Gallivan was asked to come back with a more modest proposal that focussed on the arterial roads within the county that are within the jurisdiction of the individual Frontenac townships. He was also told to keep his proposal within the $40,000 cost that had been approved in the 2010 budget.

In receiving the terms of reference for that more limited roads management plan at the meeting of County Council on Wednesday August 11, at least two of the four members of the current council served notice of the limits of their support for a comprehensive county roads system.

Frontenac Islands Mayor Jim Vanden Hoek said “I’m fine with common standards, about seeking grants, etc. but I think it will be a long time before I support any kind of financial requisition from the townships for a regional roads system. In the deliverables for this project, it says ‘A vision for a Frontenac County road network’. I would prefer if it said ‘a vision for a road network in Frontenac County’. It might seem like semantics, but I am not entirely comfortable with what’s on the table at this time.”

Central Frontenac Mayor Janet Gutowski did not share Vanden Hoek’s concerns. “Any financial plan would be a long term, 20-year model,” she said.

North Frontenac Mayor Ron Maguire said the new proposal was an improvement over the earlier version. “I would expect that whatever comes of this will bring equity across the County.”

South Frontenac Mayor Gary Davision shared Vanden Hoek’s unease with the direction of the plan. “I too have concerns about where this long term plan is going because we cannot afford the roads we have now. When the county spends money a lot of it comes from my own constituents. In South Frontenac we are already looking at 18 kilometres of Road 38 that is a monster that is about to bite us.”

Joe Gallivan said that the roads management plan that he envisioned bringing forward would be rather open ended, leaving decisions about funding it to members of county council. “Our expectation is that a number of models will be brought forward,” he said.

He then took up Mayor Davison’s concern over Road 38. “It was never right for a road like 38 to be paid for by an individual council in the first place,” he said.

Gallivan got the go ahead to prepare a request for proposal for a consultant to consider a number of models for developing a regional roads system.

GIS SPECIALIST TO BE HIRED – County Council approved the creation of the full time position of Global Information Systems (GIS) specialist at a pay rate of $26 an hour. The position will be reviewed after four years.

PROVINCIAL POLICY STATEMENT – The Provincial Policy statement is a document that is used by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (MMAH) to curtail some of the initiatives that municipalities in Frontenac County would like to see in their own Official Plans. Currently North, South, and Central Frontenac are all locked in stalemates over their Official Plans with the MMAH over certain kinds of development the townships would like to permit but the ministry will not accept.

Development on private laneways is a case in point. The MMAH would like to see it prohibited, based on their own interpretation of the Provincial Policy Statement, a move that both North and Central Frontenac fear will curtail their already limited growth potential.

The Provincial Policy Statement is undergoing its own review, and Frontenac County is making submissions to that review with a view towards establishing “clear and consistent policy on the development and extension of private roads.”

The County is making 10 other recommendations to the policy statement review, on topics such as limits on the location of small-scale renewable energy projects, clear policies for lake trout lakes, and others.

 

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