Frontenac County brings in a tax decrease for 2010

Jeff Green | Mar 11, 2010

Frontenac County Council put themselves, and County staff, through a kind of push and pull exercise throughout the month of February. The result was a change in the tax levy to ratepayers from the 2% increase that was in the draft budget to a net 0.59% decrease.

The exercise was initiated by Frontenac Islands Mayor Jim Vanden Hoek, who took exception to the way that the initial budget accounted for savings that came about because the provincial government has assumed the entire cost of a major social program, the Ontario Disability Support Program

Vanden Hoek argued that if those savings, which amounted to several hundred thousand dollars, were passed directly on to the local municipalities (South, Central, and North Frontenac and the Frontenac Islands) the county tax increase would be over 6% and county council would be more likely to cut some spending.

In the end several projects were cut from the budget, including plans to fix the front entrance-way to the county office, a savings of $150,000, a cut of about $50,000 from the staff training budget, and the elimination of a plan to spend $25,000 to turn the bare bones room where county council currently meets into a multi-media county council chamber and conference room for use by the county and the Frontenac Land Ambulance service.

One of the most costly county operations is the Fairmount Nursing Home, and council considered cutting back on municipal funding for the home.

At the end of the budget discussion on February 17, Council asked the home’s director Julie Shillington to consider the implications of a $100,000 cut to the Fairmount budget. In the end, after a lengthy in camera discussion at their final budget meeting on March 3, council decided to leave the Fairmount Home budget unchanged for 2010. Instead, they looked to controlling costs in future years, after contract negotiations with unionized employees of the home are completed later this year.

Council approved a motion that asks staff to provide “alternative budgeting scenarios for council’s consideration in 2011 and 2012 to address opportunities both leading to reductions and increases” of the Fairmount budget, and “ provide full explanations as opportunities arise and circumstances change.”

Other changes that council made to the budget had to do with the way that a gas tax rebate that the county receives from the federal government will be allocated.

A plan to spend $150,000 on a transportation study focusing on regional roads (Road 38, Perth Road, and Roads 506/509) was scaled back to $40,000, and a plan to develop community improvement plans was scaled back from $75,000 to $30,000.

While these changes will have no direct effect on municipal taxation rates because they were using federal money, there will be an indirect impact, because county council decided to transfer $110,000 in gas tax money to the local municipalities.

The net effect of the four budget meetings that county council held was to transfer about a half a million dollars to the local municipalities.

In an unusual move, the county will levy a 3.74% increase to the local municipalities and then provide a grant equaling 4.33% of that same levy, for a net effect of minus 0.59%.

As they each consider their own budgets this month, each township will have the choice of applying their share of the extra money to their own infrastructure needs, or using it for tax relief for ratepayers.