County will take a year to study charge-back for municipal planning

Jeff Green | Feb 05, 2014

Three of the four Frontenac townships are set to take advantage of an offer by Frontenac County to provide planning services. South Frontenac is the one township that is not going to avail itself of the service, and its mayor, Gary Davison, has been asking for months for a report into how much it will cost the county to provide the service.

In delivering the report, Manager of Planning Joe Gallivan provided information from six other counties in Eastern Ontario that provide planning services for member municipalities, mostly at no additional cost.

He did say, however, that a charge-back of $30 an hour for planning work generated directly by the member townships would cover the county's costs.

However he recommended that the county wait a year before starting to charge the townships for the work.

“We recently purchased software that allows us to track our time. We can spend this year gathering data and then it will be clear what the charges will come to,” Gallivan said.

He also pointed out that if the county begins charging for the service, there will be an additional cost to ratepayers in South Frontenac.

“We already do the work for plans of subdivision and plans of condominium, most of which are done in South Frontenac, and we have never charged for that until now,” he said.

Gary Davison did not see why there should be a one-year delay.

“I would think the townships would be happy to pay it right away, while we are doing this tracking. $30 an hour is a pretty reasonable price,” he said.

“I think we should continue along on the current path, where we do not charge, at least until we can get some more data. Don't forget that we all benefit from increased development because it generates increased taxation over time,” said Central Frontenac Mayor Janet Gutowski.

Frontenac Islands Mayor Dennis Doyle said that his township has been making use of the county planning service for over a year, “and the service, I must say, has been excellent. We are happy to pay. But I agree we should take a year to make sure we get it right.”

A motion to forego charges for a year and gather data was passed. Mayor Davison and Councilor John McDougall voted against the motion, as did Frontenac Islands Councilor David Jones.