Frontenac County Council parks $3.5 million

Jeff Green | May 15, 2014

One of the concrete accomplishments of the four years of controversy that has been Frontenac County Council, has been finding $3.5 million that had been sitting dormant in various reserve funds that the county set up over its 15- year history.

Last week, Council met as a Committee of the Whole to discuss where those monies should go.

The discussion was organised around a report prepared by Director of Corporate Services, Marian Vanbruinessen, which included a sort of shopping list of long-term initiatives for Council’s consideration. The list, VanBruinessen said, came from proposals and ideas that have come from members of council and council committees over the last three years. It totalled over $6 million.

The list was not well received by South Frontenac Mayor Gary Davison. “Here we go again. Now we have over $6 million in spending when all we have is three and a half million in the kitty. We are being dragged down another path here,” he said.

“Those are not proposed spending envelopes,” said Vanbruinessen, “they are only opportunities identified by Council.”

When the committee went through the list they cut the $6.4 million to $3.3 million.

Those proposals include: $1.5 million for seniors’ initiatives (housing and transportation); $500,000 for Economic Development; $380,000 for infrastructure replacement; $340,000 for potential cost sharing for capital projects in the City of Kingston; $380,000 for the Frontenac Renovates project (assistance to low income homeowners); $30,000 for land acquisition for the K&P trail; and $100,000 for Community Improvement Plans.

“This is only a first discussion about reserves, as far as I am concerned,” said Councilor John Inglis from North Frontenac. “I think this should come back to the Committee of the Whole for further debate in the context of a discussion about all of our reserve funds”.

For her part, Central Frontenac Mayor Janet Gutowski did not want to spend more time debating the reserve funds.

“I think we can bring this to Council for debate and approval when we meet later in May. This is only a plan for future spending, not a commitment to future spending,” she said.

Frontenac Islands Mayor Dennis Doyle, who had previously proposed that the $3.5 million be distributed among the four member townships, thought there should be more debate.

“I also point out that Councilor Jones (also from Frontenac Islands) is not here today and he will have something to say about where to allocate this money,” he said.

Jones had earlier said that the county reserve funds were made up of “squirrelled away” funds that should be returned to ratepayers.

One of the major sources of the surplus money that created the $3.5 million pool of money was budget surpluses that occur most years. The county did not have a mechanism for dealing with those funds in its first 15 years. As of this year, however, budget surplus are being applied directly to subsequent county budgets, to offset taxation.