North Frontenac puts the brakes on County roads network

Jeff Green | Aug 21, 2019

At their meeting last Friday, North Frontenac Council passed a motion to explore 2 previously discussed options for the development of a regional roads network in Frontenac County.

The main stated purpose of the regional roads network is to make Frontenac County, as well as its member municipalities, eligible for road construction grants. For the past 20 years, only the municipalities have been able to apply for federal and provincial road and bridge grants.

A study prepared by Frontenac County Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Pender, estimated that under the granting programs that have been in place, Frontenac County lost out on “$3M to $5.3M dollars higher over a three-year period” between 2015 and 2017.

In response to this, Pender proposed, in a report to Frontenac County Council in April, that each of the Frontenac townships endorse one of two similar versions of a plan that would see the county play a minor or no role at all in planning road construction on the major roads in the county, but establish enough responsibility to be able to apply for grants, which would save each of the townships and/or lead to a higher level of road maintenance.

A motion, passed by Frontenac County Council on April 17, asked each of the townships to pass a motion endorsing a version of the plan by May 31st.

North Frontenac did not do so in time, opting instead to wait for a legal opinion about a clause in the plan that calls for 1% ownership of arterial roads in each of the townships. Once that opinion was delivered, and said the 1% ownership will not create a legal issue. Still North Frontenac wanted the public works managers from the townships to discuss the proposals before bringing them back to North Frontenac Council for a vote.

The public works managers met on July 17th and recommended that one of the options be explored further through the development of a business plan at a cost of $40,000 to be funded by Frontenac County, using one-time grant monies from the Province of Ontario that are supposed to aid rural municipalities to become more efficient in their operations.

The motion that North Frontenac Council passed last week called for the development of the business plan by a consultant, but also asked that the consultant examine changes that are taking place in new funding models from both the federal and provincial governments.

The North Frontenac motion also specifically precludes a key piece of the county proposal, which is a call for the county to petition the province to remove clause 6.2 from the restructuring order of 1997 which created the current form of Frontenac County governance. Clause 6.2 prohibits Frontenac County from being involved in roads, and downloads all road issues and ownership to the local townships.

“Council does not endorse a petition to the Province of Ontario to remove section 6.2 … related to the prohibition of county involvement in roads …”

A report by North Frontenac Public Works Manager, Darwyn Sproule, brought two concerns with the county plan to the forefront.

One concern is that the funding program under which the county would have been able to receive grant monies, which it has been missing out on, has been discontinued and the details about the program that is replacing it are “unknown at this time”, according to Sproule.

The second concern is based on a string of successful grant applications that North Frontenac has received in recent years, up to and including a grant in 2019 of $1.5 million to go towards improvements to the Myers Cave/Harlowe Road. This comes on the heels of over $2.8 million in grants received by the township since 2014.

“With the current regional roads proposal, there doesn’t appear to be a downside to the county when grant applications are unsuccessful, but the ability for the townships to apply individually may be impacted,” Sproule wrote.

North Frontenac Council followed Sproules’ recommendation.

Councillor John Inglis, who spent eight years on Frontenac County Council between 2010 and 2017, said that the regional roads plan was brought forward in his first year at the county.

“It was a no-brainer then, it meant more money for roads. Now I see the funding formula has changed and I have a bias against it now. It now means ‘same roads, more staff.’”