NF Council Mourns Death Of Fred Perry, Then Gets Down To Business

Jeff Green | Jul 20, 2022

The regular meeting of North Frontenac Council last Friday (July 15) began on a sombre note.

Mayor Ron Higgins asked his fellow councillors, staff and public in attendance to “take a moment to contemplate our colleague Fred Perry’s time on council and as a friend”.

“Rest in Peace, Fred,” Higgin’s said afterwards.

Land O’Lakes Community Services

Shelby Rosenblath and Marlene Dacuk from Land O’Lakes Community Services (LOLCS) came to Council. They were on hand to talk about the possibility of extending the outdoor maintenance program for seniors, and those with physical disabilities, that they support in Addington Highlands and parts of Ward 1, to the rest of North Frontenac.

Rosenblath explained that LOLCS acts as a broker, and provides subsidy money as needed, for workers who receive $18 per hour to cut grass and do other outdoor work.

For the most part, Rural Frontenac Community Services (RFCS) provides supports for seniors in wards 1 and 2, and Land O’Lakes Community Services does the same for Ward 3, which has the greatest population.

“We have identified that our senior residents would prefer home maintenance help to having us build a seniors’ residence,” said Councillor John Inglis. “Part of our effort was to engage RFCS in this but they were not interested. They have a program for support with indoor work, house cleaning, etc., but not outdoors.”

“We use brokered workers, so they are not technically our workers and they may work differently,” said Marlene Dacuk.

Councillor Vernon Hermer, who is responsible for social services under the councillor portfolio system in North Frontenac, said he has talked to RFCS Executive Director Louise Moody.

“She said it was a liability issue for them,” he said.

The delegates from LOLCS said they will look at the geography and will work with township staff to see if a program can be set up. The township is willing to commit $20,000 per year for 4 years to help with admin. and subsidy costs.

Kashwakamak waste site

Heather Dzurko, a project manager with Cambium, the company that provides geotechnical services for waste sites throughout Frontenac County, appeared before Council via zoom to deliver a presentation about the Kashwakamak waste site.

Based on monitoring of 17 test wells at locations throughout the footprint of the site, Cambium has been satisfied that there are no “offsite impacts in groundwater” from the site.

There have been some elevated mineral levels in test wells nearer to the interior of the site, but “due to the uncertainty of the sources of the elevated concentrations and the general lack of impacts, at most wells adjacent to the southern property boundary, additional work was not previously recommended by Cambium,” she said.

However, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) sees those results as non-compliant, and wants the township to do some further work to determine if there is any risk of impacts on groundwater offsite.

Dzurko outlined a plan to put in two new wells and use other techniques to provide surety to the MECP that the site is safe, at a cost of $15,000 to $20,000 to the township.

The alternative would be to close the site, which would cost $240,000 and the township would also forfeit the remaining life of the site, which is 87 years at the current fill rate. The township has about 40 years in overall dump capacity at its 6 sites.

“Why is the ministry identifying these issues, when we pay Cambium to identify them first,” asked Councillor Inglis.

“We did identify the issues, and if we can avoid additional wells we tend to do that. The ministry wants us to confirm some of our assumptions, so we need to do that in order to provide them with the comfort level they are asking for,” Dzurko.

Inglis then said that the township needs to begin looking for alternative waste sites, since the capacity of existing townships sites will run out.

“We have 40 years,” said Public Works manager Darwin Sproule.

“That’s not a long time,” said Inglis.

“With 6 active sites to manage, we have not been looking at new sites,” said Sproule.

Radon at Clar/Mil Fire Hall

The Clarendon/Miller Fire Hall, located at the township office complex, is the newest fire hall in the township, coming on stream in 2007. A test had determined that it had higher than acceptable levels of radon.

Radon mitigation will cost $19,252. Council decided to go ahead with the mitigation, using money from the Infrastructure Sustainability Reserve fund.

Truck purchase woes

Once upon a time, townships would purchase a new tandem plow truck every few years for $250,000. But those days are long past.

In February of this year, Council approved the purchase of a truck for $351,000 from the lowest bid to request for proposal that the township put out. That was over the limit set by Council and required Council approval.

“The proponent subsequently withdrew their proposal” said Public Works Manager Sproule, “citing uncertainty regarding delivery dates.

The best the township could do, by going back to the second lowest bidder, is $374,000.

I went to neighbouring municipalities to see what they are doing, and some said they can’t get a price at all, or a delivery date. One of them said they are waiting on 4 trucks, one of which was ordered in March of 2021,” he said.

Given market conditions, Sproule said he recommends that Council proceed with the purchase at the price of asking. Council agreed and approved spending the higher amount.

No support for private roads

A proposal to look at a granting program to help road and lake associations maintain and upgrade their private laneways, was rejected by Council.

A similar program has been up and running in South Frontenac, but North Frontenac seems less interested.

“I’m personally not in favour of this,” said Mayor Higgins, “we have financial problems, reserve issues, etc. We also have a lot of private roads. I don’t see why we should even look at it at this time.”

“There have always been requests for us to take on private lanes. I would prefer not to go ahead with this study,” said Councillor Wayne Good.

“I’ll vote in favour,” said Councillor John Inglis, “we collect a lot of taxes from people on private laneways, it would be nice to look at giving some back.”

Inglis’s sentiment did not sway the rest of council, as the proposal to study setting up the program was rejected by the majority of council.