Addington Highlands to work with County GIS strategic plan

Craig Bakay | Jun 12, 2024

Although it has no GIS (Geographical Information Systems) personnel or equipment of its own, Addington Highlands Council passed a motion to work with Lennox & Addington County on a GIS strategic plan at its regular meeting June 4 in Flinton.

In a letter to Council, County Clerk/Communications Manager Tracey McKenzie said: “GIS has developed and grown within the County and its member municipalities over the last several years.

“The County and the majority of its local municipalities use GIS technology on a daily or weekly basis, as the demand for integrated and collective analysis of geospatial data has grown.

“Although the needs for the County’s GIS department are well defined, the responsibilities are not as clear. This is especially true for enterprise GIS responsibilities and expectations in our cooperative upper and lower tier environment in Lennox & Addington County.”

She said the completion of a GIS strategic plan would provide recommendations on delivering value and improvement in key areas, including data quality and management, as well as addressing strategic business needs and challenges.

“County Council is requesting that staff from the Township of Addington Highlands collaborate with the County and our other lower-tier municipalities to identify the need of all parties and recommend an efficient and effective approach to our GIS service levels,” she said.

“We have no GIS staff in place and we rely completely on the County staff for that,” said Dep, Reeve Tony Fritsch, who also sits on County Council. “The issue at County is sorting through what County staff will be doing and what lower tier staff will be doing.

“Some lower tiers do have GIS staff.”

“I don’t think there’s any way we could do it ourselves,” said Reeve Henry Hogg.

“We don’t have the expertise on staff or the capacity,” said CAO/Clerk-Treasurer Christine Reed. “If it wasn’t for the initiative of the County, I’m fairly certain Addington Highlands would not have access to GIS.

“It’s used for asset management and all of our mapping systems,” said Fritsch.

Newsletter

Council approved the 2024 Township newsletter, which should be sent out soon.

Snowmobile Club request

Council tentatively approved a request from the Mazinaw Powerline Snowmobile Club for use of Township property at the Cloyne Transfer Station which is operated by the Township of North Frontenac.

CAO/Clerk-Treasurer Christine Reed said they just wanted to circulate the request to North Frontenac for comments before fully committing.

“While we do own it, North Frontenac is operating a waste site there and it’s only courteous and part of our due diligence to circulate it to them for comments because it could have an impact on their operations,” she said.

Support for Physician compensation

Council voted to support a resolution from the City of Belleville requesting that the Province take immediate action to ensure family physicians are properly compensated with immediate fee increases and that the administrative burden now being experienced by family doctors be reduced so that they have more time to see their patients.

“I’ll support this but I’m not sure giving doctors more money will solve our doctor shortage,” said Coun. Ken Hook. “We need more medical schools training family doctors.”

Story Board

Council approved the Library Board’s request to affix story boards to fences for the summer reading period.

Public works

Roads and Waste Manager Brett Reavie reported that they’ve begun moving rocks to Tracey Park to build a higher barrier for the parking area.

He also reported that the cost of calcium chloride has risen about 3.76 per cent ($1,000( but they had budgeted for such and increase. Application should start at the end of June.

Beaver Dam

Coun. Kirby Thompson asked about the beaver dam on Vennachar Road, noting that it seems to require a lot of clearing.

“It keeps the road saturated which affects the integrity of the road,” said Roads and Waste Manager Brett Reavie. “It’s a battle.”

“I understand why we do it,” said Thompson. “I just wonder if we have to do it so often.”

Load Restrictions to be revisited

Council agreed to revisit the Township load restriction on roads, in order to match the restrictions imposed by the County.

“It might only be one week different but that could be 20-30 loads of logs,” said Coun. Kirby Thompson. “There’s a lot of money involved.”