How Much did the CF Admin Building Cost Anyway?

Central Frontenac Council received a report at their meeting last week about how successful they have been so far in selling off surplus assets in order to cover the cost of buying the Simonett Building on Road 38, as a new home for the township’s administration.

We reported on it last week, and when it came to Council it was received without much comment. Later in the same meeting, a motion from Councillor Nicki Gowdy to come up with a comprehensive list of properties the township owns, and can sell, presumably with a view towards creating a new pool of money for the township to use for capital needs, was passed by Council with revisions.

It makes sense for Central Frontenac, which has been facing a financial impasse due to the fixed costs it is saddled with to cover the cost of road maintenance, relative to the size of its tax base, to look to recover whatever funds it can, from properties it has no need for.

However, aside from the sale of the former township office, there is no logic to applying the proceeds from the sale of properties to the purchase of the new office, except as a public relations exercise to appease residents who think buying the new building was an unnecessary extravagance.

If it is a good idea to sell off these properties, and it appears that it is, they should be sold off. The money raised will indeed offset the cost to ratepayers of capital purchases made by the township, but it can offset any capital purchase, such as a new grader, just as much as a new office building.

What we did learn from the report is that the new building cost $1.6 million, and selling off the old building, which only became available for sale because of that purchase, brought in $840,000. That leaves the net cost of the new building $760,000. And there is a catch, because there is a monthly rental fee for the library branch that the township did not have to pay before.

We are in the midst of an election, and in Central Frontenac the decision to purchase the Simonett building, which was something no one campaigned for in 2022 because no one could have foreseen the building would be available, was divisive.

It was a split decision on council, and among the public it was equally so.

People are entitled to vote one way or another for whatever reason they choose, and they can vote against candidates who supported the purchase simply for that reason.

But there is a broader context to this. Central Frontenac is not the only township to have found that, twenty years after amalgamation, there was more to municipal administration than anyone thought of, when these townships were set up. Much of this comes from the requirements that the provincial government has put in place.

Municipalities throughout rural Ontario have seen a need to expand the size and capacity of their township office.

Each of the municipalities we cover at the Frontenac News has renovated their existing buildings, all at a higher cost, in 2025 dollars, than the net cost of the Simonett building for Central Frontenac taxpayers.

The Simonett building may not be what the township really needed. It was originally a garage that was converted into the office of a financial services company, and now a municipality. It was not purpose built or even renovated for its current use. This is what those who opposed the purchase said at the time and they may be right or they may be wrong.

But if the focus is purely on whether it cost too much for the capacityn that it created, on the face of it, it did not.