Funds transfer raises eyebrows at County

Jeff Green | Sep 28, 2016

Frontenac County Council has approved a staff plan to take $300,000 from a reserve fund geared at helping low-income residents remain in their homes, and use it to purchase land that is required to complete the K&P Trail.

Some of the money will be used to buy land for the stretch of trail that runs from Tichborne to Sharbot Lake, and some for a lot in Verona that has been earmarked as a parking lot/trailhead.

The remaining $100,000 is to remain in the reserve fund “pending finalisation of the K&P Trail land acquisition project and the Verona Trail Head Project” according to a report from Treasurer Marian Vanbruinessen and CAO Kelly Pender.

Pender explained to Council, at their meeting in Glenburnie on September 21 that the reserve fund was created in 2014 to buffer against the possibility that the Province of Ontario was going to pull its funding for the Kingston/Frontenac Renovates program. That program provides grants of up to $3,500 and forgivable loans of up to $10,000 to low-income homeowners in Kingston and Frontenac County to pay for major repairs. It has been more widely accessed in Frontenac County than in Kingston over the years. Since that reserve was created, using county tax dollars from 2014, the province has renewed its commitment to fund Kingston Frontenac Renovates until 2019.

In his report, Pender said that three things may happen at that time: the province may continue to fund the program; the province may pull out and the program will end; or the province may pull out and the City and County may step in to fund it themselves.

Under that third option, the County would then have to seek more money from taxation.

“There is some urgency here,” Pender said of the need to find money for land purchases. “We have made offers to purchase which will come through in the near future and we have no money set aside to cover all those offers when they come through.”

The K&P trail has been a central project for the Frontenac County Economic Development Department, and has been identified as the county legacy project for Canada 150 next year. The trail links the Cataraqui Trail in South Frontenac with the Trans-Canada Trail in Shabot Lake. It was created by using the track bed from the former K&P Rail line, which Frontenac County purchased several years ago from its previous owner, Bell Canada.

The trail is complete from the southern border of Frontenac County until the CP rail crossing at Tichborne. The next eight kilometres of former track bed has been sold off to over 20 adjacent landowners and the county has been in negotiation with those landowners, seeking to secure the entire length in time for work to commence in the spring of 2017. The goal is to have the Kingston to Sharbot Lake trail completed by next summer.

Some members of Frontenac County Council were sceptical about diverting money from Kingston Frontenac Renovates to the trail.

Councilor Natalie Nossal, from Frontenac Islands, said, “I'm sorry but that is $400,000 that the county set aside to fill a void that did not transpire, not for this purpose.”

Councilor John McDougall, from South Frontenac, is the county rep on the Housing and Homelessness Committee for Kingston and Frontenac.

“Kingston Frontenac Renovates has never been discussed as something that might lose its provincial funding. As far as anyone knows the funding is solid. I think this money could be used for the trail. I think it is a good idea,” he said.

Earlier in the meeting, the council received a presentation by Sheldon Laidman, Manager for Housing from the City of Kingston, whose department handles money transfers from the Province of Ontario for Loughborough Not-for-Profit Housing in Sydenham; McMullen Manor in Verona; and North Frontenac Not-For-Profit Housing in Sharbot Lake, representing a total of over 100 units of social housing.

Laidman said that the province is pulling out of its financial support for those and all other social housing units in Ontario over the next 10 years, and the county should start thinking about how it will continue to support those properties, as it will still be obligated to offer discounted rent-geared-to income for low-income families and seniors.

With that earlier, sobering presentation in mind, Mayor of Frontenac Islands Denis Doyle said, “Putting that money into a fund for our future rent-geared-to-income commitments is closer to the intention for the money than this is.”

“That money was not collected for trails,” said North Frontenac Mayor Ron Higgins.

County Warden and Central Frontenac Mayor, Frances Smith said, “We have made commitments for purchases and we have money available that we do not need now, and may not need in the future. Whatever we do, we have to pay for the trail now and for our social housing commitments as well,” she said.

Smith then asked Anne Marie Young, the Manager for Economic Development for Frontenac County, “How did your spending on these properties go beyond what you had available?”

Young replied that $80,000 had been set aside for the land purchases, “which is about half of what was needed, at a minimum.

In the end the transfer from reserves was approved, with both representatives from Frontenac Islands and Mayor Higgins from North Frontenac voting against it.

(Yup, there is an editorial about this one – see page 2)