Frontenac County set to increase its levy by 4%

Jeff Green | Nov 30, 2016

“When we look at projected change in requisition it looks like we are heading towards increases.”

That was the somewhat grim assessment of future budget pressures that will be facing Frontenac County over the next few years by County Treasurer Marian VanBruinessen as Council completed their work on the 2017 budget.

Earlier in the meeting, which took place last Wednesday morning (November 23) Council trimmed $51,200 in special projects, leaving Frontenac ratepayers with a collective bill of $9.37 million for 2017, an increase of $372,216 (4.15%) over 2016. Based on VanBruinessen's analysis, the increase is offset by 1% in growth due to new construction in recent years, leaving a net 3.15% impact on ratepayers.

Council cut a proposed $35,000 one time grant to the Frontenac Community Futures Development Corporation, as well as a $14,000 fund for community projects, a $1,200 contribution to support the Ontario ATV association AGM in North Frontenac, and a $1,000 membership in the Community Schools alliance in order to trim the increase from $3.72% in the draft budget to the 3.15% impact.

The goal that Council had set for township staff was 1% lower than that. That goal of 2.15% was based on a Consumer Price Index (CPI) report in August that set the annual inflation rate at 1.5%, on top of which a 0.65 % annual increase for ten years has been added by council to go towards the replacement of capital assets.

One enhancement that stayed in the budget was a commitment to reinstating a 12 hour ambulance shift in the City of Kingston. The 12 hour night shift was eliminated in 2013 during tense labour negotiations with OPSEU, which represents the Paramedics, at which time the issue of sick time was raised as well.

Paul Charbonneau, Chief of Emergency Services, told Council last week that response times have remained within the standard set by the service even with one less shift, mainly because Lennox and Addington built a base in Loyalist township, cutting 1,000 cross border calls to Frontenac Paramedic Service (FPS) each year. As well, FPS ceased doing patient transfers for Kingston General Hospital, making paramedics more available for emergency calls.

“That worked for four years, but in 2016 we saw a 4% increase in calls and we project we will continue to see an increase, which will mean we will no longer be able to keep to our response time standard,” said Charbonneau.

In order to soften the blow for ratepayers, Charbonneau proposed instituting the new shift in July of 2017 instead of January. Also, the new shift will only be an 8 hour shift for the first 18 months, only reaching 12 hours in January of 2019. This keeps the impact on the 2017 county budget to $30,000.

There was a short debate about whether to follow Charbonneau’s recommendation to bring a new shift on stream. When challenged,  Charbonneau insisted that it is important for FPS to remain pro-active and not wait for the response times to fall behind the standard before adding a shift.

The Frontenac Paramedics, including OPSEU local 462 President Shauna Dunn, attended the meeting. Afterwards they said they were pleased with the decision to bring back the shift.

“But this is not an enhancement,” Dunn said, “we are only getting back to where we were in 2013 and it will take another two years to get there.”

As of January 2019, there will be five 24 hour ambulances in Kingston,  24 hour ambulances stationed in Sydenham and Parham, and a 12 hour daytime ambulance at Robertsville in North Frontenac.
The 2017 Frontenac County Budget process was aided by a decrease in the Fairmount Home budget, which came about as the result of an increase in provincial funding that was accomplished through the purchase of new tracking software as well as other measures.

“We won’t see those sorts of increases in funding again,” said Councilor John Inglis, echoing the concern expressed by VanBruinessen that in future years Council will find it even more difficult to keep costs to within the rate of inflation, even with healthy levels of growth.