Frontenac County budget project proposals

Jeff Green | Oct 26, 2017

Before members of Frontenac County Council see a complete budget document, they are meeting this week to consider requests for new spending. Some of these requests are coming from internal sources, such as the county run Fairmount Home, Frontenac Paramedic Services, and the Human Resources and Economic Development departments.

Among the list of requests is a new 7 day a week overnight Personal Support Worker (PSW) shift at Fairmount Home, and a new Human Resources position. The salaries for these jobs would be funded mostly by the City of Kingston, but county ratepayers would be on tap for $29,167 for the PSW shift, and $27,339 for the Human Resources position.

Among the other project proposals that would impact taxation is $14,400 for the county share of the costs of improvements to the parking lot at the Fairmount Home/County office complex, and a $35,000 in 2017 to boost the budget for the Economic Development Department in order to keep it at its current capacity when a three year provincial grant runs out.

County ratepayers would only be saddled with $111,000, a 1/2% increase, if all the internally driven project are approved.

That is only one part of the tax picture, however. This week council will also consider requests from external groups. Among these is a request from the University Hospital Foundations of Kingston for $200,000 toward ongoing improvements at three Kingston hospitals. This would be an increase of $146,000 over the contribution made by the county in 2017, which was the tenth and final year in a $54,000 annual contribution to a previous fund raising drive. The other large ticket item is a basket of requests from Frontenac Transportation Services for a total increase of $44,000 to their annual grant of $96,000.
All told the external requests come to over $205,000 and if granted would increase taxation by a further 2.2%.

Once the project proposals are dealt with, council will consider the budget as a whole. Based on a motion passed in September, that budget will include an increase of 1.5% for inflation, based on the Stats Canada Consumer Price Index for the year ending August 31st. Council has also agreed to 0.65% increase each year to go towards long term infrastructure replacement costs. In 2017, another 1% spending increase was covered by an increase in property assessment from new construction, and although the property assessment data is not in yet, a similar increase will be in the budget that council will be in front of council next month.

Essentially Council is looking at 3% increase before looking at any new projects, and about a 6.4% increase if they decide to say yes to all of the proposals that will be before them this week.
The likelihood is that at least some of the requests will be pegged back or eliminated, as council struggles to bring in their final budget before municipal elections in the fall of 2018.

Council meets this week to debate the project proposals, on the expectation that they will consider the budget as a whole on November 15 with a view towards adopting it in December.