Frontenac County taking the City of Kingston to court of unpaid invoice

Jeff Green | Sep 27, 2019

The City of Kingston has informed Frontenac County that they will be paying just over  $200,000 less than the amount that the county has invoiced then for their share of operating costs of the Fairmount Long Term Care Home and Frontenac Paramedic Services (FPS).  Frontenac County is going to court to recover the missing payment.

This lingering dispute between Frontenac County and the City of Kingston dates back to the beginning of 2019, when Frontenac County officials presented the budgets for both services to City Council. The budgets included substantial increases for both services, and members of Kingston City Council said the costs were too high.  The subsequent City of Kingston budget included lower amounts than the county had indicated they were going to charge for the city’s share of those costs. When Frontenac County eventually billed the city for the full amount, the city did not have enough money available in their budget to pay for their share of Fairmount and FPS costs than they were billed without dipping into reserve funds.

The shortfall for the city was $450,000 but city staff have allocated reserve funds to cover all but $200,000 of that money. On September 3, City Council decided not to pay that $200,000, on the expectation that this decision would lead to mediation and possibly arbitration, and perhaps court.

The matter will now proceed directly to court.

Last week, at the monthly Frontenac County Council meeting (September 18) Kelly Pender submitted a written report on the matter and also spoke to it during his monthly update to Council. In his report, Pender revealed that when Council last met, on July 18th, they received an opinion from their legal firm, during closed session, about their options should the “City of Kingston withhold its obligation to pay its apportionment of costs for Frontenac Paramedics and Fairmount.”

After hearing that opinion, County Council directed staff to “invoice the City of Kingston for its apportionment of costs for Frontenac Paramedics and Fairmount Home based on the 2019 budget, as well as to commence legal proceedings against the City of Kingston, if payment is not received by the City of Kingston within 90 days.”

By the time city council met on September 3rd, two thirds of those 90 days were already up.

In his oral report on September 18, Pender pointed out that the window for either of the parties to trigger arbitration on the billing for 2019 had closed at the end of June. He also said that the budget for the two services is not subject to arbitration, only the formula for determining how the costs are divvied up is.

“In 2004 the city took us to arbitration over FPS costs, and they won. We wanted to bill based on use of the service, and they wanted to be billed based on weighted assessment, and the arbiter ruled in their favour, which we have been following ever since.” Pender said.

Pender’s report, which was endorsed unanimously by Frontenac County Council, concludes with the following: “The City of Kingston’s contributions to Fairmount Home will be $162,261 under budget and Frontenac Paramedics will be $44,304 under budget. As per Council’s direction, staff will instruct the County solicitor to commence legal proceedings.”