Frontenac County settles on a 4.95% increase

Jeff Green | Nov 01, 2019

Meeting as a Committee of the Whole on Wednesday and Thursday (Oct. 23 and 24) of last week, Frontenac County Council added two new positions at Fairmount Home to a base draft budget that included a 4.21% tax increase, ultimately setting the budget at 4.95% higher than the 2019 county budget.

After listening to reports from various county departments about their ongoing operations, Frontenac County Council returned on Thursday afternoon to the one-page document that had been shown to them early on Wednesday morning.

The 4.21% base budget increase was predicated on the same service levels that the county is delivering in 2019. It includes a 2.41% increase due to inflationary and other pressures, a further 1.15% increase due to a projected freeze in provincial grants, and a 0.65% increase that comes from a ten-year commitment to increase reserve funds to adequately cover for the replacement costs of various county assets.

Alan Revill, who is serving his first term as a member of Frontenac County Council, but is in his second term on South Frontenac Council, noted at the beginning that Council might have been well served by looking at the line by line budget figures that resulted in the 4.21% increase in the base budget.

“We could do that if Council directed,” said County Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Pender. “Council has directed us to provide business plans and five-year cost projections, but if Council prefers to go line by line over the departmental budgets, we could make that change. The documents are available if you would like a copy.”

The matter was not raised again. When the business plan presentations were completed at 1pm on Thursday afternoon, Council then looked at the project proposals that, if accepted in full, would have taken the levy increase to 6.15%.

Council approved one of those proposals, the hiring of a personal support worker (day shift), and a registered practical nurse (night shift), for Fairmount Home. The county share to cover the first-year costs for these positions is $75,926, bringing the levy increase to 4.95%.

Another project proposal, a training program for primary care paramedics so they are able to start intravenous therapy (IV) in patients and administer additional IV medications as well, was also approved, but since it is one-time training, the money will be taken from reserve funds and was pulled from the levy increase for 2020.

That left one item to be considered, $96,000 in levied money to continue funding two transportation services in Frontenac County.

Council decided not to keep funding the transportation services on an ongoing basis, and will no longer levy taxpayer funds for transportation.

There was some dissent over this decision. Bill MacDonald from Central Frontenac said “One of the reasons I would like to see transportation remain in some form is that it is a link to the general population. Unless people have a relative there, they don’t know anything about Fairmount Home. They are aware of the townships, but not the county,” he said, but he did support the funding cut in the end.

Once this long-term decision was made, council decided to provide $48,000 each, to Southern Frontenac Community Services and Rural Frontenac Community Services, which was the amount requested this year, for 2020 only, taking the money from reserve funds because it is a one-time payment.

“We need to let them know that this is the last year of funding,” said South Frontenac Mayor Ron Vandewal. “I guess you could say that technically they could go to the townships for funding next year. I’m not sure why it was here in the first place and not with the townships anyway. I’m not saying we’re going to support it in South Frontenac, but they can make a request.”

(see – Only one more year of funding for transportation services in Frontenac County)

That leaves the levy increase to ratepayers at an increase of just over $500,000 (4.95%)

The budget will be forwarded to the December meeting of Frontenac County Council for approval.