Who does what, and how they do it, up for grabs in Frontenac County

Jeff Green | Jan 29, 2020

The four Frontenac townships, and Frontenac County, have received $150,000 from the Province of Ontario to undertake a service delivery review, it was announced last week. The project has been in the works for a few months, as part of a local response to a provincial initiative to modernise service delivery in rural Ontario.

The Chief Administrative Officers of North, South and Central Frontenac, Frontenac Islands and Frontenac County meet periodically to discuss common issues. Taking on a service delivery review is something that dovetails with the priorities identified by the Ford government in Toronto.

Last spring, the provincial government provided one-time grants to rural municipalities in Ontario. While the recipient municipalities could spend the money as they wished, the minister of Municipal Affairs, Steve Clark, described the grants as an “investment [that] gives Ontario’s small and rural communities the support that they need to become more efficient, to modernise service delivery, to avoid expenditure growth and ultimately better meet the needs of their residents.”

Then, on October 25, the ministry announced a new $125 million, 3-year long modernisation program intended to support rural municipalities to complete “new service delivery reviews, implement recommendations from previous reviews, and undertake a range of projects - such as IT solutions or process improvements. All applications will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.”

Rural municipalities were invited to provide the province with an “expression of interest” for the first intake of that program by December 4, 2019. The Frontenac County CAO group met and, with the support of their councils, decided they wanted to answer the call. With South Frontenac Township taking the lead, the Frontenac County group proposed a $150,000 study into the way a range of services are delivered in their respective municipalities.

A Request for Proposal (RFP) was prepared and released earlier this month, even though the group had not yet heard back from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.

“The timeframes are short, the study has to be completed by June and we did not want to wait until the announcement about funding was made, hoping we could get some consultants interested in submitting bids, by hitting the market early,” said North Frontenac Chief Administrative Officer Cheryl Robson.

If the funding had not been approved, a decision about whether to go ahead with local funding would have been necessary, causing delays because each of the 5 council’s would have had to approve it. With provincial funding now secure, it is all systems go.

“I’m very excited about this. It is something we have talked about over the years, and now we are looking seriously at it,” said Robson.

Perhaps because the timelines were so tight, the Frontenac County bid was one of only 27 that were submitted to the province, and all of them were accepted. The announcement came last week during the annual Rural Ontario Municipal Association (ROMA) Conference.

Services that were mentioned in the RFP include: transportation (including local roads and bridges) fire protection, emergency management, building inspection and permits, bylaw enforcement, animal control, parks and recreational services, environmental services - including solid waste collection/disposal and waste diversion, planning, taxation, water treatment and distribution in the village of Sydenham, cemetery, economic development, and septic permits.

The only services that were excluded are ones that are delivered by external organisations, such as police, social services, library, and public health.

Long term care, and paramedic services, which are provided by Frontenac County under provincial funding agreements, are also excluded, as is the Crown Land Stewardship Program in North Frontenac.

“As far as how the townships operate is concerned, we want to look at everything, nothing is off the table,” said North Frontenac Mayor Ron Higgins.

This project has been approved, coincidentally, just as Frontenac County Council is considering a report about creating a regional roads network for the larger, arterial roads in the county, in order to improve efficiency and be better placed to receive larger grants for road reconstruction and improvements. (see Frontenac County meets to discuss regional management of major roads).