Frontenac County budget

Jeff Green | Apr 07, 2011

Members of Frontenac County Council met for three and a half hours last Wednesday March 30 in an effort to wrestle down the $45 million 2011 County budget.

When all is said and done, council's deliberations will likely lead to a marginal increase in the county portion of the municipal tax bill for county ratepayers in 2011, bills that will see larger overall increases this year due to higher local taxes in each township.

However, the budget debate was anything but smooth. A number of issues were raised but few were resolved, and an extra meeting has been set for Wednesday, April 13 to try and finalize the budget.

Among items that seem to have been resolved, a proposed $25,000 expenditure on furniture for the county council chamber was scrapped, as was the practice of county councillors receiving compensation for the cost of high-speed Internet in their own homes. A proposed increase in staffing at the county office by two persons was also scaled back to one.

In terms of major budget items, Fairmount Nursing Home administrator, Julie Shillington, presented a revised budget that has been trimmed so that the net operating cost for the home has no increase this year. In order to accomplish that, given the increases in fixed costs such as raw food, laundry and linen services, and administrative costs, staffing cuts had to be made. The nursing and personal care budget was trimmed by $82,716 even though unionized staff received a contracted pay increase. A cut of almost 8%, or $32,500, in program and support services was also required to bring down operating costs.

Although the overall municipal contribution to the home is up by 1.67% this year, due to an increase in capital costs, the amount that will be paid by Frontenac County residents is down by almost 1% because of some transfers from reserve funds. The net county contribution to Fairmount Home will be $727,300 in 2011, down from $733,518 in 2010.

Before county council started debating the rest of the budget, Mayor Dennis Doyle from Frontenac Islands asked if he could address council.

Doyle handed out a breakdown of the impact of county taxes on each of the Frontenac townships over the past three years. Property assessments values on Frontenac Islands have risen more than elsewhere in the county – by 43.6%, compared to 36.4% in North Frontenac, 33% in Central Frontenac, and 29.1% in South Frontenac. This has shifted the burden of county taxation.

“While the county levy has increased by an acceptable average of 1.9% in South Frontenac over the last three years, it is 6% in the Frontenac Islands. I can't justify that to my constituents,” Doyle said. “I wanted to get that on the table, so people know that if we get a little aggressive on holding the line against any tax increase, there is a reason. If you look at the draft budget, South Frontenac will be asked to increase their levy by 0.75%; Frontenac Islands by 3.5%.”

“We are seeing increases in taxes without increases in service,” said David Jones, the other county council representative from Frontenac Islands.

North Frontenac Mayor Bud Clayton then addressed Council with his own perspective. He prefaced his comments by saying “This is in fact a municipal budget, which is essentially a wish list,”

Clayton then said he wanted to further address the Fairmount Home budget.

“Fairmount Home is an elite facility,” he said. “The average cost for long-term care in Ontario homes is $56,000 per patient per year, and at Fairmount it is $78,000. Deep in my heart, I think the Fairmount budget should be decreased by $300,000, and we should do the same thing each year for four years.”

He also said that the fire station/ambulance base in Ompah should go ahead.

“My proposition is that this go ahead, with $300,000 from the county. North Frontenac will spend $350,000, and North Frontenac will be responsible for the septic and the water, and the project can go out as a design build.”

His final issue was county support for Pine Meadow Nursing Home, a community-owned nursing home in Northbrook (in L&A County) that serves residents in Central and North Frontenac.

“The $25,000 asked for by Pine Meadow should be granted. Three quarters of a million dollars in county money goes to Fairmount Home and $150,000 goes to help redevelop the hospital in Kingston. These are health care dollars; these dollars should be spent on health care for people in our township. To ask for $25,000 when all these figures are being handled is a small percentage,” Clayton said.

Central Frontenac Mayor then asked for leave to comment, She took exception to both Clayton and Doyle's remarks.

“I can appreciate that all mayors and all our staff are under pressure, but I am distressed to hear a budget referred to as a wish list. It is not a wish list; it is a working document. We have to recognize that this is an opportunity to work collaboratively, look at the big picture and work cooperatively. I could sit and whine and complain just as much about Central Frontenac as well. Let's step back. Let's look at the big picture.”

County Sustainability Planner Joe Gallivan and Economic Development Manager Anne Marie Young both outlined a number of projects that are proposed to be funded through a federal gas tax transfer. Whether council approves these projects or not will not impact the county budget, but a number of members of council indicated they would like to put a stop to some of them and transfer some of the gas tax money to the townships for use on fixed infrastructure costs rather than county-wide projects.

Warden Davison for one, questioned the efficacy of a study into the viability of a milk processing plant in Frontenac County.

As the meeting drew to close, Warden Davison said that the entire budget would be open for discussion when county council meets again on April 13.

In a subsequent telephone interview, he said that he knew the budget debate has been slower this year, but said, “It is important, with six new councillors, that everyone is comfortable with the budget that we pass. There are still some serious questions to be resolved, and nothing is chiselled in stone until we get direction from council.”