Frontenac County Budget Debate Ends Quietly With Recriminations

Jeff Green | May 09, 2013

If the Frontenac County budget process were a play (it would likely be a melodrama) then the first thing that would strike the audience about the final scene, was that one of the major players was missing.

Choosing instead to preside over Business over Breakfast meeting in Sharbot Lake, County Warden Janet Gutowski ceded the chair for the final budget meeting last Thursday (May 2), leaving North Frontenac Mayor Bud Clayton to preside over the meeting. About an hour into the meeting, Gutowski slipped in, and sat quietly at the table as the 2013 budget was finally approved.

Before addressing the budget, Council looked briefly at a proposal from South Frontenac Councilor John McDougall to earmark $1.5 million of the accumulated County surplus in federal gas tax rebates for a homelessness and low income housing strategy. The proposal was quickly deferred until after the budget was approved.

The next item of business, one that did relate directly to the budget, was the county reserve fund policy. This topic was also deferred until after the budget process was complete, and will likely resurface at the May 15th monthly meeting of Council.

With this matter out of the way, after a bit more confusion over whether the budget was already passed after Council inadvertently accepted the budget document and had to then bring it back for reconsideration, there was finally an opportunity for members of council to open up the budget document to scrutiny for the first time since the document was rejected on March 20.

Frontenac Islands Mayor Dennis Doyle had a number of questions regarding the document. However, there was still no appetite at the table to revisit any of the major program budgets, such as Fairmount Home, Frontenac Paramedic Services or County Administration.

Instead, Doyle decided to focus on the fate of the $130,350 operating surplus that the County ran in 2012.

“An operating surplus should be applied directly to the levy to taxpayers, and should not be simply lumped into the working fund as has been done. I move that the levy be decreased by $130,350,” said Doyle.

However, the county working fund had already been depleted earlier in the budget process. According to information provided by the Treasury department, $339,658 in working funds had already been used to offset costs, and another $178,246 was transferred to specific reserve funds. With the additional $130,350, the working fund has now shrunk by over $600,000.

Council accepted Doyle's amendment to the budget, leaving the budget levy down by about $157,000, or 1.92% as compared to last year.

In addition, the local townships will be receiving 100% of county federal gas tax rebates in 2013, effectively doubling the amount they each receive directly from the federal government each year to help fund local infrastructure projects.

These changes were enough to convince the majority of Council to accept the budget, which then passed by a vote of 7-2.

The two opposing votes both came from Frontenac Islands, and a subsequent comment about “mismanagement” at the county, attributed to David Jones, a member of County Council from Frontenac Islands, led Warden Gutowski to issue a press release.

In her release, Gutowski accused Jones of making “inaccurate, inflammatory, and unfounded” statements, which she described as “a slap in the face to our citizens, our staff, and my colleagues on council ...”.

Jones has since responded with his own press release, in which he said that the county has been characterised by inefficiency.

“Years of escalating mismanagement, escalating absenteeism in particular, is anything but effective and efficient,” he said, laying the blame for the current reality at the feet of Gutowski, who, he said, is responsible for “an atmosphere of acrimony and distrust in chamber …”