Frontenac County budget debate hits overtime

Feb 04, 2010

Frontenac County Council had been planning to finalise its 2010 budget this week, but Frontenac Islands Mayor Jim Vanden Hoek threw a bit of a spanner into the works.

While the overall tax levy number as prepared by county staff was within an acceptable range at 1.94% over the 2009 levels, Vanden Hoek noted that spending was up about 15% and said the county was taking advantage of almost $800,000 in savings this year that came about because the Province of Ontario has taken on municipal costs for the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP).

“I'd like to move that the $793,814 as identified in our budget document as savings from the ODSP upload be identified as a direct transfer to the townships,” Vanden Hoek said.

North Frontenac Mayor Ron Maguire quickly seconded the motion, saying, “I think the optics of it would be very good. It'd be nice to point to a place in the budget where the upload occurred and say we transferred that money to the townships to be put directly to municipal infrastructure needs.”

Central Frontenac Mayor Janet Gutowski said she could not support the motion. “I think the move is drawing too straight a line from the ODSP upload to infrastructure spending. We made a decision last year to keep the tax levy down by transferring money from reserves, with this download in mind.”

Gutowski was referring to $354,000 that was taken from a “stabilization reserve” in 2009 to keep the tax increase to a minimum, and is slated to be repaid to that reserve fund in 2010.

South Frontenac Mayor, and 2010 County Warden, Gary Davison said, “I'm struggling in my own mind figuring this out. If we take that money out of the budget, how would we fill the gap? What is the implication to the budget?”

“It would make the tax increase 11.3%,” said County Treasurer Marian Vanbruinessen.

“That's my point,” said Mayor Vanden Hoek. “If we go through the budget in detail faced with an 11.3% increase in the levy, we will worry a lot more about some of those $25,000 and $35,000 expenditures that we might not let go if we are only facing a 2% increase.”

Warden Davison said he was wary of Vanden Hoek's approach, saying it would mean taking the entire budget apart. “To me if we want to trim the budget, why don’t we just go through the budget and trim it?” he asked.

Vanden Hoek then offered to defer his motion, and Council began going through the budget.

A $25,000 item for new tables and a sound system in the multi-purpose room that is used as a council chamber was scrapped, and a recommended expense of $69,000 in training for county staff was trimmed to $40,000.

Council did approve a grant of $80,000 to the Rural Routes Transportation program for 2010.

Other issues did not get resolved. For a couple of years money has been set aside for repairs to the entrance way to the county offices, which are located in an old house attached to Fairmount Home. Although the home was renovated a few years ago, the old house is in need of attention. Staff would like to see the repairs completed this year, but council will look at it once again before deciding how much to put towards it.

Another area of concern to several members of council was four projects under the heading of “sustainability planning”. Although these projects are to be funded by a federal gas tax transfer and would not affect local taxes, Warden Davison said he would like to see some of the gas tax money go to the local townships for local infrastructure.

These issues were left for another meeting.

As the meeting was nearing an end, Mayor Vanden Hoek said he would agree to lowering the number in his direct transfer motion from $793,814 to $437,245 to account for the $354,000 that is slated to be returned to the stabilisation reserve fund.

By press time, no other date had been set for a further county budget meeting.