Frontenac County moves past the hump to an uncertain future

Jeff Green | Jan 22, 2014

Seniors' housing emerging as a common objective

After a tumultuous 18 months that resulted in a lawsuit (which is still active), the departure of the chief administrative officer for a friendlier location, and some lingering personal and political grievances, there was a noticeable shift in the tone and pace of the monthly Frontenac County Council meeting last week.

Newly minted warden, North Frontenac mayor Bud Clayton, put forward some of his personal agenda items for the year, including a push for more youth involvement in municipal politics, and then Council went about its business without much fuss.

Part of the change has to do with the fact that Council meets twice a month now, and much of the real debate takes place at the more informal Committee of the Whole meetings, so council meetings are more for formal approval of items that have already been discussed.

At a relatively short in camera meeting, Council approved a new corporate structure, which changes some of the relationships between the top managers (the still vacant chief administrator position, the treasurer and the clerk) but refrained from making any of the downgrades to some of the junior management positions that were rumoured to have been put forward as options in the non-public sections of a service delivery review that was recently completed by consultants from the firm KPMG.

One of the interesting indications that there has been a change in the relationship between the council and the county was the lack of debate when Warden Clayton suggested that the County Sustainability Planner Joe Gallivan sit in on the ongoing meetings between the public works managers of South, Central and North Frontenac. These meetings have led to talk of joint contracting for services in the areas of waste management and road maintenance.

“The County may have access to grants that the townships might never be able to get, and sometimes it is easier to put in one application instead of three,” Clayton said, and a no-fuss vote of approval followed.

In the past two years, similar proposals by former CAO Liz Savill led to vigorous calls for the county to keep clear of township business.

The test of this new-found calm at the county will come next week, when the 2014 budget is tabled.

Two items that will be included with the budget also promise to be contentious. South Frontenac Mayor Davison will be looking for a complete costing for the planning services that the county will be doing for three of the four townships, not including his own, to ensure in his own mind that South Frontenac ratepayers are not subsidizing planning costs for other townships.

The other issue that will finally be front and centre will be the question of how to deal with county reserve funds. Chief among them is the $4.5 million working fund reserve, which by all accounts can be cut down substantially without causing any undue risk. Also in play is $1.6 million in accumulated reserves from federal gas tax grants. While Council has allocated all future gas tax funds to the townships, this money is still sitting in a county reserve. The debate will be centred on whether that money should be paid out to the townships as well, or left where it is to fund on-going sustainability projects and community improvement plans that are in place in Verona and Sharbot Lake, and Marysville on Wolfe Island.

One possible outcome of the reserves discussion would be the allocation of $1 million or more to fund a seniors' housing initiative that was formally initiated when council passed a bylaw establishing a task force to explore seniors' housing initiatives at locations throughout the county.

The task force setup itself is based on the idea of collaboration between the county and local advocates for housing. It calls for county council members to engage members of the public from each township to work on specific projects.

The first project that is on the horizon is in Marysville, where there is a piece of land on offer within the hamlet, and the hope is to build a small scale project, under five units.

The big question for the Marysville project, and for all future projects as well, will be financing. As of yet there is no developer on the horizon and that might be because it is difficult to make a profit building small-scale housing projects, particularly those that are being marketed to seniors