Frontenac County approves budget with 2.5% increase

Jeff Green | Mar 05, 2014

At their February 20 meeting, Frontenac County Council approved a budget with a 2.5% increase.

Two councilors, Garry Davison (South Frontenac) and David Jones (Frontenac Islands) voted against the Frontenac County budget late last month.

The budget had been informally approved at a committee meeting beforehand, but both councilors expressed displeasure at both the process and the results.

“We gave instructions for two budgets, a 1% increase and a 1% decrease. Instead we got one budget, with a 2.5% increase, and a bunch of reasons why it was impossible to make cuts,’ said Davison.

For his part, David Jones was angry at his fellow councilors.

“We have a bloated $40 million budget here, and are you people seriously saying we can’t cut just 1% out of that budget, that we have to put the levy up by 2.5%. This is our last kick at the can here and that’s all we could do?” he said.

Even though there were only two who voted against the budget on an eight-member council, the vote was pretty close. Warden Bud Clayton was not at the meeting, leaving only five votes in favour, and since Gary Davison has two votes as mayor of the largest municipality, there were three votes against. If one of the five who supported the budget had flipped their vote, it would have been a 4-4 tie, which would have been a lost vote.

In 2013 the first time the county budget came to a vote it was defeated. Three weeks later the same document came back to a vote, and was approved.

This is the first time under the current council that the budget has been approved in February. Last year the budget was not finalised until the beginning of June.