Frontenac County planning report

Jeff Green | Nov 26, 2014

As the term wound down last week at Frontenac County, the representatives from South Frontenac Council chose not to bring their concerns to the table - at least during open session - about a report from the county planning department on the work they did in 2014 as a contract planner for three of the four Frontenac townships.

“All I can say is this does not reflect what John McDougall and I were told was going to happen,” said a frustrated South Frontenac Mayor Gary Davison.

At the beginning of the year, North and Central Frontenac entered into a contract with Frontenac County for planning services, which Frontenac Islands had already done two years ago.

At the time, South Frontenac Mayor Gary Davison expressed the concern that his ratepayers not be on the hook for providing planning services for the other townships.

South Frontenac has its own planning department, and South Frontenac ratepayers also pay 60% of Frontenac County taxation.

At the time it was agreed that tracking software would be employed to determine what the two county planners were working on at all times, and armed with that data a user pay model for their time would be worked out.

In February, Frontenac Islands Mayor Dennis Doyle said “we would be happy to pay the full cost of the service. It will be a win-win for South Frontenac ratepayers.”

However, the report that was presented to Frontenac County Council last week, (November 19) used a different kind of model.

In the preamble to the report, the County Planning manager Joe Gallivan wrote: “The County has been using a ‘community benefit model’ in providing planning services to the townships. This model is used by other County planning departments in Eastern Ontario. It recognizes that a regional government has the ability to overcome disparities based on geography and/or tax base and tax assessment in order to provide equitable services. This is particularly relevant to Frontenac County, which has a large physical area with limited fiscal and human resources in local government.”

He compared the billing model with the one used by health units and conservation authorities, in which more populated areas subsidise the costs for more rural locations.

In line with this, the county has been providing service free of charge to North and Central Frontenac and Frontenac Islands for day-to-day planning work and land use policy work, and charging for work that is generated by privately initiated applications, which the townships charge back to the private applicants.

According to the report, 57% of the department's time was spent on county-related planning work, which includes preparing the county Official Plan, developing policy and doing approvals for subdivisions, which is a county responsibility.

The remaining 43% of the department's time was spent on work for the three contract townships. A little more than half of that work (23% of the total) was for work generated by the townships themselves, which was not charged back, and the rest (19% of the total) was spent on privately generated planning applications.

However, the revenue generated for the county was minimal, only $3,640, significantly less than the $12,000 that was projected.

The salary line in the county planning budget for 2014 is over $200,000.