Frontenac County budget unchanged except for a funding shuffle - Vandewal, Dolye Cast Disse

Jeff Green | Oct 28, 2020

The way Frontenac County’s budget oversight process, by the elected council, has developed over the years has turned into a wait, wait a bit more, and then hurry up process.

The entire budget package, which includes multiple Powerpoint presentations with highlights from each department, a budget summary page and budget detail pages as well, was posted a few days before the budget meetings took place on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, October 20 and 21.

As reported last week, county staff prepared a budget that targeting a 1.8% tax increase for spending on existing programs, stating that the normal target of the actual rate of inflation was not a realistic target this year. Because of COVID, the rate of inflation was an annualised 0.1% as of the end of August, but wage increases that the county is committed to by collective agreements, made the 1.8% target more realistic. On top of that, Council has committed to a 0.65% increase each year for 10 years to create an ongoing reserve fund for replacing aging infrastructure.

On top of the 2.45% increase, staff brought enhancement proposals for a new 12-hour ambulance shift in the west end of the City of Kingston, a Personal Support Worker shift at Fairmount Home, and a new community planner position in the Planning Department.

These new positions, in addition to the restoration of funding to Rural Frontenac Community Services and Southern Frontenac Community Services to support transportation for vulnerable residents, resulted in a budget with a 5.5% tax increase.

The rationale for creating all of the new positions had been brought to council over the past year in multiple reports to council from the three departments, and on Tuesday and Wednesday the managers of those departments took the opportunity to plead their case again.

The Personal Support Worker position at Fairmount Home is being created in order to help Fairmount on the path toward a level of care which is currently recommended by the Province of Ontario and will likely be mandated down the line.

The 12-hour ambulance is a response to increasing call volumes, in the west end of Kingston, that corresponds to population growth that will only be increasing as a building boom in that region plays out.

In justifying the new community planner position, Manager of Planning and Economic Development Joe Gallivan, pointed out that his department is currently working over capacity just to keep up with demand for planning approvals. The amount of time that Gallivan himself, and senior planner Megan Rueckwald, are able to apply to “the big issues, the regional issues, like the county official plan, the private roads issue, and communal servicing” is limited

“We are supposed to be spending 50% of our time on those issues, but that is not happening now and won’t be happening if we don’t create this position,” said Gallivan.

Frontenac County provides planning services to three of the four Frontenac Townships, on a cost recovery basis. North Frontenac Mayor Ron Higgins said that North Frontenac is considering pulling out of the arrangement and hiring their own in-house planner, a decision that will be made during North Frontenac’s budget deliberations in early 2021.

“If that happens, maybe this position will not be required” said Higgins.

“Even if North Frontenac pulls out of the contract, we will need this position,” said Gallivan.

After listening to presentations for several hours on Tuesday (October 21) council held an abbreviated version of their regular monthly meeting on Wednesday morning
(October 22) before another two-hour session of presentations. By the time the presentations were done, it was 1:45, and the meeting was scheduled to finish at 2:15.

“I don’t know what we can do in a half an hour, but I’m not coming back tomorrow,” said Deputy Warden Ron Vandewal, who was chairing the budget session because it was a Committee of the Whole session.

“We could defer the final discussion until November,” said County Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Pender, “the budget does not get approved until the December meeting.”

“Good idea,” said Vandewal, “that’s why you are the CAO.”

“Is there anything we can do now, since we are here,” said Vandewal next.

Warden Frances Smith, North Frontenac Mayor Higgins, and Councillors Bill Macdonald (Central Frontenac) and Alan Revill (South Frontenac) all said that the support for transportation programs is a priority with the public, and it should be included in the budget.

“We could take some of it, or all of it, from reserves this year, and move it into the budget over two or three years to mitigate the increase, but it should be a line in our budget so we aren’t debating it every year. It is the one thing that the county does, that people who I talk to, know about,” said Bill Macdonald.

With no obvious dissent, and a plan afoot to pull the funding from taxation and pay for it from reserves for one year, Council quickly agreed that they should keep all of the new positions in the budget as well.

Deputy Warden Vandewal said “I agree with all these new positions as well, but I just don’t want to increase the budget to pay for them.”

When the draft budget, with an increase of 4.9% and an allocation of $96,000 from reserve funds for transportation services, came to a vote, the result was 7-2, with Frontenac Islands Mayor Denis Doyle joining Ron Vandewal in casting a dissenting vote.

Doyle later explained that he voted against the budget for two reasons. The first is that he thinks the tax increase is too high.

The second is based on his concern about the county trail initiative in 2021-2026, a project that will cost an estimated $1.25 million to extend the K&P recreational trail from Clarendon to Snow Road.

When Richard Allen (Manager for Economic Development) proposed the extension as a new project, Doyle asked why a proposed Canal trail on Wolfe Island is being bypassed in favour of a further expansion of the K&P trail to the north.

“Fair is fair,” he said at the meeting, “we’ve always supported the K&P trail expansion to Sharbot Lake, but now that it is done, we would like to see some attention paid to the Islands.”

“We need more debate to see how we can get the tax increase down to something more acceptable to our property tax payers,” Doyle said in a subsequent email to the News.

“I also have a serious concern because the Islands have been waiting for over 10 years to participate in the funding for trails initiative. The Trails Master Plan called for funding and County staff support, to open the Wolfe Island Canal for a water section of the trail, and after nearly $5 million being spent on the mainland trail it is time to do some work in my municipality. This is certainly past due, at this point in time. The budget called for some funding for North Frontenac in 2021, which I support as they have also been very patiently waiting, but to be fair we also need to move forward in the Islands.”