South Frontenac & the $600,000 dream

Jeff Green | Nov 08, 2012

Editorial by Jeff Green

Last week, members of South Frontenac Council received the draft capital budget for next year, which they will consider when they sit down this weekend to hammer out their 2013 township budget.

Included in that capital budget is the continuation of a relatively aggressive road reconstruction plan, at a cost of $4.5 million.

To pay for that, the draft budget calls for $3.5 million from 2013 tax dollars, $475,000 from township reserve funds, and $600,000 from a grant from the City of Kingston.

Two of these numbers require a bit of explanation. Township reserves are slated to decrease this year, as they have for several years. The draft capital budget calls for the reserves to drop to $13.1 million by the end of 2013, down from $14.5 million at the end of 2012. This, of course, is not good news.

But the $600,000 grant from Kingston is another matter altogether. It is accompanied by a note at the side of the page, which says “City of Kingston ???”

To understand this $600,000 accompanied by no less than three question marks, we have to go back to 1997, to the Ambassador Hotel in Kingston where the final deals were made between Kingston and Frontenac County politicians, setting up an expanded City of Kingston and a diminished Frontenac County.

The two largest townships in the former Frontenac County were Kingston and Pittsburgh townships. They both joined the City of Kingston, depriving Frontenac County of its largest source of property tax revenue. At the same time, the County roads system was devolved to the local townships. In compensation for all these changes, the City of Kingston agreed to help South Frontenac Township with the maintenance costs on those roads, which include Perth Road, Sydenham Road, Battersea Road, and others. A smaller amount went to Frontenac Islands for Howe Island Road.

The agreement was set to last for 15 years, and those 15 years are up on January 1, 2013, which is why the $600,000 that was received in 2012 is very much in doubt for the coming year.

Since I have been covering budget debates in South Frontenac, council members, mayors and senior staff have consistently talked about the $600,000 running out after 2012. My understanding was that the money was transitional, designed to help South Frontenac to get on its feet.

Members of South Frontenac Council talked about weaning themselves from that money before it ran out.

But as we can see in the 2013 capital budget, South Frontenac Council still needs that money if they are not going to have to make some difficult decisions. They will have to cut planned road work, raising taxes, or dip even further into reserve funds.

What surprised me is not that the money will be missed, but that there is any expectation that the City might choose to renew the payment beyond 2012.

It turns out that the 1997 restructuring order does indeed leave the door open for the City to keep paying. It reads, “The council of the new City and the new Frontenac Management Board [since re-named Frontenac County] shall, on or after January 1, 2013, reconsider the annual contribution.”

It is pretty close to 2013 now, and how or when that reconsideration will take place is unclear, but presumably Frontenac County will ask for the payments to be renewed sometime soon.

Aside from the implications for the South Frontenac budget as this $600,000 question plays out, it also raises another question. After 15 years, has municipal amalgamation worked for residents of Frontenac County, or is it time to rethink some of the relationships that have developed?

The county continues to suffer from having a dearth of commercial/industry tax assessment and no population centres.

Without support from the City of Kingston, what does the future look like for Frontenac?

Looking to the west, Lennox and Addington includes Napanee, and Hastings County includes Belleville. Frontenac County needs Kingston, but Kingston does not need to support Frontenac County.

That does not really bode well for the future.