Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Power-outages stemming from a lightning storm pushed Greater Napanee’s regularly scheduled July 20 meeting to July 26.
Just another one of the new challenges that have popped up in the era of online meetings.
Fortunately council was eventually to conduct their lone meeting of July via Zoom and broadcast on the town’s YouTube channel. Here are some of the highlights:
-Mayor Marg Isbester moved the town would send letters of support to members of the Eastern Ontario Regional Network (EORN) bid to improve connectivity of the province’s rural communities.
“There are so many different ways that people are trying to get both cell gap and internet to every single corner of Eastern Ontario,” said Isbester. “There are lots of ways that municipalities can apply to some of these things but EORN, right from the very beginning, both for cell gap and for internet has been the one that has sort of steered the way, been the pioneer in it and they’re not in it just to get the low hanging fruit, the Dundas Street, the Bridge Street. What they’re trying to do is to get it into 95 per cent of the 13 areas within the Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus and the Eastern Ontario Mayors’ Caucus.”
Isbester added EORN is committed to bringing the best available networks to the remaining five per cent of homes that would fall outside that area.
Isbester agreed with EORN’s request to send letters to federal and provincial ministers in an effort to expedite the process.
“They’ve just been dragging their feet and dragging their feet after so much time and effort and money and proof of success has been put out there by EORN, which is part of the EOWC,” said Isbester. “It’s a track record. Everybody wants to bid on their jobs.”
Council voted to support Isbester’s motion.
-Looking to expedite another matter, councillor Terry Richardson put forward a successful motion calling for the town to hire a full-time bylaw office as soon as possible.
“The position’s been vacant for a number of months now,” said Richardson. “We deferred it under the understanding if my memory serves me right we contracted Frontenac Bylaw to come and do some work, I think its 20 hours a week.”
Richardson noted the issue was discussed at council back in March where it was agreed to be re-visited in June.
Isbester agreed with much of what Richardson said, but noted the town still had vacant clerk and CAO jobs to fill.
“No one is going to work more closely with a bylaw officer than our clerk,” said Isbester. “Part of that conversation that we had for reviewing it is that we wish to have a clerk in place before a bylaw officer was hired.”
When asked by councillor Ellen Johnson when the soonest a bylaw officer could be hired, Greater Napanee deputy CAO Brandt Zatterberg said the town is already working on filling other roles and would have a clerk in place by the time the bylaw office job posting closed.
“I know that there’s some rumblings in our town with Frontenac Bylaw, but I’m quite sure if we hire a new bylaw we’d want them to be just as aggressive,” added councillor Dave Pinnell Jr.
Richardson says part of the motivation behind speeding up the process of hiring a full-time bylaw officer is to help maintain property standards.
“The fact of the matter is the position’s been vacant for quite a period of time,” said Richardson. “It’s a full-time position and I think it’s imperative that we use or take advantage of that full-time position and get it filled as soon as possible. It wasn’t all that long ago where our previous CAO had mentioned that we were down in a number of positions and his goal was to get all the vacant positions filled. To me it doesn’t make sense to leave a bunch of positions vacant.”
Council voted in support of the motion.
-Town staff will bring back a recommendation to council as to whether or not to allow Access Automotive to sell used cars from their 199 Richmond Blvd. location.
Council will decide at their Aug. 17 meeting how many cars the business would be allowed to have for sale on their property. Though the main business would remain as automotive repair, the owners have requested council allow for them to sell a small amount of used cars as an accessory-essentially a replacement for any cars that were deemed too costly to repair.
Council will also decide whether or not to rezone a property on Beechwood Road from prime agricultural to rural to permit a future residential development of a 0.96 ha. lot.
The town’s Director of Development Services Michael Nobes informed council that although currently zoned primed agricultural land, an updated version of the town’s master plan determines the lot would be more appropriately classified as rural.
“My assumption is at the time there was an evaluation of the soil classification for the site,” Nobes told council. “Typically class three four soils are what are looked for to designate large slots of primary agricultural land. This is kind of bordering off of that. My assumption is this was probably the determining factor. Also the hydro corridor to the east kind of bounds this area locally. It made some good sense to shift it away from primary agricultural and designate it rural.”
-Under correspondents for information, councillor john McCormack voiced his support for petitioning the province to cover the costs of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests.
The blood test is used to screen for prostate cancer in men.
“The province of Ontario and the province of British Columbia are the only two provinces in (Canada) where the PSA test is not covered by the provincial health program,” said McCormack. “Coincidentally my twin brother was here on the weekend and he’s a urologist and he was telling me that 30 years ago the cost to do a PSA test would have been expensive when you consider the volume of tests, so $35 to $50 to do a test. That he believes is the basis for the decision of the province of Ontario not to include it. Today the test costs 25 cents let’s say. It’s very inexpensive to do. I can say that I want to support this because this is the only test that men have, contrary to the tests that women have which are covered. If it was a monetary hindrance that’d be different, but when you go to Life Labs today to do blood work, adding the PSA test is a nothing and it’s done at the same time and it doesn’t really cost hardly anything.”
Council voted to lend its support to the Town of Cochrane, which is sending a letter to the province regarding the matter.
-Deputy Mayor Max Kaiser voted to add a correspondence from the Friends of Wilton Creek Watershed speaking out against a proposed asphalt plant to be built in Greater Napanee to the file.