Roads come up in every hall and every backyard in this township. Last month I posted the numbers behind them. This is the longer version: what our roads cost, why the budget cannot catch up, how I would set priorities, and what borrowing would cost against what it saves.
What We Own and What It Costs
North Frontenac maintains 344 kilometres of road. 184 are tar and chip. 147 are gravel. 13 are asphalt. The Township's 2025 Asset Management Plan says those roads would cost $118.4 million to replace.
The same plan says keeping them in their current condition costs $4,354,371 a year. The Township puts in $1,223,250. The gap is $3,131,121 every year.
Needed to hold current condition: $4,354,371 a year
What the Township puts in: $1,223,250 a year
The gap: $3,131,121 every year
Our tar and chip roads, more than half the network, average a condition score of 46 out of 100. The plan's own table says a tar and chip road at 50 needs pulverizing and a new double surface. At 30 it needs full reconstruction. We are already below the first trigger on average.
I live at Snow Road. Road 509 is how I get anywhere. Anyone who has driven it in April knows what a score of 46 feels like in the steering wheel.
Why the Current Budget Cannot Fix It
The 2026 budget raises $7,932,095 in property taxes. The roads gap alone is 40 percent of that. The full roads requirement is 55 percent of it. Of every dollar raised in property tax, 57 cents already goes to the roads department before fire, waste, or the office lights.
The council's answer in 2025 was a two percent levy increase each year for infrastructure. In 2026 that line is $150,480. The gap is $3.1 million. The asset plan itself estimated that closing the gap on all assets over 15 years would take an average tax increase of 2.9 percent a year. Council approved two. Costs rise every year.
The ten-year capital plan adopted this spring holds surface treatment at a flat $1,000,000 a year from 2027 to 2035. It names no road after 2028. Gravel drops to $300,000 a year, which at 2026 prices buys about 12 kilometres. That puts 147 kilometres of gravel on a twelve-year cycle against the five-year cycle the asset plan calls for.
Over ten years the capital plan spends $14.1 million on road surfaces. The asset plan says the roads need $43.5 million. The Township is funding 32 percent of its own stated need. Both documents came out of the same office in the same year.
So the math is settled. You cannot tax your way out of a $3.1 million annual gap on a $7.9 million levy. I have not heard that said at the budget table. Until it is said, the debate stays stuck on whether to raise taxes two percent or three.
How I Would Set Priorities
Priority is not who complains loudest or which ward's turn it is. It is three numbers per road: how many vehicles use it, what condition it is in, and what it costs to fix now versus after it fails.
Roads 506 and 509 carry 600 to 800 vehicles a day. Most other roads carry under 150. Those two are the spine, and they go first. The 2026 plan puts $761,000 into 509 this year and $466,000 into 506 next year. That is the right order. It is not enough money.
After the spine, the rule is the one in the Township's 2019 road needs study: it costs far less to keep a fair road fair than to let it fail and rebuild it. Money goes to roads at 50 to 60 before roads at 30, because a dollar at 55 buys five years and a dollar at 30 buys a fraction of a rebuild.
That requires knowing the condition of every kilometre every year, not every five years when a consultant drives it. The Township already pays $16,100 a year for route patrol software and $7,620 for vehicle locators on its trucks. Put a camera on the dash and let the trucks score the road every time they drive it. Markham tested this in 2024. Windsor reports a 90 percent drop in pothole claims since adopting it.
How to Close the Gap in Ten Years
Every piece of this is a program that exists today.
One. Stop treating grants as luck. In my earlier post I said the asset plan assumes grant funding will arrive periodically. After going back to the document, that is not what it says, and I want to correct it. The plan leaves grants out of its math because it calls them "unstable," and it says bridge and culvert work "may also be deferred depending on the availability of grant funding opportunities." That is the problem. If grants are too unpredictable to plan on, then chasing them has to be someone's job. Name every program, put its intake date on the Council agenda, and assign a staff member to each application.
On August 16, Canada and Ontario opened a $1 billion Non-Development Charge Municipalities Stream for roads, bridges, and water in municipalities without development charges. Ontario and Canada each pay 40 percent of an approved project, and the township pays 20. Applications open October 29, three days after the election, and close December 2. Decisions come in spring 2027. It funds infrastructure that supports housing, and every house in this township sits on 506, 509, or a road that feeds them. North Frontenac has no development charges bylaw that I can find. Staff should confirm eligibility with the Ministry now and write the application now. Joint projects get priority, so a shared application with our neighbours on a common corridor is worth a phone call this month.
Two. Bank the OCIF grant instead of spending it as it arrives. The province cut our 2026 allocation to $890,657 from $989,619. Every township in the county took the same 10 percent cut. Under the program's rules, OCIF can be accumulated for five years. Two years of it is $1.8 million ready to match cost-shared programs. One caution: the housing stream in step One does not allow OCIF as the township's share. So OCIF is the match for other programs, or it pays for the next roads on the list while that grant covers the spine.
Three. Dedicate every OMPF increase to roads. The province raised our 2026 OMPF grant by $276,600 for small tax bases. The budget left it in general revenue and kept the roads share at $250,000. Move it.
Four. Borrow once, deliberately. North Frontenac carries $507,056 in debt and pays about $45,000 a year on it, a small fraction of what the province allows. A single $5 million debenture through Infrastructure Ontario, matched with banked OCIF and senior government money, reworks the worst 80 kilometres of tar and chip in one season instead of eight. Central Frontenac carried $1,477,630 at the end of 2024, about three times ours, and its treasurer called that a quarter of the provincial limit. The risk is not borrowing. The risk is borrowing without a plan. The next section shows exactly what that loan costs and what it saves.
Five. Share what the county already owns. Frontenac County's mapping office runs AI road detection and holds elevation data for the whole county. Our county levy already pays for it. A shared services agreement puts it to work on our 344 kilometres.
Six. Use the road needs study on time. Ours is from 2022. The next is due in 2027. With our own condition data as the baseline, it costs less and says more.
What Borrowing Costs, and What It Saves
A $5 million loan over 15 years costs about $2 million in interest. Letting the same roads fail costs $11 million to $24 million more than fixing them now. That is the whole case in two sentences. Here is the arithmetic behind it.
What a kilometre costs, before and after it fails
| Treatment | When the plan calls for it | Cost per km |
|---|---|---|
| Pulverize and new double surface | Condition 50 | about $88,000 |
| Single maintenance layer afterward | Every several years, while the road holds at 55 to 65 | about $33,000 |
| Full reconstruction | Condition 30 | about $411,000 |
The triggers come from our 2025 Asset Management Plan. The rebuild figure is the plan's own replacement value for tar and chip: $75.7 million for 184 kilometres. Our plan does not print a per-kilometre price for rework, so the first two rows use Asphodel-Norwood Township's 2026 surface treatment program, a rural township with the same kind of roads. Theirs averaged $87,920 a kilometre for double surface reconstruction and $32,612 for a maintenance layer. The point is the ratio: a rebuild costs between four and five times what a timely rework does.
What the loan costs
At 4.5 percent over 15 years, a $5 million debenture costs $465,569 a year, and $1,983,536 in interest over its life. That matches the work. Nipissing Township's 2023 road needs study expects pulverizing and double surface treating a road to add 14 years of life, so the loan is paid off about as the new surface wears out. Infrastructure Ontario sets its rate the day the loan is approved, so here is what a point either way does:
| Interest rate | Yearly payment | Interest over 15 years |
|---|---|---|
| 4.0% | $449,706 | $1,745,583 |
| 4.5% | $465,569 | $1,983,536 |
| 5.0% | $481,711 | $2,225,672 |
The payment is already in sight. This year's OMPF increase was $276,600. This year's two percent infrastructure levy line is $150,480. Together that is $427,080 a year, within $40,000 of the payment, without a new tax increase beyond what council has already adopted.
If the grant comes through
Everything above assumes no competitive grant, because the asset plan itself says not to plan on grants. If the housing stream in step One approves the rework, it pays 80 percent and the numbers shrink:
| Without the grant | With the grant | |
|---|---|---|
| Grant money | about $2.0 million in banked OCIF and other grants | $5.63 million (80 percent) |
| Township share | $5.0 million borrowed | $1.41 million (20 percent) |
| Yearly payment, 4.5% over 15 years | $465,569 | $130,985 |
| Interest over 15 years | $1,983,536 | $558,056 |
With the grant, banked OCIF is no longer needed for this work and can go to the next roads on the list. That is the reason to have the application in by December 2.
What it saves
At $88,000 a kilometre, 80 kilometres of rework costs about $7.0 million. The $5 million loan covers most of it, and two years of banked OCIF and grant money covers the rest. Including every dollar of interest, the fix-now path costs about $9.0 million.
The wait path is the one we are on. Our tar and chip already averages 46, below the rework trigger. If those 80 kilometres slide to 30, rebuilding them costs $32.9 million. Even if only half of them fail and the other half can still be reworked, the bill is $20.0 million.
The fix-now bar includes 15 years of interest. The wait bars include no inflation at all, and construction prices rise every year, so the real gap is wider than shown.
What waiting would mean for your tax bill
Another way to read that chart is to ask what each path would add to the property tax levy. One percent of this year's levy is about $79,300. Each path below is paid for the same way as the fix-now plan: 2026 dollars, an Infrastructure Ontario loan at 4.5 percent over 15 years, two years of banked OCIF applied first, and the $427,080 a year from the OMPF increase and the two percent infrastructure line put toward the payment.
| Path | Levy increase needed | Yearly payment | Borrowed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fix now (rework at 50) | 0.5% | $465,569 | $5.0 million |
| Wait, half fail to 30 | 15.7% | $1,676,049 | $18.0 million |
| Wait, all fail to 30 | 30.9% | $2,877,217 | $30.9 million |
If we wait until half these roads fail, paying for them would take a one-time increase of about 16 percent on the Township's share of the tax bill. That is roughly $157 more for every $1,000 a household now pays the Township. The increase would stay in the levy for 15 years, on top of the two percent a year council has already adopted. County and education taxes are separate and not included. Fixing the same roads now takes about half of one percent.
This is not a forecast that taxes will rise 16 percent. It is what the bill for waiting looks like when it is paid the same way as the plan to fix now. A longer loan would lower the yearly figure and add more interest. Paying cash would be far worse: covering $18 million over ten years would add about 23 percent to the levy for each of those years.
What That Produces
By 2030, the worst 80 kilometres of tar and chip are reworked, funded by banked OCIF, the OMPF increases, one debenture, and whichever senior government stream says yes. By 2032, every kilometre has a condition score updated every patrol, and a capital plan that names a road for every dollar. By 2036, the annual roads gap closes to what the two percent levy can carry.
None of that bankrupts the Township. We hold $8.2 million in reserve funds and use almost none of our borrowing room. What we lack is not money in the province's programs. It is a council that starts from its own asset plan and budgets to the gap instead of the levy.
On Value for Money
Value is not the lowest tender. Value is the road that lasts its full life because it was treated at 55 instead of rebuilt at 30. Value is a culvert that was in the ten-year plan a year before it was needed. Value is a grant application that goes in on time. Each of those is a management decision, not a tax decision.
The numbers here are in the Township's own documents, on its own website, adopted by the council now leaving office. The plan says the gap is $3.1 million a year and that two percent will not close it. The plan is right.
The question on the ballot is whether the next Council will do the next part.
The asset plan is on the Township website under Budget and Finance. Read it. Then tell me which road you worry about most. I answer every message.
Art Hannigan
Candidate for Mayor, Township of North Frontenac
Authorized by Arthur J. Hannigan, Candidate for Mayor, Township of North Frontenac.
Sources
- North Frontenac 2025 Asset Management Plan: network, replacement values, condition scores, treatment triggers, annual requirement and gap
- North Frontenac Budget and Finance page: 2026 budget and 10-year capital plan
- Asphodel-Norwood 5-Year Surface Treatment Plan, updated July 2026: per-km rework and maintenance layer costs
- Gananoque ponders $12.9M borrowing, The Brockvilleist, July 2026: 4.5% planning rate used for an Infrastructure Ontario loan
- Infrastructure Ontario lending rates: rates quoted only on application
- Township of Nipissing 2023 Road Needs Study: 14-year service life extension for pulverize and double surface treatment
- Municipal Housing Infrastructure Program, Non-DC Stream guidelines, August 2026: 40/40/20 cost share, $20 million cap, December 2 deadline, no OCIF stacking
- Government of Canada announcement, August 2026