In the records we searched, when North Frontenac council or its staff name a newspaper for a notice, it's the Frontenac News, never North Frontenac News Media, which publishes this paper and which I own. On April 10, council wrote the Frontenac News into township law, for a road-closing notice Ontario doesn't require. No rule requires a quote, a comparison or a second phone call.
The by-law, signed by Mayor Gerry Lichty and Clerk Tara Mieske, adopts the township's land-sale policy. For closing an inland road allowance, it reads: "The Notice will be placed in the Frontenac News at least ten (10) days prior to the By-law being passed; and posted on the Township's Website." Ontario's Municipal Act, which sets out how a road is closed, asks for no notice and no newspaper. The duty to tell you at all comes from the township's own policy. Nobody made council write that name down.
For selling surplus township property, the same policy asks for notice "once in the local newspaper" and names no paper. Closing a shore road allowance takes letters to the neighbours and signs on the property, and no newspaper at all. Why one company, in one clause? Nothing in the by-law, its staff report or the minutes says.
Council's yearly votes name the same paper. Every year back to 2021, most recently on September 11, council has told staff to put the mayor's Emergency Preparedness Week and Fire Prevention Week declarations "in the Frontenac News." The audit committee and the economic development task force asked for ads there too, for the audited statements and a business workshop. No law requires the emergency week, fire week or workshop notices.
We searched roughly a thousand township documents. No other news outlet is named in a single township instruction. The habit predates this paper. A by-law passed eleven years ago already named the Frontenac News for road closings, and a later rewrite narrowed its role.
For notices the law requires, the township's notice by-law asks for a weekly paper that, in the Clerk's opinion, circulates widely enough to give reasonable notice. This paper's first edition is dated September 14.
On February 16, I wrote to the mayor, five councillors and the chief administrative officer. I offered to carry the township's media releases and emergency announcements on our site, for free. The Clerk wasn't on that email, and neither was the fire chief, who drafts the emergency and fire week wording.
About eight weeks later, on the day council passed the land policy, it reviewed the township's social media accounts. It dropped its X account and approved four Facebook pages and one Instagram account. The staff report named no news outlet. So the township talks to you through its own website and Facebook pages, and ads in one weekly published in Sharbot Lake.
Advertising has been exempt from the township's purchasing rules since 2019, at any price. In June, council passed a new purchasing policy. It kept that exemption word for word and took away the last piece of paper the old rule produced, a purchase order.
It's small money. The emergency week report in April put the mayor's declaration at $170. A line in the township's budgets from 2022 to 2025 carried the company's name: "Frontenac News Recreation Guide," $1,500 a year.
You can't look up what the township paid that paper, in any year. It publishes no cheque register, no accounts payable list and no vendor report. Not one dollar paid to the Frontenac News is on the public record.
Gerry Lichty is a candidate for mayor in the October 26 election.