By the time council met on June 12, 2025, Mayor Gerry Lichty had chosen to give back three of the powers Ontario had just handed him. Before that meeting ended, the same council made him chair of a new housing task force, on his own report, 5 to 1, with his own vote among the five. He chose to hand back only what the law let him, and the budget powers he couldn't give back, he kept and used.
Hiring, suspending or firing the chief administrative officer went to council. The organisation chart went to council and the CAO. Committees went to council. The clerk set it all out in an email that council received for information.
Then council passed one resolution. It created the Housing Advisory Task Force. It dissolved the Seniors Housing Committee and the housing arm of the Economic Development Task Force. It named Lichty the chair, and gave the chair the job of recommending the people who got the public seats. Councillor Stephanie Regent was the only vote against. There was no separate vote on the man who would run it. Council's own rules leave the task force chair to council, and the report that recommended him for it was his own.
The budget came next. In August of last year he directed the CAO and the treasurer in writing to build this year's budget the way it had been built in the past. His own additions came to council as a published line called Mayors Requests. Its items came to about $13,000. The money was for a food bank, a school, two festivals, a volunteer dinner, a grant fund for fixing up properties and a raise in each council member's expense allowance. Council cut three of them back. The levy, the total the township raises from your taxes, came out nearly 4.8 per cent higher.
On December 4 he issued one decision that did three things. He wouldn't veto council's amendments to his own budget. He cut the time he had to consider a veto down to that same day. And the budget was deemed adopted at the moment the decision was issued. Council's own window to propose amendments still had a day to run. The next morning Treasurer Kelly Watkins wrote to council: "For the 2026 Budget, there is not a Resolution approving the Budget as has been done in previous years." On December 12 council passed a by-law confirming a budget that was already adopted.
So what has that task force sent council? Its own notes, signed "Mayor Gerry Lichty, Chair," recommending that council receive them for information and approve its own terms of reference and work plan. In January its members wrote down a real obstacle: the planning rules don't let five or six small homes share a well and a septic system. Two members were assigned to work it up. No recommendation on it reached the council table.
The one proposal with money attached, a housing expo, was deferred in September to next year's budget. The task force's terms of reference run out October 31, just after the October 26 vote.
Gerry Lichty is a candidate for mayor of North Frontenac in the October 26 election.