North Frontenac's 2026 budget expects $214,834 in federal gas tax money. The Township's budgets call it the Canada Community Building Fund, or CCBF, and the Township's October 23 agenda now calls it the Build Communities Strong Fund. Under Township policy, the money must go to building, renewing or improving capital assets in categories Ottawa sets. The Township's budget papers say that, historically, "70% of the CCBF money has been used for Roads projects."
Council has now committed part of that fund to a recreation project. In September 2024 it approved up to $205,000 of it for the Plevna rink. By July 2025 the Township's share of the rink stood at as much as $367,126, all of it from the same fund. Council allowed up to $135,000 more in March of this year. I added the two together, and that is as much as $502,126 of gas tax money committed to the rink. On Friday's agenda, council is asked to move another $5,000 from the fund to replace a donation the Snow Road Community Centre withdrew.
This is not a complaint about the rink. The Township reads the fund's rules as allowing a rink, and Plevna gets a new facility out of it. But whatever the fund puts into the rink, it can't also put into the roads.
In July 2025 the staff report presenting the Township's asset management plan, the long-range plan for keeping roads, bridges and buildings up as they wear out, said the plan left the fund out of its numbers. The report's reason was that the money "has recently been directed toward one-off projects," and it gives two examples, the Plevna Rink Project and the Pine Lake Culvert. It adds that "These projects were outside our current 10 year Capital planned spending." The same report also says "there may be opportunities to utilize the CCBF."
The plan also says what the roads need. It puts the Township's roads $3,131,121 a year short of what the plan says it takes to keep them up, and its bridges and culverts another $577,512 a year short. Those are the Township's numbers, not mine, and NFNM is not saying the rink caused them.
The Township's ten-year capital plan changed its wording too. In 2023 and again in 2024 it made "an assumption that all of our CCBF Funding would be used for Capital Projects." In December 2025 the same line read "an assumption that some of our CCBF Funding would be used for Capital Projects." NFNM has found nothing in the Township's records that explains the change from all to some.
Road money from the fund had not stopped altogether as of last December. The Township's budget summary dated December 1, 2025 set aside $378,000 of the fund for the Buckshot Lake Road project, pending a grant, along with $367,126 for the rink and $65,000 for boat launches and parking. That summary estimated about $619,000 left in the fund at the end of this year. Friday's agenda, about ten months later, gives an estimated year-end balance of about $1.06 million. NFNM has not found a Township record that explains the gap or says whether both figures are for the same year-end. Nor has it found any record of a road or bridge project cut or put off because of the rink.
So here's my question, and it is one the Treasurer can answer. Is the $378,000 for Buckshot Lake Road still coming out of the fund? With some of the fund now going to one-off projects, which road and bridge work, if any, is it not paying for, and when does that money come back to the roads? Council should ask that before it votes on Friday. If you drive North Frontenac's roads, you're owed an answer.